Eashaan Vajpeyi: Confidence shines early, leads him to impressive heights as attorney

After being placed on the wait list for admission into the University of Iowa–College of Law, the 2003 graduate of the former Northern University High School said he wrote a message to the admissions director:

“By your logic, in not admitting me, you’re telling me that I’m going to perform below the worst performing student you’ve already admitted. So basically you’re telling me I’m going to be worst in the class if you were to admit me.

“I guarantee you that I won’t, and that’s why you need to let me in.”

Vajpeyi was admitted, and later graduated in 2011. He has no way to prove whether the correspondence played a role in the decision, but at the minimum, it demonstrated his belief in himself.

“When I decide to step up and do something, I get it done,” Vajpeyi said about his confidence at the time.

Soon after graduating, Vajpeyi, now 37, became a licensed attorney and joined the firm Ball, Kirk & Holm, where he’s focused his practice on personal injury litigation and appellate work.

Vajpeyi is one of The Courier’s 20 Under 40 honorees for 2022.

He enjoys the opportunity to pick his own cases.

“If I have a case about a furnace that malfunctioned and caused a death, then you get to learn all about furnaces. Or it might be roads, or this medical procedure or that medical procedure,” he said, adding that “at the end of the day, what I say to people, is all I ever try to do is take money from an insurance company and give it to a regular person.”

His confidence was on display again when selected for a year, beginning in 2021, as the 49th president of the Iowa Association for Justice, an honor that stands alongside numerous other legal accolades.

“I’m young, but I can hang with the older, more accomplished members, doing the same things they are doing” was part of his pitch as to why he felt worthy of the title.

He’s believed to be the youngest person ever to hold the title of IAJ president.

Emily Lamar, a friend who nominated Vajpeyi for the 20 Under 40 recognition, said “he is willing to help out anyone in need. He is truly the advocate for those in need and for those who often don’t have a voice themselves.”

That sentiment – having “too much advocate in me” – is one reason Vajpeyi said he’s not interested in becoming a judge anytime soon. But it extends to his work beyond the legal realm in an effort to promote diversity and equity.

He served on the Cedar Falls Human Rights Commission from 2013 to 2016. He landed back on the panel in 2021 and is now its chair.

“When I was in grade school, I was reading multiple chapter books about Martin Luther King,” he said. “I was really into Jackie Robinson. Me and a couple friends started an Amnesty International chapter at our school, did the whole Model UN thing – human rights has always been a little bit of an interest of mine.”

Vajpeyi joined the Cedar Valley Rotary Club in 2015, and has served in various capacities, including as the organization’s president. He’s also been a local landlord since 2014, now renting out to some 20 tenants across two duplexes and one multiplex.

“You meet different people that you wouldn’t otherwise meet just being a lawyer,” he said. “That’s why I do all these different things. You meet a different group of people being a landlord. You meet a different group of people being an attorney.”

“You meet a different group of people being on the Cedar Falls Human Rights Commission. You meet a different group of people being in Rotary.”