{"id":996230,"date":"2026-08-12T15:08:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T15:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/996230\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T15:08:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T15:08:16","slug":"two-pasadena-women-who-dont-practice-law-make-las-list-of-top-litigators-pasadena-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/996230\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Pasadena Women Who Don\u2019t Practice Law Make LA\u2019s List of Top Litigators \u2013 Pasadena Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Mercy Tolentino Steenwyk and Emily Lou Steenwyk [photo credit: ForensisGroup]Two of the names on the Los Angeles Business Journal\u2018s 2026 list of influential litigators and trial attorneys belong to Pasadena women who don\u2019t practice law.<\/p>\n

Mercy Tolentino Steenwyk and Emily Lou Steenwyk run ForensisGroup, a South Lake Avenue firm that secures expert witnesses for attorneys, law firms, insurers and corporations \u2014 the engineers, physicians and accountants who explain the technical parts of a case. <\/p>\n

The Business Journal recently profiled both women in its \u201cLeaders of Influence: Litigators & Trial Attorneys\u201d section, a nomination-based feature the publication says honorees do not pay to enter. <\/p>\n

The firm the pair lead started 35 years ago, at a dining table in Altadena.<\/p>\n

Mercy Steenwyk opened ForensisGroup on April 14, 1991, according to the company. She had been in a marketing job in Century City. She had two small children and a Rolodex full of construction consultants. She used the Pasadena Public Library as an office and made her calls from the dining area of her Altadena home. Within a week she had her first client.<\/p>\n

She started the firm after seeing how hard it was for attorneys to locate qualified expert witnesses across highly specialized disciplines, the company said. It says it has since supported more than 20,000 clients in more than 30,000 cases.<\/p>\n

Neither woman practices law, the company said in a press release issued Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we aren\u2019t litigators ourselves, we\u2019ve dedicated our careers to helping attorneys uncover the technical truth through qualified, objective experts,\u201d Mercy Tolentino Steenwyk said in the release.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery case is different and every expert relationship matters,\u201d Emily Lou Steenwyk said in the same release.<\/p>\n

ForensisGroup has said its specialists are assisting with cause-and-origin investigations, fire behavior analysis and construction cost estimating for claims arising from the January 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires, and that it extended its consultations to fire survivors.<\/p>\n

Get our daily Pasadena newspaper in your email box. Free.<\/p>\n

Get all the latest Pasadena news, more than 10 fresh stories daily, 7 days a week at 7 a.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercy Tolentino Steenwyk and Emily Lou Steenwyk [photo credit: ForensisGroup]Two of the names on the Los Angeles Business…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":996231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[104,1582,18601,276,7366,2105,2961,105,37258,728,224,42067,5337,42072,42077,42078,5338,42074,42070,42068,42076,42071,42073,42075,42069],"class_list":["post-996230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-breaking-news","tag-ca","tag-calendar","tag-california","tag-community-news","tag-food-and-drink","tag-la","tag-latest-news","tag-lifestyles","tag-local-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-county-news","tag-losangeles","tag-nonprofit-news","tag-official-events-calendar","tag-old-town-pasadena-news","tag-pasadena","tag-pasadena-arts-and-culture","tag-pasadena-city-guide","tag-pasadena-events","tag-pasadena-living","tag-pasadena-restaurants","tag-pasadena-shopping-news","tag-popular-things-to-do-in-pasadena","tag-things-to-do-in-pasadena"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=996230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/996230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/996231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=996230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=996230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=996230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}