 Aloha. This is Making Leadership Work on Think Tech, and I'm your host, Carol Monli. Today my guest is Brenda Kotanda, who is a lawyer from Philadelphia, who's moved here from Philadelphia to Hawaii last year. And the name of our show today is called Cross-Country Law Practice is the Way of the Future. So, welcome, Brenda. Thank you, Carol. Happy to be here. Great. So now tell us again, tell me and tell our audience why you moved to Hawaii a year ago. Sure. We came here because my husband, who originally grew up here in Hawaii, went to school in Hawaii, that's been on the mainland, was offered position as president of Hawaii Pacific University. So we made the big trip, packed up the whole family, and moved out to Hawaii. And we're very, very happy with the move. Great. So it's you, your husband, John, your two children, and your dog, right? Right. Welcome. So we're going to talk about cross-country law practice because you are a partner in the law firm of Manco Goldcatcher Fox in the Philadelphia region. That's right. And so tell us why you decided to stay in the law practice there and instead of moving to Hawaii and maybe starting out a different type of career of law practice. Right. Well, I've been with the firm for over 20 years and actually joined the firm one year out of law school. And it's a terrific firm and I really do terrific work with the firm. So my partners are very supportive and I have clients that present challenging environmental issues, we're an environmental and energy law practice. And so I really didn't want to leave it because I love what I do and I love who I work with. And so rather than leaving them to join a firm here, we set up this arrangement so that I could work long distance. And it's, you know, we've been doing it now for a while since I moved and it's been working just awesomely. Great. So let's find out a little bit more about your firm. So about how many lawyers do you have? So we have 30 lawyers all practicing environmental and energy law. It's actually environmental health and safety, energy and sustainability. And we have three technical consultants on staff as well. So we offer a multi-disciplinary practice to our clients. Oftentimes environmental legal issues have complicated technical aspects and so we can bring to bear on the legal issues technical input because sometimes it's more cost effective to solve a complicated legal issue with a change in perhaps the technology. Maybe there's somebody who's got a wastewater treatment plant and it's a very difficult for them to meet a particular water quality standard but there's a different technical approach that they could take that could solve the problem. I see. So is this a growing practice of law in Philadelphia and maybe nationwide? So we've certainly been growing. Our firm was formed in 1989 and at the time I think we started out with maybe 10 lawyers and we're now at 30. Never had the intention to grow just for the sake of growing but our number of clients has grown, our business has grown and so as that's happened our firm has evolved and grown with it as well. Was that your specialty in law school? Did you get a certificate in environmental law or did you always have an interest in this area? So I went to the University of Texas at Austin. There was no certificate in environmental law available but I knew I wanted to practice environmental law when I started so I was able to take environmental law classes while I was in law school and in fact work with some environmental lawyers in Texas before moving back to the east coast. I see and on your business card it has a couple of letters that I don't usually see after Brenda Potanda Esquire. Lead AP, L-E-E-D-A-P. Tell us what that means. So I lead our firm's sustainability law practice and one of the things that we address is green building, green leasing, green practices and things like that. So the U.S. Green Building Council has a program called LEED, stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. And that's L-E-E-D. That's right and they certify buildings that have sustainable construction and operating practices, so green buildings and they have a professional accreditation that you can pursue. It involves learning about all of the green practices and then taking an exam so kind of like a bar exam only for green buildings. I see. Is it a very selective group of people who have this designation? Many of the people are in the construction industry and in the development industry, but I went ahead and did it because I have a lot of clients that build green buildings, manage green buildings and I thought it was really important to have that in order to be able to most effectively counsel them on legal matters involving green issues and sustainability, how they might address the issue in leases to ensure that the buildings were operated in a fashion to have a certification maintain it. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So are there other attorneys in your firm with the same designation? So there is one of our technical consultants has it, but I'm the only one that has the LEED AP among the legal staff. Nice. So tell us a little about your clients. You mentioned your clients and what you do for them. Sure. In general. I know you can't disclose names. So we handle complicated cutting edge legal matters in environmental health and safety, and we also handle day-to-day compliance and transactions. So our clients range from industrial manufacturers to developers to healthcare facilities, transportation, railroad, retail, almost any business that you can think of typically encounters some environmental issue in what it is they do, whether they are manufacturing something and so therefore may need a permit to discharge wastewater after treatment or perhaps they're building a building and looking at redeveloping a site that has some contamination on it and so therefore wants to clean up that contamination and put it back into reuse. So it's mostly corporate clients, sometimes individuals because even individuals can experience perhaps a spill that needs to be remediated, buying and selling properties, compliance counseling and transactions. So are your clients mostly in the Philadelphia area? So we have clients in that region, but also nationally and internationally. Sometimes we are working for a client that has an issue