Mu'min Islam

The phone rang three times before six-thirty in the morning. Mu'min Islam almost let it go — and the case on the other end became the one he still measures every other one by.Mu'min Islam did not set out to be a trial lawyer. At Temple University's business school, he noticed how many corporate executives held law degrees and saw law school as a runway toward the C-suite. Graduating in 2008, into the teeth of the financial crisis, rerouted that plan — his Philadelphia firm laid off nearly its entire first-year class — and a corporate lawyer who insisted he "didn't want to litigate" slowly became one who lives for it.What carries through his story is a particular kind of tenacity he traces back home. "You can Google, what is a Philadelphia lawyer?" he says — shorthand for a grind he argues you had to have to survive in Philly. Now managing partner at Ace Law, LP, splitting his time between the Atlanta area and Philadelphia, he brings that grind to a Georgia market where, he observes, plenty of firms will take a case, try to settle it quickly, and refer it out if they can't. Islam works a file, in his words, to the umpteenth degree, and handles matters soup to nuts — from intake through trial — rather than passing them along.He credits range, too. Raised in a Jamaican family where he says he worked every job under the sun, he relates to the UPS worker and to the client who made one bad decision alike — an everyman fluency he thinks sets him apart as much as any courtroom aggression.Then there is the case that stuck. It began with that early-morning call: an immigrant day laborer killed on a construction site, electrocuted when the hook of a bucket he was raising struck a live wire. Because the man was not a citizen, the threshold question was whether his family could recover at all. Islam dug up case law from other states, reconstructed the man's earnings from the money-transfer receipts he had kept each time he sent money home, and flew to Mexico with an interpreter so the family could settle the estate. He negotiated a settlement with the utility company. Years later, he returned to hand the man's now-grown son — today living in the United States — a couple hundred thousand dollars held in trust.It is that long arc — the client you helped years ago resurfacing through someone they sent your way — that Islam returns to in his "Closing Argument," a reflection on why this work, for all its stress, is the kind that stays with the people you do it for.Key Takeaways·       Tenacity is a habit, not a talent — working a file to the umpteenth degree is what separates a quick settlement from a real result.·       Taking a case from intake through trial, instead of referring it out, keeps a lawyer accountable to the client the whole way through.·       A lawyer who has worked every kind of job can meet clients where they actually are, whatever their circumstances.·       Threshold questions — like whether a non-citizen's family can recover — are won with research and creativity, not assumptions.·       The impact of a case can outlast the verdict by years, resurfacing when a former client sends the next one your way.The Trial Lawyer's Journal is Presented by CloudLex and Lexvia.ai.TLJ InstagramTLJ YouTubeTLJ LinkedIn