 My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Today we're going to stay in Hawaii and talk with Greg Fry. Greg is the president of the Hawaii State Bar Association, and we are going to talk about, of all things, coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. Of course, that's the subject of social and media discussion generally right now. However, we're going to talk about how it affects law firms, the law practice, the bar association, the courts, and lawyers, and how we're going to deal with this. I'm going to see what Greg's experience has been and how he thinks we all have to address this new reality. So, Greg, we're both isolated and talking from different quarantine stations. How are you? I'm well, Mark. It's an honor to be here, and thank you, and thank you very much to the Think Tank over there at the studios who has put us all together from different places. It means a lot. Thank you. Okay. Now, you're the president of the Hawaii State Bar Association. How long have you been president? It is an elected office. It's a bit of a grueling campaign, if you will. And that actually starts by our bylaws about three years ago. You run and you joust, if you will, in competitive normal type elections as the vice president. If you get through that, you are the vice president for a year. Then you are what's called the president elect for a year, and then you are the president, which is what I sit now. So I'll be president for one year, 2020 calendar year. But I've been at it at the officer ranks as a member of the State Bar Directors and Board for three years now. Okay. Now, before we get into our discussion on COVID-19 and how it affects lawyers and the bar in courts, what normally would be your job as HSBA president? What normally would you do? What are your duties normally under normal times? Each day that passes, Mark, I'm starting to forget how to even spell, remember, or understand the term normal. But thanks for asking because that reminisces me back, I think. One of the neat things when you become president is, in the first issue of our professional magazine, they put you on the cover. Now, I've never been on the cover of any magazine before, but here I was. And in that magazine, we're supposed to say what we normally want to get accomplished in normal times. For me, it was a huge push, ironically, perhaps, prophetically a bit, but it was a huge push to get more and more people involved at all levels of the bar in committee work, in leadership positions, in chairs on sections. I really wanted more and more lawyers to go beyond their normal course, beyond their normal work, to get fully involved and fully engaged, not just for the benefits, but for the philanthropic side of working with ourselves for ourselves. So that was really my campaign, if you will, and what I had pledged to do before the world shifted quite dramatically. Okay, all right, so now let's get into that. You, I mean, welcome to the presidency, you know, as soon as you got in, I guess, we started hearing things from China. And now we have COVID-19 in the United States, the pandemic, and it's here in Hawaii. But how has that affected you, your duties as bar president, and what you have been trying to accomplish? Can you still accomplish, or is that part of the whole, the whole plan now? Where are you, where are you going under these new circumstances? That's what I love about the great questions that you put together for this program. They're amazing, and they get people thinking, including myself. As I thought about that question and that idea, I said to myself, we are an association. I'm honored and humbled to be the leader of a significant association that guides councils, provides benefits to over 8000 members, being the lawyers in the state of Hawaii. So what COVID-19 has done is made us examine several layers of grave and important concern. This is beyond the obvious. The obvious is the medical uncertainty, the need to do what government and other entities are telling us to do, to stop, stilt, destroy, and get rid of this virus over time. But for us as an association, we have two things to really deal with. One is any association is to give benefit to its members. So we're getting calls all the time from lawyers that are saying, help us figure out what we need to do to get through this. Meaning, I need help to remotely create my office. I need help in telephone conferencing. Mark, you know, you're quite frankly an incredibly gifted IT enthusiast. But there are a lot of lawyers, whether we call them dinosaurs out of total respect, or simply a little less seasoned than IT savvy lawyers. We're across the board in our membership. So HSBA is trying to provide that. The second layer of complexity is the true dire financial straits that law firms, practitioners, whether they be solo, they be associates, they be managing partners or attorneys, or they be owners in any stretch of that decision or that structure. The reality is, the courts are in some respect closed to foot traffic. Therefore, we have to work our cases, figure out a way to do it and figure out a way to get clients and failing that or controlling the loss of revenues. We're dealing with hard realities, just like the restaurant business, just like the tourism business. Downsizing of attorneys, downsizing of staff, reducing of monthly expenses, reducing of salary and benefits. These are hardcore things that, believe it or not, our membership would like to know more about because this is a new world. It's like fighting a ghost, I was told by someone I respect, and I really believe that. It's a bit of an unknown for all of us. And so these are issues that have been brought up to you by lawyers. And how are you dealing with it? I mean, as bar president, what do you do? And how do the people under the bar association, what are they doing? How are you helping these people with those issues? Are you talking with them? Or is there a, trying to provide a solution? Where are you coming from? Thanks, Mark. Great question. I had said, indicated earlier when I gave my little plug for my GQ cover story in a bar journal that I had wanted more people involved. I didn't necessarily believe it would happen this way, but here's the reality. The HSBA as an association is getting help, guidance from all over our legal community. There has been no less than two substantial conferences telephonically through remote, both video and audio channels with many, many firms that are pooling together in discussion about how to keep the court moving smoothly, how to keep business in the door. That morphed into the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court, Mark Rectonwald, bringing together several