in the Philadelphia region and that's how we first get involved with them, but then the relationship develops and they've got an issue in Europe or they've got an issue in South America and they want to handle things in a certain way to make sure that it complies with not only their own policies, but then laws elsewhere and while we may not be expert in international laws, we can give them what a standard of care would be here in the States. I see. Do you have clients here in Hawaii? So I am developing a Hawaii practice and have passed the BAR, member of the Hawaii bar. So you have the office is now Hawaii office too. That's right, exactly. And I'm trying to get involved in the community to meet people and to develop our practice. So I've joined the environmental section of the BAR and I'll be an officer this year for programs. Great. And then I'm getting also involved in other things because it's really important I think to give back to the community as a starting point. So let's talk about how you manage then having a very vibrant, interesting law practice in Philadelphia area and living 5,000 miles away here in Hawaii. So what kind of a challenge is that and how do you actually manage it? Well, I'll tell you there's some key components to managing it. I think you need to have a supportive firm, supportive clients. You have to have a certain type of personality and a certain type of practice. So as far as the firm is concerned, my firm is terrific. They've been so supportive in that they've in fact they suggested that I continue to work after I left. We believe my firm believes in work-life balance and in diversity and providing a supportive work environment. So a third of our partners are women. About half of them are on a part-time schedule. So this idea really wasn't that radical to them. We're connected very easily with the technology. When I log into my computer system here in Hawaii, it's as if I'm sitting there in Pennsylvania. Of course, time difference, right? Of course, the time difference, right. So we manage that. How do you manage the time difference? So we're about five or six hours different. And I've said to all of my clients and all of my partners and colleagues, if you need me up for a nine o'clock call on the East Coast, I'm there and I'll get up in the middle of the night. It's not a problem. 3 a.m. here. That's right. But all of them, they, you know, they rather have me fresh and alert. And so they try to schedule calls and meetings in the afternoon principally. And so I start work here around 6.30 a.m. So as to catch the full balance of the afternoon. And then I can actually work into their evening because it's just the daytime here for me. So that's worked out very well. But I guess I'd say the other thing too is it's really important to have a certain practice and personality. So a lot of my practice involves work over the telephone, talking to clients, talking to regulators, emailing, when we're doing transactions buying and selling property or trying to work out permitting issues. A lot of it involves communication over the internet email. So that really is key to this. And the other thing is to really be a person that has a lot of initiative, right? So I've got a track record with the firm. I'm very proactive. I try to think of issues before they arise and then address it, make a plan for, you know, when this is going to come up, how are we going to address it? Do you Skype? We do. We do. We have Skype for business and we have partners meeting on a monthly basis. So I will Skype in for that. So I'm present on videoconference, sitting around the table while everybody's eating lunch. I'm eating breakfast. So that works just fine. So how often do you travel back to the mainland to see your firm or meet with clients? So in the past year I've been back two or three times and the funny thing is is I, you know, when I was practicing there I wouldn't necessarily reach out just to meet with a client just for the sake of meeting with the clients. Because they're always there. They're there and I figure they're busy and let's just get our work done. But now that I'm going back and it's a deliberate trip I call and contact them. So I'm seeing my clients I think far more than I ever had because of the nature of how I'm organizing my visits. Did you experience any pushback when you were telling your clients you were moving to Hawaii and were they concerned about the responsiveness or the ability to... I think the responsiveness is key. They weren't concerned about it because they've got a track record with them for being responsive. So, you know, when they send an email they expect the prompt response. And as long as you're responsive and you're flexible I've not had any problem or any client, you know, say that this wasn't going to work. Quite the contrary. Great. So as part of your practice on the mainland do you find that you're able to keep up with the developments in the law both statewide in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania and also nationwide and then perhaps what's going on here in Hawaii? I do. And part of it is because there is so much information that's available electronically now in terms of, you know, reporters and business journals and so I still subscribe to all of those. So I'm getting the local news. We have actually offices in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. So I'm, you know, still keeping current with Pennsylvania and New Jersey legal matters. And our 30 lawyers in our firm work together collectively. So when somebody sees a new legal issue, shoots out an email to the whole firm. So it's not as though I feel like I'm missing anything because of the way we practice. We all help one another to keep current with issues. So the current administration, Trump administration and the changes in the environmental protection agency and related areas, how has that affected your practice? I think a lot of people have uncertainty. So given that they're reaching out to their lawyers to try to anticipate what's to come. A little hard to anticipate it given the nature of how things have been rolling out. But we're certainly staying on top of regulatory changes. What does it mean if you remove a particular rule? Because just because somebody is deregulating, it doesn't affect all clients the same way. And for some, it might