Meet Angela
Angela Bruno (formerly, Angela Nalu), is the managing partner at BRUNO | NALU. Angela graduated summa cum laude from UCLA in 2001 and UC Hastings College of the Law in 2007. With an economics major, Angela joined one of the prestigious Big Five accounting firms in downtown Los Angeles. After three years in the business sector, she yearned to directly help people and went to law school.
While at UC Hastings, Angela studied the art of communication with a focus on negotiation/mediation. She used her skills to ultimately win the 2007 Regional Mediation Competition (Seattle, WA) and 2007 National Mediation Competition (Washington, D.C)— a national competition among the top law schools. Due to her success, Angela was offered and accepted a position in Rome, Italy to work on projects with the European Union to help educate judges and local counsel on the value of mediation. During her time, Angela hosted international conferences which included high level officials in the European Union, along with professors from the US (including Harvard, Stanford and Yale) to promote the use of mediation in both local, and international, disputes.
Over the years, Angela continued to maintain a client focused approach and became well known as a fearless courtroom advocate.
In 2014, Angela started her firm with her husband, Keith Bruno. The two found immediate success after settling a case in mediation (for $100K more than asked in the referring attorney’s mediation brief) during their first month as partners. Two months later, they tried their first case together and brought in a large verdict in a case with no surgery recommendations, one epidural and one trigger point injection, and no treatment for almost two years prior to trial. By June 2015, Angela participated in a wrongful death case against a major restaurant franchise that resulted in a $40 million verdict.
Over the years, Angela has focused her practice toward settlement and has earned great respect among the ADR community for her preparedness and commitment to the process. Angela not only takes her own cases to mediation but will also mediate cases for other lawyers who have not found success within that forum. Many lawyers find immediate discomfort when needing to share bottom line numbers and case valuation, however, Angela is driven by the game and does not shy away from getting full value for her clients. Angela has continued to be the lead negotiator at BRUNO | NALU, and has been the reason for the firm’s undeniable success in settlement.