 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. Okay, we're back. It's the two o'clock block. It's Life in the Law, and I really love these kinds of shows. Greg Fry here from Coats and Fry right upstairs here in the Pioneer Plaza building. Welcome to the show. Yeah, it's really an honor, Jay. Thanks for having me. It means a lot. Yeah. Well, it means a lot to us, too, because we'd like to cover lawyers. They lead interesting lives and they have an effect, a leverage effect on the community. Some people think they're a stabilizing force in the community in kind of a civic sense. And how they go, really, how goes the stability of the community. That's what I think. Maybe akin to no one really likes lawyers until they need them. Right. They are very important to us, and I think our current president doesn't necessarily recognize it. He sees them as weapons. Agreed. And indeed, in the matrimonial field, there is an inclination in the part of clients to see lawyers as weapons, and you have to resist that, am I right? Very aggressively. And sometimes you pay the price for that, because when you're talking to a client about what makes more sense than a full, tilt, frontal assault, they see that as you're disagreeing, you're not on their side, you're not advocating in their best interest, when in fact in the long run, especially if they have kids, you are. You've seen all of this. I do want to talk about your three generations of lawyers and your family, and I'd like to dwell on that for a minute. So your father, who I knew, that was, his first name? Philip. Philip Phil Fry knew him, and he was associated with Cowan, Stu Cowan. For over 25 years. Over 25 years, and they had a long term, they were together in the community. Pretty inseparable in a lot of different ways. Inseparable, everybody knew those two words, Cowan and Fry, it was an association. And then there was Greenstein, which I want to talk about, because I knew Greenstein when I first came out here. Greenstein was the litigator who wore a white suit all the time, all white. And he had a green car, and everything was green for Greenstein, and he would do these Melvin-Bella-I kinds of high profile cases back in the 60s. And I was a little kid when he actually joined the firm, I probably didn't know it back then, but probably of some form of council designation. But the firm then formally changed from my father's origination in 1970 was Cowan, Fry, and Williams. Then it became Cowan and Fry, then it became Greenstein, Cowan and Fry. And their letterhead, Jay, you remember back in the days when everyone had raised a letterhead and it was this sort of paper with his, anything like that now? Because it's a technological age, there's really no need for such distinction. And it was all green, and that was insisted on who I knew as Uncle Greenie as a little kid, and he would sign pleadings and letters in green ink, they'd be shipped back to him because they were supposed to be in black ink, and then he would sign again, but it was his, I don't know, it was his way. Making trouble. Yeah, I think so. I knew him as a kid looking up, but I certainly remember him like yesterday. Yeah, he was a very likable guy, I knew him, I spent social time with him way back in the 60s. Yeah, he was one to remember. So anyway, that was an important connection there. What I didn't know was that your father, Phillip Fry, his father was also a lawyer in Hawaii. Can you talk about that? Actually, he never made it to the islands, but he was an attorney. Back then, as I think a lot of lawyers, yourself in the service, thank you for that all those years ago, he started in the Army Air Force as a JAG officer after graduating from the University of Southern California USC in 1934, and then he used his law degree truly back in the day as a general practitioner, how do you need my help? You know, it was a different time probably back then. I wasn't alive, but it was truly a small town atmosphere of I know and trust you. What do you need? He really used his law degree to run a business with his father for many, many years as I remember a big manufacturing plant called Ames Fry, and he did the law side of it. So we had a Monpo truly Monpo practice, and I don't have much left except two pictures of the physical plant, the company, and his law degree that I keep in my office. Which of those have you brought with you today? In fact, I brought, thanks for asking, it means a lot to me. I brought two of them, actually, because the first would be my grandfather's law degree from USC in 1934. 