Message from the President - January 2026

Dear fellow ABOTA members,

I write this with a bit of sadness in that this will be my last President’s Message. Serving as President of the Orange County ABOTA Chapter in 2025 has been one of the highlights, if not the highlight, of my 39-year legal career. While it has been a lot of work and hard work, it has not only been fun, but very personally rewarding.

Since my last message, we have continued to be busy and active. With a new school year, we started doing our Mendez Monument Park Presentations Tributes again. On October 21, 2025, we had over 50 elementary school students from Anaheim Elementary School listen to our presentation on the significance of the Mendez v. Westminster School District case and the 7^th Amendment. Even though they were only 4^th graders, they intently listened to the presentation and had some very eye-opening questions regarding attorneys and the current state of the law.

If you have not been involved in this program, you should reach out to myself, Michael Maguire and/or our incoming 2026 Chapter President Deborah Tropp-Thompson to get involved. We have 16 more presentations to do from now until April 23, 2026. You will find that it is one of the most personally rewarding things you can do.

Over 20 Chapter members and their spouses attended the CAL-ABOTA Hawaii Conference from November 3-8, 2025, at the Mauna Lani Resort on the Big Island, now officially known as the Island of Hawaii. Our own Chapter’s Keith More was recognized on the first night at a dinner for having been selected as the CAL-ABOTA Community Service Award Recipient for 2025. He was most deserving of this award for all he does, not only in the legal community and for ABOTA, but the local community.

Our Chapter hosted a dinner at Tommy Bahama on November 4, 2025, as a way to bring all our members and their spouses together as a group. We had over 30 attendees and a fun time was had by all.

On November 7, 2025, Jennifer Leeper, one of our National Board Representatives, participated in the Orange County Superior Court’s Young Men’s and Women’s Civic Leadership Conference. This is program is put on by the OCSC for high school students throughout the county. Panels and workshops are put on to inspire students to identify local issues and explore ways to drive change in their schools and communities. Through interactive activities, they learn to lead impactful service projects and to expand civic learning county and statewide. We also donated the cost of the lunches for all attendees.

There were over 180 students, their teachers and school administrators who attended. Jennifer gave a speech about ABOTA, our Chapter and the importance of the 7^th Amendment and also led a table of students. She reported to our Board that OCSC Presiding Judge Maria Hernandez, Assistant Presiding Judge Sheila Hanson, and several judges, including criminal judges, spoke about how tremendous ABOTA and our Chapter are in participating in civics programs and court programs. She also noted that they said that only the best of the best trial lawyers are members of ABOTA that we are the best of the best.      

On December 3, 2025, our Chapter hosted our Annual Holiday Dinner at Muldoon’s in Newport Beach. We had almost 100 attendees, which is a great turnout. We also raised over $8,000 in gift cards for OC Project Youth. Over the past three years, we have raised over $22,000 for them. They really appreciate our support and generosity.

I want to thank our 2025 Executive Committee, Deborah Tropp-Thompson, Jennifer Russell, Keith More, Kimberly Valentine-Gibson, Elizabeth Kolar, Jeff Roberts, Greg Admunson, Dan Hodes, Jenniffer Leeper, Pamela Traut, Yoshi Kubota and William Haggerty, for all their support and help this year. Without them and other past presidents and Chapter members, we would not be what I consider to be the best ABOTA Chapter in the country. I also wish Deborah  and all the other Executive Committee members and chapter members good luck in 2026. May it be our Chapter’s best year ever.    

Juan C. Delgado

President | Orange County ABOTA