of his lead judges in the, first with the Civil Division. And discussions continued where we would think of ways to get the word out. What's the word? The word is that lawyers and legal services have been deemed by both the mayor and the governor, orders that are in place to be essential services. Therefore, there are clients and potential clients that are thinking and needing essential work. So we need to get out to the public a couple of messages. One, the courts are open. We might not be able to go to the actual courthouse because of foot traffic and state building restrictions, but we can submit things for filing. We can ask for telephonic conferences. We can ask for actual hearings if everybody agrees. We can deal with mediation and arbitration alternatives done successfully. We can generate essential services for clients and people of our community who need the work. And we're getting that word out. You'll see in a day or so we get a monthly e-newsletter from the bar. It's going to lay out much of what you now have actually put on your program before the rest of the bar is going to read. What I'm telling you now is going to be in an e-newsletter. And we're meeting or talking with the Chief Justice, the Supreme Court, the leading judges in the different divisions on what can the bar do and what must the bar do to help lawyers. This includes some reduced pricing on continuing legal education for those that need the stockpile now when they have time. This includes the use of the IT availability through the bar at no cost to lawyers or members of our association, which Mark, you know, is any licensed attorney in the state of Hawaii. And so it's a reach out. It sounds like it's a reach out to attorneys and also to the public. The public here, you'll be telling the public, hey, if you need a lawyer, what is a lawyer available, even in these times, in these weird times, you still have a lawyer that you can go to and the courts are available in those situations that it's critical. And then you're telling the lawyers, hey, you got to go out and tell people this too. Is that, am I getting the message right? You're absolutely correct, Mark, and very well put, far more artful than I might have on two essential levels. One is that we want to urge our island community to understand that if they believe something's important to them legally, the governor, the mayor and existing restriction orders already have put into place that they recognize law business is important. Law business has been deemed essential. Beyond that, there are some areas of the law, family law being one of them, temporary restraining orders, orders for protection and safety concerns, custody orders, child support reduction orders because of loss of job or income. Criminal courts across the land, the loss or risk of loss of personal freedoms, require our court system to be open, constitutional or otherwise. We have to be open for business in those very important essential roles in the law. So we want clients to know that. We're asking lawyers to use their own promotional devices. My firm, for example, might have an e-tree of about 13,000 people that we have put together and maintain and continually quality control. We're sending out service announcements, not solicitation, but service announcements. These are things you might want to think about in the area of the law that we deal in and we're urging all attorneys across the board regardless of the style or the emphasis of practice to do the same. Remind the public that we're here and we're open for business. And remind them that the COVID-19 has not taken away lawyers, that lawyers are still there to serve. And we're going to talk a little bit more about that after we take a short break. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence and finding greatness. I feature a wide range of amazing guests who share valuable insights about how going beyond the lines leads to success in everything you do in life. I'm looking forward to you joining me every Monday at 11 am. Aloha. Aloha. I am back with Greg Fry, president of the White State Bar Association and we are talking about how this COVID-19 epidemic pandemic has affected the law profession and lawyers. And we're learning that the message that lawyers and courts want to send out is that we're still here to help. We are available. We want to be of service to the community. And if you need it, if you need lawyers, you need courts, we're there. Is that it, Greg? Is that the right message? It's exactly the message that we've been talking about, I think, in the first half of your program, Mark, and also to recognize that's within limitations and restrictions that we're all trying to live by in order to protect each other and our island community. By that I mean it might take a while to get things filed. We might not get hearing dates until well after the restrictions and the stay at home orders are lifted or modified, but at least you're in the pipe. You're in the direction of getting assistance and some hearings can and will be held if they are those which the court has predetermined, the judiciary, the Chief Justice has predetermined need to be handled on a regular basis. I cited some earlier restraining orders, criminal matters, custody matters of select types, things of that nature. And so the CJ is involved in this, the Bar Association is involved, and it sounds like you're talking with a bunch of law firms also. Just generally, the Bar Association has an office downtown, what's the status of that office? Is it open? Are people working as Pat, the Executive Director working there, or is she from home, or how's that all coming down? As our leader, our Executive Director, Petma Hoshimizu, has got to make critical decisions. She calls me and consults me and gets authorization as the Bar leadership from me and all of those critical decisions. And one of those recently, and it is being communicated to the Bar now, is the actual offices downtown are closed to the public. And in fact, all staff is working from home remotely, currently, Monday through Friday. Pat, the Assistant Executive Director, Iris Ito, the CFO, and select IT folks come in on Wednesday to do a week's worth of monitoring the calls that hadn't been taken remotely, monitoring emails that might have been not taken remotely, dealing with the business of business, paying bills, answering any other inquiries from other states, from other jurisdictions. And so, yes, we're open from business, but much like this program, much like so many places in our island state as well as around the world in the U.S., open remotely. So the Bar Association is still there, still helping if you need something, if lawyers need