I started this firm so that businesses and families, whether they have been in Southern California for generations or are just arriving, would have a lawyer who knows the American system from the ground up, understands the world they do business in, and will stand up for them.
Our story
I grew up the eldest of four sisters, with a younger brother. Today all four of us sisters are lawyers, and my younger sisters and brother run their own law firm in Xiamen. As the eldest, I started working early: in factories by day, teaching myself English and computers at night, and paying for my own schooling with savings and tutoring. I earned a degree in English and then a Juris Master in China, and in 2012 I passed China’s National Judicial Examination.
When I moved to the United States, I kept meeting the same kind of people: a factory owner whose container had been sitting at the port for weeks, a family trying to settle a parent’s estate in a language they did not read, a small business owner frightened by a letter from the IRS. They were capable, hard-working people. What they lacked was someone who could stand between two countries and two legal systems and explain, honestly, what was happening and what could be done. I wanted to be that bridge.
I also knew that a bridge has to be built properly on both sides. Passing a U.S. bar exam lets a lawyer practice here. It does not, by itself, give you the years of training that American lawyers go through. I did not want to serve my clients with a shortcut. So I started over. I went to law school again, at the University of Arizona, and earned a J.D., studying contracts, property, procedure, evidence and constitutional law alongside American classmates, case by case, for three years. Then, because so many of my clients’ problems turned out to be tax problems, I went on to the University of Florida, whose Graduate Tax Program has long ranked among the top three in the country, and earned an LL.M. in Taxation.
After graduation I joined Florida’s Seventeenth Judicial Circuit in Broward County as a staff attorney, first on civil cases and later on probate and guardianship. Working inside the courthouse changed me. I read filing after filing from people who had no lawyer, or whose lawyer did not understand their situation. I saw elderly parents whose futures were decided in guardianship hearings, families who lost rights because they missed a deadline they never knew existed, and immigrants whose side of the story never fully reached the judge because no one put it into the record in a way the court could use. The law was there to protect them. Too often, no one used it for them.
That is why I left the court and opened Concord & Wisdom. Around the same time, trade between China and the United States became harder and more tightly policed. Chinese manufacturers, exporters and U.S. importers began calling with shipments detained or seized by Customs, sudden tariff bills, agency holds, and compliance rules no one had explained to them. Families who had built lives in both countries needed estate plans and tax advice that worked under both systems. These are the problems we solve every day, for U.S. companies and local families as well as for clients from China and elsewhere. Every one of them deserves to be heard fully.
— Cynthia Zhenhua Wu (吴振华), founder
Our core values
- Fairness for every client. A small importer deserves the same careful work as a large one, a local family the same attention as an international company, and every client, in English or Mandarin, deserves to be fully understood. We make sure our clients’ facts and arguments are fully on the record, on time, in the right forum.
- Excellence without compromise. Our clients deserve lawyers trained to the highest standard American law offers. We built ours on a U.S. J.D., a graduate degree in taxation and years of service inside a courthouse, and we hold every piece of work to that same standard: the law read at its source, every fact checked, nothing left to chance.
- Integrity above all. Trust is the foundation of everything we do. We tell clients the truth about their case from the first conversation, give only advice we would stand behind in any courtroom, and never trade honesty for comfort.
- Advocacy that does not yield. When an agency holds a client’s goods, money or future, we stand up for that client with every lawful tool available: before the agency, at the negotiating table and, when needed, in federal court. We stay with the matter until it is resolved.
- A bridge between two systems. Trained in both China and the United States, we understand the documents, family arrangements and business habits our clients bring, and how U.S. law will treat them. Nothing gets lost in translation.
- Stewardship across generations. We guide businesses and families not only through today’s problem but toward what comes after it: the company they are building, the wealth they will pass on, and the next generation that will inherit both.
Recent results include an order from the U.S. Court of International Trade for a client’s IEEPA duty refund (2026), the recovery of seized merchandise valued at about US$900,000 (2026), and the release of more than US$10 million in detained merchandise across CBP matters (2025). Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
