 My name is Mark Shklov. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Today we will go across the sea to Singapore. And my crew are my guests. And I recently attended the 29th Annual Inter-Pacific Bar Association Annual Meeting with my guests. My guests are Hawaii Attorneys Shinpei Okie and Elbridge Z. Smith. Shinpei is an attorney with the law firm of Goodsville Anderson Quinn and Stifle, and Elbridge Z. Smith, or EZ as we like to call him, is an attorney with the law firm of Bronster Fujichaku Robbins. The Inter-Pacific Bar Association, or IPBA for short, is an international association of business and commercial lawyers who live or have a strong interest in the Asian Pacific region. And each year, the IPBA holds an annual meeting somewhere in the region. All three of us, myself and my two guests, attended this year's annual meeting in Singapore, and we want to share our experiences. However, before we start talking about the Inter-Pacific Bar Association and its annual meeting in Singapore, I'd like each of my guests to briefly tell a little bit about themselves, their legal practice, what you do as attorneys. Shinpei, you first. Mark, thank you for having us today. Yes, I'd like to share a little bit about myself. I have been practicing in Hawaii. By the way, first, I'm a Richardson log grad. I've been in Hawaii for a while now. I have been practicing for almost 10 years. I've been with Goodsville Anderson Quinn and Stifle for the past six of those years, and I primarily work in the transaction area where real estate, corporate transaction, mostly assisting Japanese companies and Japanese investors. Okay, and that's because of your background from Japan? That is because of my background. You're absolutely right. I speak and read Japanese fully. I was born and raised in Japan, so I take that to my advantage. Okay, easy. A little bit about you. Sure. I just actually started at Bronster Fujichaku Robin's last month. Before that, I worked at my dad's law firm, Smith-Himmelman. He is also Albridge Smith. He is also Albridge Smith. So we'll try to keep you apart by EZ and EW. Right. Otherwise, there's pretty much no way that you could tell us apart. So my background is mostly in employment law and now working at Bronster Fujichaku Robin's, getting experience in all different types of law. All right, and so that is the beginning of a new career for you in a way? It's the next step, sure. All right, so the three of us recently attended the Inter-Pacific Bar Association's annual meeting in Singapore. I'm an old timer. I've attended many. I attended the first IPBA annual meeting in Tokyo almost 30 years ago. Shimpei has attended a few meetings before, right, Shimpei? That's correct. EZ, was this your first? This is my first. Okay. Shimpei, what is the Inter-Pacific Bar Association? And you are mine. What is it to you? Inter-Pacific. Okay. Yes, it's an organization, my understanding. It's a group, from what I've seen, it's a group that is made of attorneys from many jurisdictions. Some from the United States, a lot from the Asian Pacific region, but it has grown to Asia, not Asia, to Europe and many other parts of the world. It's a very friendly organization, a very professional organization. It's an organization where you can learn, make friends, really learn about other jurisdictions as well as create referral sources, explain to the group what we do here in Hawaii. And Hawaii has always had a special place with the IPBA since several of the founding members, including Mark yourself, were Hawaii attorneys. And since, because of that, I think Hawaii is looked at as a very unique jurisdiction. Even 30 years later today, and we have, I think our, at least my personal experience, has been, has been very positive, being able to represent myself as an attorney from Hawaii. Okay, yeah. The Alan Fujimoto. Alan Fujimoto, yes. Jerry Sumida, were both involved, pretty much the beginning of IPBA, and both of them served as secretary generals. That's correct, yes. Of IPBA. So there is kind of a close connection with Hawaii and Hawaii lawyers. There is. With IPBA. And how did you first get involved with it? And as you mentioned, Alan Fujimoto is a partner at GoodSill. He has been involved from the beginning. He has, like you said, served as secretary general of the organization. He has been very active, very close to the organization. And when I joined GoodSill, I was fortunate enough to be in a position where I would essentially serve as the next in line and with the intent of maintaining a relationship with the organization and to be able to keep, as part of our business development efforts, to keep GoodSill as part of being the IPBA. So I attended my first conference three, two years ago with the New Zealand Auckland Conference, followed by Manila last year. And then I was fortunate enough to attend this year again in Singapore. Okay. And you look at it as business development, but I also hear personal relationships, also friendships, develop. Yes. I think that goes hand in hand. Business development is essentially making friends in my mind. So I have treated as, to a certain extent, one in the same. But IPBA has, again, because Hawaii has had a special place with the organization, it's not overwhelming for an Hawaii attorney. It's not as overwhelming as you think it is for a Hawaii lawyer from a small jurisdiction joining these international