1934 is pretty well preserved. It is, isn't it? And Victor Leslie Fry. Yes. His father immigrated from Hungary in 1901. And then my father's law degree from Stanford in 1968. So I have these in my office, I think, more as an inspiration that law has a great history, both in a family and in the United States and in the world. Isn't it true? It's the stories that count. I think so. It's backbone kinds of things about the development of our society. You can probably imagine, Jay, that as a kid, I have a twin brother. And he devoted his life to the Marine Corps and did just about 23 years at his retirement, and is still in as a GS employee law enforcement running a police academy for the Marine Corps. But we used to laugh as kids. We need to flip a coin as to who was going to be the lawyer, because clearly somebody was going to be. In the family, right? Yeah, because there was a tradition there. And there was, I think, a time-honored one, at least. I felt that way. Did you flip a coin? Several times. And I don't know who won, but in my mind, I think I did. I have always enjoyed the work that I've done. I'm a people person. What's also about your own evolution in the practice? Thank you. I've been practicing now 31 years, almost entirely in the area of family law. When you first start out, when you work for the man, other people, you do what they want you to do. Yeah. So I did a little bit of everything and enjoyed it, but gravitated to family law very early on because, well, I'll tell you it's interesting, as much as I show you the male side of my family, and I don't mean that in any disrespect to gender in any way, shape, or form. But I was one of those sad stories where my grandmother was everything because she was the only one who happened to be available. Our mom dropped my brother and I off on a Friday and said, I'll be back on Monday and we never saw her again. And so my grandma always said she was an old mother because she had my father later in life and a young grandmother. My dad was very young when my brother and I were born. He was in high school. So he went off to college and then law school and took a little longer than most because he had to work his way through. And so he wasn't available not because he didn't want to be, but because he was elsewhere. He went to school away from, so we lived with my grandma at a pretty critical time. I like to say that I decided to go into family law because I have sort of a pledge in the desire to help children get to where it makes most sense in a family. Now we never meet the kids in traditional family law practice. We deal with our parents. We deal with experts. We deal with the court. The children are dealt with with people who they should be dealt with. Why not though? Do you think it would be helpful for you as the lawyer involved in this family to meet those kids to get the sense of who they are? You know what a brilliant question. I'll tell you, although you've got a huge audience that I'm telling it to, you know, you're so easy to talk to. It's like I think I'm only talking to you, but I would tell you yes, a direct answer. I think it would be very helpful, but I'll also tell you that lawyers that who have done that, I've used it very effectively quite frankly against them in terms of what leveraging is being done, what is being put into their mind by somebody other than a psychologist. Yes. Or discussion with a custody evaluator. Yeah. Really, as I was saying, those that really deal with the children or the parents, naturally, even though it's a tough time, psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, as well as evaluators if it's a fight and there's somebody in there looking at what's best for the kids. Oh, it sounds so complicated. It is far more complicated than kids should have to deal with. Yes. You remember when you were a kid, there were such simple things to think about. Try to get home before your parents got mad because for no other reason there was food on the table, right? And a couple other things, do your homework, try to stay out of trouble, but it never really worked. But that was about it. And then they get thrust into this system of strangers evaluating their every move, asking them questions. They never ask the ultimate question, who do you want to live with? They can't do that. They can't. Because it divides children and it confuses them like sea monkeys just add water, instant life. Right. Immediately, it really confuses them. So they'll ask what's it like to be around dad, hey, if you mess up, what goes on? What's he doing in his spare time? How does he talk to you? Same thing with mom. And that's how they glean, I guess, on what might be best for children. May I say, is that really relevant, how the kid feels? You know, your questions are so great and I'll tell you why. I use this analogy. I talk to my clients often in an analogy because local way, right? They remember things that way. And I'll say, when a mom, hypothetically, but it happens all the time, says, Johnny doesn't want to go to his dad. He doesn't want to visit on the weekend. I'll say, with all due respect, who cares what Johnny says? And I'll tell you why. My analogy is, if we allowed our children to decide what they ate every day, it would be Captain Crunch, Fritos, and Twinkies. Exactly. We tell them when to go to bed, when to get up, who to hang around with, with a reason, what school they're going to go to, where they're going to live. So I'm with you, I'm with you. But it changes. They don't have the judgment yet. I don't think so. They need people around them who can help them with the judgment. As brilliant as our kids are today, and let's face it, compared to us with more simpler times back then, they were brilliant. And you're a technological man, and you're very advanced. You know that. But you have to say that these kids today were born that way, because they were born into it. But no matter how bright they are in those ways, experience of life is kind of hard to get other than living it. So what do you do? You have a husband and a wife who don't agree on custody. They take opposite positions. Of course, you have the possibility