be beneficial to them and others it might not be beneficial. So we continue to have to, you know, help clients work through these issues and determine what it means to them for their own operations. Because a lot of what we do is compliance counseling. How do you comply? What do you do? What systems do you put in place to make sure that you're meeting the regulatory requirements? Is there one particular deregulation or issue that is of particular concern? Across the board to all clients, not really. Because we represent such diverse sectors. And I guess the same answer for anything that might be positive. That's right. It really depends upon what they're doing. As I said, we have folks that are developing real estate or that are pursuing new energy projects. There's a new caravan solar. So for those that are pursuing solar, perhaps that could be a bit of a challenge to them. Though I've also heard some people say they don't think it'll impact quite as negatively as some of the press is saying, at least for some of the projects that are happening in the Philadelphia region. Okay. Well, great. On that note, we're going to take a short break. And I'm here with my guest, Brenda Gotanda, a lawyer from the Pennsylvania, Philadelphia area who's now living in Hawaii and practicing law. 5,000 miles away. We'll be right back with Think Tech Hawaii. Come back. This is Karamon Lee with Making Music Work and my guest, Brenda Gotanda. Welcome, Brenda. I want to have everybody look at this wonderful backdrop picture that we have, which is we are sitting in the middle of your reception area. Is that right? That's right. Your law firm, Manco Goldcatcher and Fox. That's right. In Philadelphia area. So we have some wonderful slides and tell us, Brenda, your role in how the firm and the reception area is using your particular areas of expertise to develop a not just beautiful, but functional and environmentally positive statement. Thank you. I'd be happy to. So as an environmental and energy law firm, we're not only dedicated to providing high quality legal services to our clients, but being responsible stewards to the environment. So when we needed to make a move for purposes of getting larger office space, because we were growing, we actually moved from one floor to a higher floor in our building where there was more space available. And we wanted to do it in a way that was sensitive to the environment and take steps to design and construct the space in a sustainable manner. So what we did is we used the U.S. Green Building Council lead certification as a guide in our design and construction. And in doing so, we were able to become the first law firm in the Philadelphia region that achieved a lead gold certification for its interior fit out. So I'd be happy to show some of the things that we did in order to do that. Yeah. Okay. So now we're looking at a slide that has a picture of three different pictures. So tell us how. So this is one example of the things that we did when we were doing the construction. We made sure that there was an indoor environmental quality management plan that was used during construction to make sure that once we were fully constructed, we didn't have a lot of residual chemicals and such in the space. We used low VOC paints, sealants. VOC. Volatile organic compounds. So you know when you get a new carpet, it's that new carpet smell that you sometimes smell. But there's carpets now that you can get and adhesives and paints that don't use the VOCs. And so it's better for the environment, better indoor air quality. So your floor and your reception area, is that carpeting? So that actually is stonework. See the background of this slide here, material and resources, that's a picture of the stonework. The background, the beige color is the stonework. Right. And the blue is carpeting. And the blue is carpeting. Okay. And in this particular photo here you can see the coffee table in our reception area. That's a really beautiful coffee table. It looks like a work of art, a building pushed on its side. And one of the terrific aspects of it is that it is made of reclaimed timber locally sourced. So all buildings that were torn down, they reclaimed the timber and made this beautifully handcrafted coffee table. Similarly we have our office signage in the entryway. Same thing, reclaimed material. Here you can see one of our conference rooms. You can see it in this picture there too. In the background, right? Yeah, maybe can we go back to slide one? Yes, let's see. You can see the full height glass walls. And that allow, and we have that not only in our conference rooms, but also for our attorney offices, which is fairly unique. Not a lot of lawyers are comfortable with a glass office, but we wanted to have daylight extend through to the interior spaces, which reduces energy because you don't need to have as many lights on. And it makes for a better work environment for the staff that are outside of the offices. It does. Is there a question though as far as confidentiality? For instance, meetings that people may not want to necessarily know that privacy? We have in our conference rooms shades that can be pulled down if necessary. But because they're enclosed with doors, the conference rooms typically most clients feel comfortable with that and don't need the shades pulled down. And I know we can't see it from the slide, but is there unique characteristics to temperature control? Yes, we do. We also made sure that we incorporated temperature controls. We incorporated also lighting controls. Both of those things are important to saving energy. And in fact, because of the energy saving techniques that we used, we were able to reduce our energy use by 47% in the first year, even though the space was larger than where we came from. So it was quite dramatic. So your old space and when did you actually move to your new space? It was in 2014. So you built it out to your specifications with all of the lead requirements to achieve the gold status. So the building before, even though the space was smaller, you had a 47% higher energy cost? In the old space. And in the old space we had already undertaken some energy conservation efforts. But when you do a complete fit out, there's so much more that you can do. And so we made sure that we did that and we achieved those energy savings, which results in