About
Julie A. Duncan
Admitted to the California Bar in 1992. 33 years later, still a solo practice in Costa Mesa — which is a deliberate choice, not a stage on the way to something bigger.
I have spent more than three decades doing the same thing: sitting across a table from someone whose life has become complicated, and working out what can actually be done about it.
Most of that work is family law — divorce, custody, support, the division of everything two people built together. It is a practice area that rewards patience and punishes bluster. The client in front of me is rarely at their best; they are frightened, or angry, or exhausted, and often all three. My job is to be the steady one in the room, and to give them a clear-eyed read on their position even when a more comfortable answer is available.
The rest of the practice grew out of that. Divorcing clients turned out to own businesses that needed valuing, and then needed contracts. Households under strain turned out to need debt relief. Families who had just finished dividing an estate wanted to make sure their own would not be divided the same way. So the office handles business law, bankruptcy, and estate planning too — not as separate specialties, but because they keep showing up attached to the same people.
Why the practice stayed small
A larger firm would mean delegating. In family law, delegation is where cases quietly go wrong — the associate who did not sit in on the first meeting does not know which detail was the one that mattered. Clients here get the attorney they hired, on the phone, at the hearing, and in the negotiation.
It also keeps the billing honest. When there is no leverage model to feed, there is no reason to run up hours on work that will not change the outcome. Clients notice; it is the thing they mention most often.
Trial practice and appellate work
I have argued two appeals before the Fourth District Court of Appeal that the court chose to publish — which means both became citable precedent rather than disappearing, as the large majority of California appellate opinions do.
In Vogt v. Herron Construction, Inc.(2011) the court reversed a summary judgment, and the reasoning is now quoted in the Judicial Council's official civil jury instructions. In In re H.D.(2019) a trial court had terminated a mother's parental rights for abandonment while she was in recovery and actively working to reunify with her daughters. The Court of Appeal reversed and her rights were restored. Of everything in this office, that is the result I am most glad to have gotten.
That experience changed how I handle cases at the trial level. Appeals are won or lost on the record made months earlier — on whether the right objection was stated, the right evidence offered, the right issue preserved. Every case gets built with that in mind, whether or not it ever goes up.
Thirty-plus years is worth one phone call.
Tell me what is going on and I will tell you, plainly, what your options look like and what they are likely to cost.