of joint custody. And you know, we talked to Brad Coates about that. And he probably told you that it is the growing norm. It's no longer when we first started years and decades ago, it was really an, it was an oddity to think that imputing folks could then jointly raise their children. Another analogy I use when a client says to me, bad, bad, bad, bad, meaning their spouse and soon to be accessed, I say, really? Now if my door were shut and the blinds were drawn and the lights were off and nobody was here, you'd have to say there were some great times. If for no other reason, those three kids you created are the best of times. How can you now say everything? You know, people talk dramatically. Everything is bad. And I try to do that in asking and exploring the possibility of joint raising. I'll be honest, when I was a kid, I would have died to have had two people making decisions for me as opposed to what the reality was because not everybody was there. I mean, I think two heads can be better than one in making decisions. Gender does come into it. Males look at things a little differently. Females look at things a little differently. They can share ideas and hopefully come to consensus but knock on wood. How hard is that really? It's difficult. You're talking like a psychologist. A bitch, you know, funny you should say that after years and years and years of doing this kind of work, I went back and got a master's degree in psychology because I was so fascinated in the difference between mostly gender. And here's how I explain it to clients. That if a mom and I look at the exact same thing from the exact same angle, at the exact same time, we'll see it differently. Some will have to do with age, experience, education, bias, but some of it will have to do with gender. And I was so fascinated in the difference between how people think from a gender-based perspective that I decided it might help my practice. And I got to tell you, I think it has. I think it has. Yeah, I think it has. Yeah, and you know, back in the day, I don't know if you remember these names, but there were a couple of them, Tom Rice was one of them. But a legendary man, he was. Legendary man, another fellow I can't remember his name right now. Hogan. Yeah, Bob Hogan. Those guys were gladiators. You know, they go into the pit and they wanted to draw blood. And they would fight like hell for any point. And they would attack opposite counsel just as easily. And make as big a mess as, and I really mean it, they'd make a big mess for everybody involved. Things have changed. And the language you're talking now is the language of Pono Pono. It's the language of coming together and trying to find a reasonable relationship going forward. It's a big difference between practicing matrimonial then and now. What a point. I'm not sure if Brad Coach, when he came and talked to you or other practitioners in this area, I've told you. But when Michael Town, who then was elevated to the circuit court and had a very distinguished career there and now sits as a brilliant mediator in the family law area, when he was the chief judge of the family court, he created with a committee after many years of drafting the civility code. And it is part of our divorce manual that Bill Dara works on so diligently every year to update. And that civility code is the written but not formally promulgated, because it's not under the color of any true authority. But boy, if he didn't treat people in the right way, there were sanctions that came down. So that's how they started to try to change the gladiator. You still, you know, litigation, it's brutal. It's brutal and you have to represent your client and you don't want to lose, you don't want to make a mistake, you don't want to lose. And so, you know, that's a kind of conflict and I'd like to ask you about that. So you want to do the right thing. You want to be decent. You want your client to be decent. At the same time, your client expects you to win. It's an economic experience, at least in part. And you have to cope with some strong forces, the force of the guy on the other side and the woman on the other side who's adverse counsel to you and your own client. And of course, the children, as you mentioned, this could make your head split to have all these forces on you. And at the same time, remembering, aside from the civility code, you have a duty to your client. Absolutely. You can sympathize with the other side more than you sympathize with your client, even if your client's not as nice a person. Or even if your client from the standard of the law may be wrong. It's your job to educate them as to what is likely to happen. Suppose they disagree. They say, Greg, thanks very much, but I want you to go out and beat them up. I handle that in a couple of ways. One is, I tell them straight up, I'll go to the mat because that's what we do. For anything that is legally and reasonably advanceable or defensible. And if I truly believe that it is not, I have an obligation to tell them that. And if it is not, then you get into the code and our ethical code as to whether I can continue to represent that client as vigorously and as aggressively as the code requires us to as you just observed. And sometimes it comes down and another lawyer will be better for you. Ever done that? Ever said farewell? Many times. Not because I