[2] Founded in 1983 as the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) following the killing of Vincent Chin, AJSOCAL serves more than 15,000 individuals and organizations every year.

[3] AJSOCAL serves its clients in numerous languages including Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Khmer, Indonesian, Tagalog, and Vietnamese, along with English and Spanish.

[4] In 1995, AJSOCAL served as the lead counsel in a groundbreaking federal civil rights lawsuit, Bureerong v. Uvawas, on behalf of 80 Thai garment workers who had been trafficked into the United States, held illegally, and forced to work behind barbed wire and under armed guard in an apartment complex in El Monte, California.

The report found that five of the eight SPAs countywide are majority non-English speaking, and that Latino and Asian American communities faced the greatest challenges, with 48% and 43%, respectively, experiencing some difficulty communicating in English.

[12] In the fall of 2019, the organization, then known as Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Los Angeles (AAAJ-LA), laid off approximately 20% of its staff amidst ongoing contract negotiations with its newly unionized workforce.

[13][14] This action, which included the termination of several union leaders and negotiations committee members, sparked significant controversy and accusations of anti-union tactics.

[15][16][17] The layoffs were attributed to a reported $2 million budget shortfall, but critics argued they were strategically timed to weaken the union's bargaining position.

[13][14] The layoffs also drew concerns about their impact on the organization's ability to serve the community, particularly as they affected multilingual hotline workers who provided critical services to non-English speakers.

[17] The NLRB's Office of the General Counsel investigated the complaint and issued an Advice Memorandum on November 3, 2020, concluding that AAAJ-LA had indeed violated labor laws in certain respects.