"This job is fulfilling. It is fulfilling because you're changing people's lives and helping them."
Mu’Min Faruq Islam is a trial lawyer and managing partner at Ace Law, LP in Atlanta, Georgia. He represents clients in personal injury, criminal defense, and corporate matters, handling cases from the initial claim through litigation and trial. Licensed in Pennsylvania and Georgia, Islam is known for bringing a tenacious, hands-on approach to every case he takes.
Islam’s path to law began at Temple University, where he enrolled in the business school and took advantage of one of the country’s early legal studies programs, a track that let him earn a business degree while preparing for law school. He had originally set his sights on the corporate world, drawn to how many executives and C-suite leaders held law degrees, and saw law school as a route toward business leadership. He went on to earn his Juris Doctor from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University in Alabama, and later completed a Master of Laws in securities and financial regulation at Georgetown University Law Center.
He graduated in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, and joined a Philadelphia firm to practice corporate law, the only kind of work he wanted at the time. He built a reputation quickly, publishing three times in his first years, before the downturn forced the firm to lay off nearly its entire first-year class. Rather than wait out the recession, Islam returned to school for his master’s in securities and finance and then decided to go home to Philadelphia, open his own practice, and be closer to his daughter.
For roughly a decade, Islam balanced two roles at once. He served as in-house counsel to a nonprofit community development corporation and charter school operator while maintaining his own practice on the side, taking on personal injury and other matters independently. The arrangement gave him both stability and the freedom to pursue larger cases. About five years ago he relocated to the Atlanta area, settling in Roswell, Georgia, and branched out on his own.
Islam credits his Philadelphia roots for the tenacity he brings to litigation. Where he sees some attorneys let cases run their course, he works a file to the umpteenth degree, pushing matters others might quickly settle or refer out. He offers clients full representation from intake through trial, handling the litigation himself rather than passing cases along. His practice centers on personal injury and criminal defense, with a continued corporate component advising business entities on formation, capital raising, and employment agreements.
One case that has stayed with him began with an early-morning phone call about a man who had died in a construction accident. The worker, an immigrant day laborer, was electrocuted when the hook of a bucket he was raising struck a live wire. Because he was not a citizen, the threshold question was whether his family could recover at all. Islam researched case law from other states, including New York, to establish that the family was entitled to benefits and lost wages, then reconstructed the man’s earnings from the money-transfer receipts he had kept each time he sent money home. He traveled to Mexico with an interpreter to have the family formally settle the estate, and negotiated a settlement with the utility company. Years later, he returned to distribute the proceeds held in trust to the man’s now-grown child, who has since moved to the United States.
Islam also teaches business law as an adjunct professor at Temple University. His representative matters include settlements for an intentional tort that caused a customer’s broken collarbone and a slip-and-fall injury requiring a hip replacement, the dismissal of a customer FINRA arbitration complaint against a broker-dealer, and the representation of a hedge fund in a FINRA and SEC enforcement action. Across practice areas, he describes the work as fundamentally about guiding people through moments when they do not know where to turn.
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