something from the Bar Association, there is a way to contact them and someone will get back to them about all of these COVID-19 issues. That's correct, Mark, as well as we're incentivizing the Bar to do just that. We're offering free setup for teleconferencing, free setup for some IT, much like what we have working with here, thanks to the engineers and tech experts at the studios. That's going to be offered free of charge with passwords that will be provided for this time of at home. We're offering teleconferencing, we're offering reduced pricing on continuing legal education that is already in the library available. Our theory on that, Mark, is we're allowed to have for compliance issues with our continuing legal education, both this year and next year, a certain number. Maybe we'll could see if we could relax that a bit or enhance it a bit, where people can stockpile now at substantially reduced prices such that when they need it at the last minute, the end of this year, the end of next year, when we're back to business as usual, we hope, then you don't want to be spending a bunch of time doing CLEs when you want to be earning money for the loss of revenues that are going on currently. Why not do it now in conjunction with a little free time? I think, Mark, you'll agree with me, we as attorneys, much like so many people in this state, don't have a lot of free time. So we're trying to encourage people and incentivize them. Yeah, give everybody an alternative under the circumstances. Now, it sounds like you have been talking with lawyers and I mean, you have your own office. So, I mean, how has this affected you personally and your office and the other lawyers you've talked to? What have you experienced and what have you heard from them? And, you know, how are things going down at this time just from a personal standpoint? Personally, I'm sure you feel the same way and we all do. It's an emotional thing. You know, I've worked with people in my office for 25, 27, 30 years, and we immediately had to make some critical decisions relative to staffing, relative to salary, relative to benefits, relative to bonuses, relative to expenses. We ordered our bookkeeper and our management team to reduce monthly expenses by a huge number. So the bells, the whistles aren't there now. We are confident. We don't have a plan B, Mark. And I don't think a lot of lawyers or businesses in this state have a plan B. We need to get through this. We need for our families, for those that depend upon us, for every employee I have remaining and standing. We need to get through this, not just my office, but every office. And I think during the conversations that I've been having both in mass and individually with attorneys in this town, that's the message that they know they need to communicate cheerleader or otherwise to their own staff, to their own clients, to their own legal world. And then beyond that, the Chief Justice is fully on board in doing everything and asking the HSBA to do everything it can to assist wherever the CJ, the judiciary asks us to assist. We're ready. And my e-newsletter that's going to come out with that special message actually says, we're open. We're open for business. We're here to help. Ask us. And yeah, okay, that's good. That's a real positive message. I mean, how do you keep your spirits up in your office? I mean, how do you keep from going crazy with all this at this time? And what advice would you give others on how to deal with this? I'm sort of, and if you read my article, I'm sort of that cheerleader type guy. I'm that guy kind of from all of the athletic days, maybe, you know, it's a team. You make decisions, you make critical decisions from the top that you engage and you let your people around you. In my case, my staff, my other attorneys help make that community decision. Our staff stops at leadership. I understand that. But for instance, with the tenor under the six foot distancing, we had a real dilemma on our hands. We have, we're a small firm, but as a family law firm, we're, you know, the biggest, we have 12 lawyers. So we're already, if all lawyers are there at the same time in office, we're over that number. It was not comfortable with that. They wanted ten or less. So we're literally marked working remotely when we're not here and we're working in swing shifts relative to the lawyers. Five on, five remotely, five on, five remotely. The staff remains constant and the same through the work bay. We have a schedule that I put together, but we need to buy in an enthusiasm at the same time. At the same time, Mark, telling our attorneys there were salary changes, hopefully for only the short term, but in order to keep the building strong and stable, the firm needs to be first. Everybody else needs to contribute to that. Thankfully, and I think a lot of firms are like this, there's buy-in at that level. I think that's how you keep your enthusiasm up is let people know what's really going on. Give them the straight, they know and lawyers are generally pretty smart folks. They know what's going on. They read, they listen, they pay attention. They learn and they act and react and implement. So that's how we did it. And I think that's how I'm learning from a lot of other people too that that's what they're doing as well. Okay, let me, we have about a minute left. My question is, what have you learned from all of this? And, you know, I knew your dad, what would he say about all of this? You know, he was a lawyer also. And what have you learned and what would your dad say? Oh, Mark, thank you. That means a lot. I know we only have a few seconds. Yeah, he's been gone over 30 years now. Time flies, right? I am a third generation attorney. You know, first, my dad would say the same thing he said when I passed the bar. He said, make sure your shoes are a little too tight so that you're a little uncomfortable. And so you'll do whatever it takes to get it done. I'm trying to learn 30 years later after losing him that that's true. What do I think's happened in our legal community coming together? I don't want to sound like a politician, but coming together as a common goal, as a common energy, we need to work together. We might be competitors in the courtroom, competitors across the desk, but in our business, we are together. And the only way we're going to get through this is together. Oh, I appreciate that. And nice to hear what your dad said. I like that very much. Thanks for sharing. And Greg, I appreciate you being on the program. I wanted to learn and wanted to share and wanted to have other lawyers learn about how the bar is dealing with this and it's very good, very upbeat. And I appreciate it. So thank you very much. Aloha.