had problems with them as a person. I'm actually a people person. I enjoy the uniqueness even under pressure. Even under pressure I enjoy the uniqueness of my clients. And even the other side, they come at you pretty hard because quite frankly, folks take it personally and they fixate on lawyers or the experts or the court as part of the reason they're in whatever dilemma they're in. I mean, I gotta tell you, as much as I enjoy this work, my children are now grown as many of our kids born here living on the mainland. And making their own way and I'm proud of that. But throughout their whole life here and to this day, I've never listed my phone number in the phone book. I don't tell people generally exactly where I live. I might say this side of the island. And I do that for a reason because you have to be careful because people have huge reactions to decisions that quite frankly change their lives. You're not gonna see your kids as often. You're not gonna keep your house anymore. Traumatic. You're losing half your retirement. They get very angry. Yeah, and you know what? That's an emotion I get. I'm kind of an anger inspired fellow myself in terms of my own personality so I can get it. I just gotta recognize that as being a reality of what we do. Yeah, let's talk about tech for one minute before we go to a break. Sure. So artificial intelligence, it's all over. And all the big tech companies are going there. They're paying enormous sums of money to people who are expert in developing artificial intelligence code. And one of the things is that it can be smart and it can learn. It can get data and it can make decisions and resolve problems in the future. I always wonder whether lawyers will be replaced by little boxes about that big that are run on artificial intelligence. And so if you feed in all the information, all the financial statements and all the history and even positions that people wanna take and the law and the practice and arguments that people might make, feed it all in, little box can make a decision and say you get 50%, you get 50% and this and that and the other thing. And it decides and it decides in one second. Will this be as good? Interesting. There were two things I was thinking about as you talked about that. I was hard for me to think because I was quite riveted on what you were saying. One, Hawaii is probably the greatest example of cultural differences and ideas, whether it's because we're on a little island and we grow up a bit differently than other places. In other words, here's what you get aspect of it, probably not so hard. But when you're dealing up with the subjective part of how do we deal with kids and how much time should I give up? You know how much I use pigeon or my localness with a lot of my clients? And I enjoy every bit of it because everybody needs to be dealt with in a way most comfortable to them. So one wonders whether that little box has the ability to be. I'm not gonna use the word culturally sensitive because that seems too weird or too overused, but can get into the head of somebody in a way that they're comfortable. I trust this box or in my case, I trust Greg because he's one of me and he's trying to help me out. What I get out of this is you want to help people out and you see the practices more than just the outcome. The practice is it's a journey. This is a journey for all the people involved and you don't want to make the journey too unpleasant because if it is that leaves a scar that might be worse and therefore a little black box is not gonna be capable of that. Might only be able to do the here and now in real time as opposed to what are you thinking about 10 years from now? Right. In human condition. Yeah, and I don't know if Brad Coates indicated to you when he was with you because I'm not sure what you folks talked about but we actually do what's called case completion surveys. How's that in a family law case? Where even when you win, you've essentially lost half of stuff you had yesterday and we say kind of, how do we do? And it's amazing how many people write back to us in this survey and then they might add a sheet of paper and they'll say, you know, my kid is happy and healthy and then I got a card yesterday from a client that I had a very tough case several years ago because she's just entered a private school and her mom wanted me to know that she's doing great. So that's beyond the black box. That's the life journey that sometimes you take some pride in that maybe you've done it in a way that these people actually take the time to fill out a survey even though their life has radically changed to say, things are pretty good. More than winning and losing. I think so. That's how you play the game. Yeah, I think so. Let's take a 30 second break, okay? Break fry and we come back and we talk about your hobbies and the things that drive you outside the practice and you'll find it very interesting. Yeah, it's pretty good. Thank you. