LA Superior Court Court Judge Hank M. Goldberg Named LA Family Law Judicial Officer of the Year

The Southern California Chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML), the nation’s foremost organization promoting excellence in the practice of family law, honored Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Hank M. Goldberg, San Diego Superior Court Commissioner William Y. Wood and Orange County Superior Court Judge Erick L. Larsh as “Family Law Judicial Officers of the Year” at a black-tie awards dinner on Saturday, January 16, 2016, at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach, California. In addition to honoring the three preeminent Southland jurists, attorney Dawn Gray was named “Family Law Person of the Year.”

“We are very proud to honor these pillars of matrimonial law for their outstanding contributions to the field,” said 2016 Institute Dean Stephen J. Wagner, partner at Dick & Wagner in Sacramento and San Diego, CA, and an AAML Southern California Chapter Board Member.

Chapter President Emily Edelman, principal of Law Office of Emily Edelman, notes, “Judge Hank M. Goldberg was named Los Angeles County’s Family Law Judicial Officer of the Year; Judge Erick L. Larsh was honored as Orange County’s Family Law Judicial Officer of the Year; and Commissioner William Y. Wood received accolades as San Diego Family Law Judicial Officer of the Year.”

The dinner was the cornerstone of the AAML chapter’s 23rd Annual Trial Advocacy Institute, “The Art of Examination at Trial and Deposition,” a three-day continuing legal education symposium that ran January 16-18. Designed for family law specialists and practitioners, the Institute featured more than a dozen legal experts who provided an in-depth focus on taking, defending and using depositions at trial.

Judge Hank M. Goldberg is currently assigned to Department 4 in the Mosk Courthouse, the trial readiness/settlement court, and is the Assistant Supervising Judge of Family Law. He has been a judge for the last twelve years: six years in criminal court and seven years in family court. He previously served as a Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County for sixteen years, during which time he tried numerous jury trials ranging from misdemeanors to special circumstance murders. Judge Goldberg graduated from Loyola of Los Angeles Law School in 1985. He worked for one year at the law firm of Pettit & Martin in Los Angeles practicing business litigation. He is currently writing a book on Family Law entitled “Keys to the Kingdom: California Family Law Findings, Orders, and Practice Pointers.” Judge Goldberg earned the nickname “Settlement Ninja” for successfully guiding an unusually high percentage of cases bound for trial to full settlement. Also noted as a “thoughtful judge,” he endeavored to become fluent in Spanish in order to better understand the victims, witnesses and documents he regularly encounters in legal cases.

Judge Erick L. Larsh has served as a court commissioner with the Orange County Superior Court since 1997 and currently teaches criminology and juvenile delinquency courses at Biola University. He was previously in private practice, specializing in criminal defense and civil litigation, from 1989 to 1997, and was a prosecutor and deputy city attorney for the City of Anaheim from 1987 to 1989. Larsh is a member of the Orange County Bar Association and the California Judges Association. He earned his Juris Doctorate from the Western State University College of Law and Bachelor of Arts degree from California State University, Fullerton.

Commissioner Willian Y. Wood was appointed by the judges of the San Diego Superior Court as a Court Commissioner in March, 2009. He began his career as a judicial officer presiding over traffic, small claims, misdemeanor arraignments and unlawful detainer actions. In 2010, he was assigned to the Family Support Division and heard child support cases. In January, 2012 he was assigned to Department 15, an independent calendar family law department in North County. Commissioner Wood will begin his 5th year in an IC Family Law assignment in January, 2016. Commissioner Wood is a graduate of the University of Arizona College of Law, Trinity University (M.S.) and the University of Arizona (B.S.). Prior to his appointment as a commissioner, he served for 16 years as a Deputy District Attorney in San Diego County. As a DDA, he was cross-designated as a Special Assistant United States Attorney and handled asset forfeiture cases arising from major narcotics investigations. Commissioner Wood also worked in the diplomatic service for United States Department of State and served a tour as a United States Foreign Service Officer at the American Institute in Taipei, Taiwan. He is the past president of the California Alliance for Drug Endangered Children, a grant funded multi-agency effort designed to protect the interests of children located by law enforcement at narcotics crime scenes. He has lectured nationally about child endangerment issues and spent many years in the District Attorney’s office prosecuting child endangerment and domestic violence cases.