Mane Sardaryan (JD '12) Selected as Southern California Rising Star 2019 -- Super Lawyers Magazine

June 19, 2019 | Pepperdine Law alumna Mane Sardaryan (JD '12) has been selected as a Southern California Rising Star 2019 by Super Lawyers magazine. Mane is an attorney at Skiermont Derby LLP, located in Los Angeles, specializing in business litigation and employment litigation defense. At Pepperdine Law, she was a winning member of the National Trial Team.

Excerpt from Super Lawyers 2019:

In 2011, Mane Sardaryan, a member of the championship team in the National Civil Trial Competition held at Loyola Law School, performed direct cross-examination of expert witnesses, responded to and argued objections, and gave closing arguments in her team's victory.

Fifteen years earlier, she didn't know a word of English.

The 31-year-old Sardaryan, now a litigation associate at Skiermont Derby in Los Angeles, was born in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. At age 5, her family moved to Russia. Three years later, they came to the U.S. and moved near relatives in the San Fernando Valley.

"My dad continued to live in Russia and came back to visit once every couple of months," Sardaryan says. "My mom held down two to three jobs. She had always been the rock of the family, but it was tough for her because she didn't speak English, either."

Sardaryan developed her English skills with the help of a pair of unusual tutors—Lucille Ball and Charles Dickens. In grade school, she would watch I Love Lucy with her mother, who was learning the language herself; and in middle and high school, she pored over classics like Great Expectations, Gone With the Wind, Crime and Punishment and The Three Musketeers.