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Aloha, I'm Glenn Martinez. I'm the volunteer host of the Aquaponics show that we've come once a week. You know, Think Tech is important to me because it gives me an avenue to share what we do on all the money gardens and the other community participation in the aquaculture world and at regular agriculture also. And now for the first time, Think Tech Hawaii is participating in the online web-based fundraising campaign to raise $40,000. Give thanks to Think Tech. We'll run only during the month of November and you can help. Please donate what you can so that Think Tech Hawaii can continue to raise public awareness and promote civic engagement through free programming like mine. I've already made my donation and look forward to yours. Please send in your tax-deductible contribution by going to this website, www.thanksforthinktech.causevox.com. On behalf of the community enriched by Think Tech Hawaii's 30 plus weekly shows, thank you. Mahalo for your generosity and we look forward to you. Okay, we're back with Greg Frye schmoozing here on a given Tuesday, enjoying ourselves with him thinking back to early days in the practice in here in Honolulu, but also seeing the changes in the practice. But I want to talk about how you have grown and developed as a person outside the practice. I want to talk about all your activities which are really interesting. I mean, just naming a couple motorcycles, Greg motorcycles, really? In fact, if you ever have some time to go look at some of the cable channels that rerun things for several years because their programming is as sparse as their budgets can allow, the travel channel, which you've probably heard of, in 19, well, I don't remember exactly, two or three years ago, my wife and I and my brother, who lives in the mainland now and who works there, a bucket list was Sturgis, which is an annual motorcycle rally literally the little town in South Dakota in Sturgis, South Dakota has a population of about 12,000 people except for two weeks every year when it goes up to, and I'm not kidding when I tell you this, about 450,000 motorcycles and about 700,000 people in the very same town that come from all over. So we went and my wife and I appeared, we were filmed all day for a show called Sturgis Raw. It was an eight-part series and we made episode two, Chrome and Glory, which I still see on TV all the time and it was about my connection to the tattoo community, which you'll probably talk about in a few minutes and some work that I had done there with a very famous guy and I just thought it was hilarious that someone came from Hawaii and so we made about four minutes or five minutes on this particular episode and yes, motorcycle and the motorcycle community is very big for me. I'm in the Honolulu Hogs, which is a Harley-Davidson group and I have been riding motorcycles since high school. No kidding, I would not have guessed that. It seems so different from what you described in the first part of the show. And you know what, Jay? Deliberately so. What I mean by that is to be around difference from what you do every day, I think is really engaging. I think it's really neat to just be different in whatever way you like to be. Whether it's sitting in a hammock and staring at the sky or riding a motorcycle or doing anything in between, it's different than what we do in the traditional law sense. Yeah, it's emancipation. It's getting out. Little bit of freedom. That's why we call this, lawyers can do other things too. That's why we call this show that. So okay, we don't have a whole lot of time, but I would like to mention that you are involved in so many nonprofit boards, so many professional boards, you're all over town. What do you live, a 48 hour day, what is that? You know, I have to credit a few people. You're right. I sit on two trustee boards for schools, both my high school here at St. Louis High School, Santa Clara University, I traveled there for their alumni board of directors. I've been a long time president following Judge Jim Burns at the St. Louis Alumni Association and I've been on that board for about 15 years. I was recently elected and I appreciate the support to be the incoming vice president of the Hawaii State Bar Association. And a few more boards and how do I do that? I have people around me who believe in my desire to do those things, including my paralegal who literally keeps my life in order as to you have to do this, this and that. And I gotta tell you, my kids like I said are gone, but they weren't for many years. My wife and my children are so supportive of the idea that I have a meeting after work. I have a meeting on the weekend, but it's just something I like to do and they allow that to happen. You have to have people around you that support that or you can't do it no matter how much you want to. Well, I'm very touched by that and I think it's great because I think you can't practice in a sort of an open way unless you get out a little bit. And a lot of lawyers don't, they keep their nose on the grindstone their whole career however many decades that may be. And you know, they're brilliant lawyers. Well, okay, we're out of time. I really appreciate you coming down, Greg. It was so great to spend time with you. Soon enough you're gonna be the president of the Bar Association. And we're hoping to come down under the, what do we call it, the three digits plus program for the numbers between 1,000 and 1,999. Wouldn't that be great. We'll do a lot of shows with the younger than the three digit program a few years ago. Your number is? 720. What year did you come in? 1968. Because my dad is 770? That makes me older than your dad. By one class, I believe. Yeah. Good, thank you, Greg. Thanks for the time.