cost savings. And here's actually some other examples of energy saving is we have lighting controls. So the lightings in our conference room will turn off when it's not in use. Automatically? Automatically. I see. So it senses body presence or not. Occupancy. I see. Even our vending machines have sensors on them so that the lighting will go off and the cooling compressor will be put into sleep mode when it's not in use and in off hours. So the cooling compressor, does that affect the temperature then? So it'll turn it off when it's not in use and then come back on. So it maintains the sodas and water in a cold temperature, but it's not overused. It's just not on constantly, which is more typical. Right. And then of course on weekends when it wouldn't be used very much at all, it's saving energy. Right. Okay, any other? And low water conservation measures, low flow fixtures, plumbing fixtures, and we were able to save, think about a little over 30% water savings in our new space as compared to our old space. And we did go ahead and re-retrofit a poor building restroom that isn't in our space, but we wanted to do that anyway. So we got some extra environmental benefit out of it. How many floors are you on in your building? There are nine floors. You have nine floors? Yes. And actually if you go to slide two, you can see a picture of the building. We saw pictures of the building right with the beautiful foliage. Right. So you have all nine floors of that? No, we're only on the, right now we're on the ninth floor and we only have a portion of that. So the whole building is not LEED certified. It's just our space, but there's certain building components you need to make sure you have and even in order to go through that program. I see. But how many square feet do you have to cover? I don't know what the number is on, but I can get back to you on that. Okay, we'll have another show. Okay. What about in terms of sustainability recycling or reducing paper waste, things like that? Right. Well, every attorney has recycling bin right at their desk. We have defaulted all printers to double-sided and so everybody's expected to use double-sided unless there's some reason not to, so as to save more paper, save more trees and save costs as well. For all of our meetings, we use actual plates, cups, glasses that are then put in a dishwasher so that we're not, you know, generating lots of paper plate waste. We use water in pitchers rather than bottled water. So there's actually many, many things that we do in our firm sustainability practices and we actually try to share those with others in terms of engaging the community, engaging our clients so that everybody can benefit from what we've learned, what works, and what doesn't. So do you have a newsletter that covers these on a regular basis? So I don't have a newsletter, but I actually put together a sustainability director's round table. So I invited sustainability directors and managers from our clients and then other folks in the community to come in, share ideas, what works, best practices, what they've had trouble with, and it was across all different sectors so that somebody might have an idea about something that the zoo was doing and they would have never reached out to the zoo, but having just a conversation, they think, oh, you know, I've got something like that and perhaps I can incorporate it into my, you know, real estate management practice. So I know you do a lot of writing, so you do have regular column or publishing certain locations. People can read about different developments and issues. So we do have client alerts that anyone can subscribe to and then we do also write for the legal intelligentser in Philadelphia. How do we get to that client alert? You can go to our website at www.mankogold.com and also if you put up slide six, we'll see this, what we also did was put together a case study and a tour book that shows a lot of what we did and explains how and why for people that may be interested in seeing what they can do to make their offices more sustainable. So that the picture in the center is the cover of the tour book and then down on the bottom right is the case study. The tour book has all the pretty pictures. The case study's got more detail. So the tour book of your offices and how it developed and all the specifications. That's right. That's right. And this is available online. It is on our website. So you can just go to our website and under practice areas you can click on sustainability and right there you can click either case study or tour book. So how have you taken these different skill sets and practices to your own personal living space? So I drive a hybrid vehicle. Very good. And we do try to, I mean at home, reduce waste. Try to buy things with less packaging. Try to recycle, right? Because it's good to recycle, but it's better to generate less waste in the first place. You know, my son actually has a whole aquaponics system going in the backyard so that we can grow some of our own herbs and uses the fish for the nutrients. So, you know, little things that people can even do at home in addition to, you know, a big sustainability program out of business. Right. Well, we only have a few more seconds. And so just quickly, how have you found Hawaii in terms of adjusting and accommodating sustainability and where it's going? I think Hawaii is very far ahead in terms of the general population understanding and embracing it and really trying to do things to advance sustainability. I don't know if that's the case in the business industry yet. I haven't seen as many businesses having lead certified buildings, but certainly there are some and I've met some folks that have them. So I think that there's further that people can go, but I think they have the knowledge base and the spirit and the desire to make it happen. So I'm really excited to be here. Well, on that note, and I want to thank you so much for joining us today on making leadership work, talking about cross-country law practices the way of the future and how one person very successfully, Brenda Katanda, has been able to manage a 5,000 mile distance in a very important and busy practice and yet living here in beautiful Hawaii and bringing her skillset to our state. Thank you so much. This is Carol Monly with Think Tech Hawaii and we'll see you next time. Aloha.