Kern County’s ‘Favorite Legal Team’: Chain | Cohn | Clark Wins Inaugural Golden Empire Award

When KGET asked the people of Kern County to name their favorite legal team, they picked the one that has been serving their community for nearly 100 years.

For its inaugural, the Law Office of Chain | Cohn | Clark took home the Golden Empire Award for “Favorite Legal Team,” voted on entirely by the community the firm has served for nearly a century.

Produced by KGET-17, Bakersfield’s NBC affiliate, Golden Empire Awards celebrate the best businesses, organizations, and people in Kern County across dozens of categories. Winners are determined entirely by viewer votes, which means no industry panel, no nominations committee, and no behind-the-scenes selection process. Just the people of Kern County deciding, on their own, which legal team they trust most.

“This one hits differently,” said managing partner and attorney Matt Clark. “The Golden Empire Award comes from our community, from the people who live on the same streets we do, whose kids go to school with our kids, who shop at the same places we shop. When they say we are their favorite, that means we are doing something right, not just in the courtroom, but in this community.”

Clark sat down with KGET-17 News at a red carpet event inside of the Fox Theater in downtown Bakersfield. You can watch the interview here.

Clark also provided the following statement:

“In a market as competitive as Kern County’s legal landscape, where billboard lawyers from Los Angeles blanket local television and radio, earning the title of ‘Favorite Legal Team’ through community votes is a meaningful and hard-won distinction. It reflects something that Chain | Cohn | Clark has built deliberately over nearly a century: a reputation that lives in the experiences of real clients, real families, and real neighbors who found themselves in the worst moments of their lives and needed someone they could trust.

“Personal injury law is not an industry where people shop around casually. Nobody plans to need a lawyer after a car accident, a workplace injury, or the death of a loved one caused by someone else’s negligence. When they do need one, they ask the people they trust most: neighbors, coworkers, family members who have been through it before. The fact that Kern County residents are consistently pointing each other toward Chain | Cohn | Clark is the most authentic form of recognition the firm could receive.

“We don’t have a script for these moments. What we have is a team of people who genuinely care about the clients walking through our door. That is not something you manufacture. It either shows or it doesn’t, and apparently, it shows.”

The Golden Empire Award honor joined two other community awards received by the firm in recent months. In the 2026 “Best of Kern County” Readers’ Choice Poll, published by The Bakersfield Californian, Chain | Cohn | Clark earned top honors in both the “Best Law Firm” and “Best Personal Injury Law Firm” categories. The law firm has been voted into the “Best Law Firm” category each year since the category was introduced — this year was the 14th time. The poll introduced the “Best Personal Injury Law Firm” category for the first time in 2022 — this year was the fifth time in a row Chain | Cohn | Clark was selected. In 2019, Chain | Cohn | Clark was inducted in the inaugural “Best of Kern County Hall of Fame”.

The culture of Chain | Cohn | Clark is grounded in its core values, the Five C’s: Compassion, Character, Competence, Communication, and Customer Experience. They are the standard against which every client interaction is measured. The firm was founded in 1934, and what has kept Chain | Cohn | Clark at the center of Kern County’s legal community for nearly a century is a consistent commitment to the people it represents. The firm has navigated every shift in California personal injury law, every change in the insurance landscape, and every evolution in how cases are built, tried, and resolved. Through oil booms and recessions, through agricultural labor disputes and highway expansions, through a global pandemic and its aftermath, the firm has remained exactly where it has always been: in downtown Bakersfield.

That physical presence matters in ways that are easy to underestimate. When a client has a question about their case, they can walk into the office. When a settlement is reached, the attorney who handled the case is the same one who explained it from the beginning. When something changes, someone calls. These are not extraordinary commitments. They are basic ones. But in an industry where out-of-town firms advertise heavily in Kern County while handling cases from offices hundreds of miles away, those basic commitments have become a meaningful differentiator.

Thousands of Kern County residents cast votes for Chain | Cohn | Clark as their favorite legal team. Many of those voters, or people close to them, have been through the experience of needing a personal injury attorney. They know what it feels like to be confused, scared, and unsure of the road ahead. And they pointed, again, to Chain | Cohn | Clark.

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If you or someone you know is injured in an accident at the fault of someone else, or injured on the job no matter whose fault it is, contact the attorneys at Chain | Cohn | Clark by calling (661) 323-4000, or fill out a free consultation form, text, or chat with us at chainlaw.com.