Known locally as Mr. DUI, Eugene Ellis is one of Southern California’s foremost DUI attorneys. With 36 years of legal experience, over 32 years of his career has been dedicated exclusively to defending DUI and DMV traffic cases.
Education: Mr. Ellis graduated from Western State University College of Law in 1975, took the 1976 California Winter Bar Examination, and was one of the first-time exam takers to pass on the first attempt. He then went on to take graduate law courses at the University of Southern California, University of San Diego, and Hastings University College of Law. After completing his education in San Diego, where he has lived for most of his adult life, Mr. Ellis has continually updated his skills as a DUI attorney. Please take a minute to look at just a few of the courses he has taken that are described in the Experience Required to Beat the System section.
Early Career: Beginning his career with a two-attorney medical malpractice firm, Mr. Ellis learned the lessons of David and Goliath. Sometimes facing defense firms with as many as 60 attorneys, he learned he could take on tough cases and beat the larger firms at their own games. Unwilling to give in to Goliath law firms, Mr. Ellis often worked around the clock combating the intimidation tactics frequently used against smaller firms. These experiences cemented his desire to fight on behalf of the downtrodden and utilized them in his battles against a massive government system designed to prosecute DUI defendants.
Limited Practice to DUI: After years of practice, Mr. Ellis concluded that an attorney who limits his or her practice to one area of the law inevitably gains enough experience to have the upper hand in litigation. In the words of Russell Cromwell, “Find something, anything, and do it better than anyone else in the world, and the public will eventually find out about you and find a way to your door.”
In 1980, Mr. Ellis started the “San Diego Ticket Clinic.” After years of fighting all types of traffic violations from common traffic tickets to Driving Under the Influence (DUI) cases, he had the honor of working for some time with Bill Fielden, a renowned DUI and federal criminal attorney. Together, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Fielden were extremely aggressive attorneys, not only in their law practice methods, but also in their ability to “swim upstream” and fight against what they felt were unpopular causes. In 1986, after building a successful practice, Mr. Ellis decided to further limit his practice to DUI handling only.