organizations with big shout-out attorneys from New York, London, Mumbai. But it's a very comfortable organization to be in, being from Hawaii. And that has really resulted in me being able to make friends with attendees. And by the third year, you recognize many of these people. It's not a massive organization that you can't find the same people every year. You meet the same people over and over again. So it really is an opportunity to make friends. Easy. Why did you go to your first IPBA? What was your experience? Did you like it? Was it what you expected or what did you expect? Sure. Well, the reason I went was because you invited me. And my prior practice was pretty specialized, kind of a niche. And I know that I'm fortunate enough to have you as a mentor of mine. And I appreciate you inviting me to expand my base of knowledge. And this sounded like a really good opportunity to meet a bunch of people who do a lot of different type of law that I'm not entirely familiar with. And I think that was probably the best experience for me, is to meet all of these different people who are everyone's so friendly and everyone's so helpful and everyone's so smart and all these different types of law that I wasn't familiar with. But that was my experience. And also Rex Fujichaku with your law firm has been involved with it and kind of may have had some influence also with you. I think he likes these organizations also. Sure, yeah. Rex is the president of the International Law Section of the Hawaii State Bar Association. So unfortunately, he wasn't able to make it to the conference. He hasn't let me forget the fact that I got to go and he didn't. But you know, we made it work. Okay, and the good thing, you met people that were friendly but these were international lawyers who handled substantial transactions but you felt at home. Absolutely. One of the main things that I took away from it was I said this entire area of law that I was not familiar with but the people at the conference are all so well versed in what they do that I didn't feel out of place. And they shared also, right? Absolutely. Okay, now, and when we went there, we had a kind of a Hawaiian introduction, right? That's our first slide. There's a couple slides that, what happened? Both of you can comment on this. So this was the Hawaii sort of free conference event that we tried to invite all of the Hawaii attorneys who were attending and also people who have very strong ties with Hawaii. I see Suresh on the right side there. Suresh was a Singapore lawyer. Right, and he was an honorary member of the international law section now. So it was just a little kind of al-Hana, I guess you could call it. Yeah, and we have also Richard Goldstein is a London-based lawyer next to me and Freddie Rupert, a France Paris-based lawyer, and Stephen Howard and then Suresh. And the reason that Richard and Freddie are there is because they're also honorary members. And what's been your experience with them? Well, it's been fantastic. Unfortunately, I missed this event because I flew in, I think, that midnight. Right. But yeah, the great thing about it is, for example, Freddie Rupert, you just mentioned, honorary member of the international law section, I've actually met him not through the IPBA, but from a different event with the HSBA, where we had a conference in Tokyo and he was interested and he just happened to attend, I met him there, but I have had the chance to see him every year since then at the IPBA. And he is very much interested in Hawaii. He actually has a bunch of Japan clients as well, but there's a connection there. And yeah, it's just important. You just get to meet these people with Hawaii connections. And we add them to our Ohana, our Hawaii Ohana, so that if we need somebody in Paris or London or in Singapore with Suresh, we can call on them. Right. And we got a connection. We're friends. And boom, the door is open. Right. And I think it goes back to Hawaii having a special place with the IPBA. I mean, we have, I don't think any other jurisdictions in the United States had a special reception for people from people related to that state. It was only Hawaii who did that. Yeah. That's right, a friendship gathering. Yeah. And then, okay, so what happens easy with the next step in, when you go to the conference, let's take a look at the next couple slides. What goes on? Okay. So this was, this looks like the Prime Minister of Singapore gave a speech on Thursday morning. He spoke for about what, almost an hour. It was really, really, it was really nice. It was very informative. There's a lot of really important world players that come to the event and were grateful that he made the time. So we have the Prime Minister of Singapore come and talk at our opening event. The Prime Minister Lee and talk and kind of welcome all the delegates, which gives you kind of a feeling about how the IPBA is viewed. All right? And, okay, so we have the introduction and then what happens? What goes on with respect to meetings and events at IPBA in Singapore specifically? For, once the conference starts kicks off with the big conference that you saw in the photo, we have special sessions, educational track sessions that goes on. So one would maybe, and there's various committees within the IPBA who organizes these sessions. And it could be from developing attorneys to international arbitration to international tax and all these different tracks. And we are free to attend any of these tracks that we are interested in. Just going, just going, attending, sitting and just listening to a group of very, very good attorneys talk about what they are very, very good at. Scholastic topics. Very, yes, exactly. And practice, things to practical ideas of practice. Yes, but there are some sessions that are very interactive with the group where we have case studies where we're a company of small groups and I actually attended one of those. You tackle a case study with attorneys from various jurisdictions, meaning they work with different laws. And a group of attorneys. Conflict of laws. Yes, exactly. We're talking about it and we're thinking and you realize no matter where you are, many attorneys face the same type of issues and we approach it in a very unique way, depending on where you're from. And all of the people come from various countries where English is not necessarily the primary language, but all of the presentations are in English. That's a very good point. Just continue to be impressed at how well they speak English, all these attorneys speak English. And there was one slide, I think the last slide we looked at, it looked like a bunch of lawyers. What was this? Oh, this one. Throughout the while we have the educational sessions, there's various receptions that also take place. This was from the new scholars reception. I think new members in scholars reception where the IPBA sponsors, it's basically a scholarship program where the IPBA provides funds for new emerging attorneys to attend the conference. So young lawyers who maybe couldn't afford to come on their own or have the funding are provided with an opportunity through the IPBA. Maybe they just started practice. Is that the idea? I believe so. And although we say young, some of these attorneys have a good five, six years under their belt and they really know what they're doing also. The one interesting thing was that when I attended the reception this year, I met an attorney from Mongolia who happened to be a LLM graduate from the Richardson School of Law. So there was a Hawaii connection there. I had no idea, but when I introduced myself as being from Mongolia, big surprise, we knew many people at Richardson. So that got the conversation going. So there's lots of connections and we're going to talk more about what happens after our break. So we will be right back after a short break. Aloha. Aloha. This is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About where every other week, Mondays at 3, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation and world and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. Aloha. I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about. Whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means. Let's take healthy back. Aloha. Aloha. We are back. I am Mark Shklov, the host of Law Across the Sea at Think Tech Hawaii with Shunpei Okie and Izzy Smith talking about the IPBA annual meeting in Seattle. The annual meeting in Singapore. Gentlemen, okay, what did each of you take away from the IPBA meeting in Singapore? What are your thoughts? Shunpei, we'll start with you. What I took away, I took away a lot of things. I made new friends, which was very important. I met a lot of new people for sure. I met old friends as well, caught up with them. I learned, and I always try to take away at least one educational component out of it as well. And I think it may be an issue that Hawaii law firms are facing too, but the generation gap between the older journeys and the younger journeys. Believe me, I feel it too. But apparently other jurisdictions are facing very, very similar issues with millennials being very different in mindset from the senior generation. And I was surprised to find out that it was not only Hawaii or the U.S. that faces this issue. It's with multiple jurisdiction. Do you find that they're being included in the IPBA? Do you feel it's inclusive of that group? It is, and I think the whole purpose of, I think that session was hosted by the new member of the Development Committee. So they try to include a lot of the thoughts and the requests of the younger journeys, not just with the conference, but with the organization as well. So that's interesting that it's kind of a worldwide phenomenon when I hear. It is, so I took that away from the conference. That being a very interesting point that I could take. I mean, of course it was Singapore. It's such a beautiful city. It was my first time there. I can't complain that the conference was there. Easy. How about you? What was your feelings? What did you take away? From the conference itself, the biggest takeaway was just, for me, was meeting a bunch of new people who are so smart and so well-versed in what they do. And feeling welcome, and especially because it's my first IPBA conference, I thought it was amazing. Shimpay is correct that Singapore is an amazing city. But even if it wasn't in Singapore, I think all the people that I met, all of the different breakout sessions that I got to attend and learn a little bit about, it was just a great experience. And next year, where is it going to be? Shanghai. All right. 2020. And then I think it's in Tokyo. After that. Yeah. Now, let's take a look at a few more slides that we lined up. This is a group of Hawaii lawyers. We're giving Stephen Howard a honorary membership also. That was kind of a surprise for him because he is not a member of the international law section of the Hawaii State Bar. Although he's a member of the Hawaii State Bar. That's right. So Rex Fujichaku was nice enough to suggest that we give him that presentation, which a group of us Hawaii lawyers did. We got together and kind of surprised him. Let's look at the next slide. Okay, so it's not all just study, is it? It's not all education. We have a little fun. What type of things did we have? Easy. What type of fun happened at these events? So there was the pre-conference get-together. That was the welcoming event. And then the next night we had our big gala dinner. And then the third night we had the movie costume party. Yeah. That was interesting. And even before the conference starts, they have a golf tournament. Right. And I think that Shinpei won it this year. Did you win this year? No. Unfortunately, I was even there. Well, next year. Yes, maybe next year if I play golf. All right. Okay. So it's not just study. And it is meeting people and it's having fun. And let's take a look at the next slide. What is this, Shinpei? This is a group photo. Although it's missing a couple of us. It's a Hawaii group photo. Anyone who has a relationship with Hawaii or from Hawaii were asked to be in the photo. And you can see just from this photo alone, there's quite a few of us. And I think even with this we're missing three or four members. So that's one photo that we try to take every year to show and to promote this event to the Hawaii bar. I see you both in the photo. Yes, we're. And I'm there with my wife. And Izzy, your wife accompanied you also. Spouses are quite welcome. I mean, we are male and female attorneys. And they bring their spouses. It's not all male, especially with the millennials. There's a lot of female attorneys, young attorneys. And some of them brought their spouses also. Did your spouse enjoy this? That's Jill. She did, yeah. Jill enjoyed it a lot. Actually, her best connection that she made was at the Gala event on Thursday night. One of the attorneys that was sitting next to us, her name's Prita. I can't remember her last name. But she does a lot of contract law in the Indonesian area. And yeah, that was a really good connection. I have to email her. OK. Yeah, so you make these connections. And what does this say about Hawaii? What does this, how do we benefit Hawaii? I mean, I hear how it benefits each of you, OK? Professional development, personal relationships, enjoyment. How does it benefit Hawaii and the bar, the Hawaii bar? Shunpei, you get the first shot at this. Wow. I think in several ways it does get Hawaii on the world radar. Hawaii, I think we tend to think that Hawaii, being a smallish restriction, being the middle of the Pacific, could sometimes be a disadvantage. But I take it as an advantage. And when we attend conferences like this, especially in larger groups from influential firms, influential practice, influential background, it really helps Hawaii get on the radar. There are very professional, very knowledgeable people here that does real important work. And I think it's important. Any opportunity that we get to show that to the world, I think we should. And I think this is one opportunity. So we are a friendly state in the United States for Asia. That is well put. I guess that's the message you want to get across. Easy. What are your thoughts? I think just also the Aloha spirit. We are a small state, small community. But I've known Shunpei for a few years now. We've met at the Tokyo event. But I think in the community we get along and we try to promote legality. And I think that really shows when we have a group of us at an event like this where in force we kind of come out and say, hi, I'm Hawaii. Nice to meet you. And how can we be friends? A bunch of lawyers who some people think are always fighting, actually working together and having a good time together. Let's take a look at the next couple of slides. Okay, so I think... We never got to visit that building, but of course that building is iconic from the recent movie. Which was? Which was Crazy Rich Asians. And we all watched that movie and enjoyed it, right? We did. And so that was on a tour that we took post-conference. That's a shot just out the window in one of the post-conference tours that we took with Suresh. Let's take a look at the next photo. Okay, so we talked about having fun. And this is the last event, right, Izzy? Yeah, this was the farewell dinner event. We had a whole bunch of great food outside, including, I think, Michelin-starred street cart food. And that's Suresh. On the right. On the right in the Black Panther, yes. But noticed until he pulled off his hat. So don't take yourselves too seriously as part of it, I guess. We're all lawyers. We have a good time. We study hard. We make relationships. We enjoy being together. And that's kind of what the IPBA says to me. Does that make sense? Yes, it really does. And it does result in business, too. So win-win for all, I think. Okay, gentlemen. I appreciate you coming down and sharing your feelings and thoughts about the IPBA in Shanghai. And we'll continue to keep the bar advised of what happens in the IPBA. So, everybody, aloha. We will next year look at Shanghai and take a look at going there and including everybody who wants to within our Hawaii group. Aloha.