 Yeah, good morning. It's the 10 o'clock clock on a given Monday morning. Exciting. This is Think Tech, and more specifically, this is Life in the Law. And it's actually part of a series we're doing on Mondays for the next few weeks, ramping up to the celebration of pro bono event we're doing with the Chief Justice and others on October 9th. So this is the first of a series of four than the celebration itself. And we have with us today the beginning of our austere group, Angela Quo-Min, and she is the Executive Director of Bounty Illegal Services, Hawaii. Very important organization. Welcome to the show, Angela. Good morning, Jay. Thank you so much for having me in our group here today. And then, and we have Nancy Kregman. Kregman make that. And she is the Executive Director of another such organization. It's Domestic Violence Action Center to its friends. It's DVAC. Welcome, Nancy. Nice to see your smiling face. Good morning. Thank you for having us. Okay. And then we have Clarissa Malinao. She's a solo private practitioner person who we interviewed a couple of months ago here on Think Tech as a member of the Hawaii State Bar Association Leadership Institute. And she is our mystery guest today. Hi, Clarissa. Hi, Jay. Thank you for having me again. Absolutely. Let's start with you, Angela. Your organization, Volunteer Illegal Services, Hawaii. Tell us about it. What does it do? Sure. Volunteer Illegal Services, Hawaii. We are a non-profit in Hawaii. We provide free legal services for the low to moderate income community. We're almost, we're going to be celebrating our 40th anniversary next year. Who we are is we actually started as a project from the Hawaii Bar Association, the Young Lawyers Division. At the time, there wasn't organization or agency vetting pro bono cases. And it's very important for us to help back and give back to the community. As lawyers, we're given the special skill that we can be an advocate for those who don't have a voice, who don't know the legal system. And so we really needed organizations such as Volunteer Illegal Services. It was actually known as the Hawaii Lawyers Pro Bono Referral Project back then. And now it later branched off as its own non-profit. And we still stand on our office on Queen Street. We partner with local community attorneys. Everyone volunteers out of the goodness of their heart. And so they want to help back. You know, there was a time when Ron Moon was the Chief Justice of Supreme Court. Correct. You could send you a volunteer letter. But it wouldn't sound much like asking for volunteer services. I think you would get, you would get on one list if you volunteered and you get another more specialist if you didn't. How do you incentivize people to volunteer? You know, when I first started at Volunteer Illegal Services, actually I used to volunteer with the kind of like sister company Volunteer Illegal in California. And what, what, if you really have such a great experience, I feel like the staff makes it easy for the attorneys, because we know everyone has a full schedule. A lot of our attorneys are partners at big firms, solo practitioners. So they're juggling their own caseload. But I think there's a way when they volunteer with our organization, it's just a different aspect of being a lawyer. I've heard from a lot of my colleagues, especially coming from prior practice before, they've heard more thank yous and more appreciation for volunteering at one of our clinics. Well, as a public policy angel, why do we care? Why do we care that lawyers volunteer? Why are they, why do we care that they volunteer legal services for the community in Hawaii? It shows that we, we are part of the community. If we don't provide access to justice for all, it really shows that, you know, we're making more barriers for a lot of individuals, especially during COVID. I mean, this is another barrier for a lot of individuals, you know, our, a lot of offices are closed, you know, before you can go to Starbucks and pick up free wifi, right? And now you can't have that resource. We try to, it's not only legal services that provide, but we want to provide community resources for our clientele. For example, our website, we list a list of community resources we like to call is not only legal resources when the courthouse is open, which courthouses are closed, but we include lists for unemployment information, housing assistance. There's a lot of resources out there. People tend to think, oh, I need to volunteer legal services to go to court or write a will, some tangible outcome, but no, it's informational too. It's like calling up your friendly lawyer and asking him a question, which you couldn't do without volunteer legal services. Yeah. Correct. I mean, I think one of the biggest things for COVID is a lot of people don't have smartphones, don't have wifi. And now that the courts, a lot of them are having zoom hearings, which I think for lawyers, we think it's great, right? We can just zoom from our homes, but a lot of people don't have strong internet and be able to be on, be online for over an hour and wait for their hearing, their calendar call. Can we have a slide on, we have a slide on you guys. Haley, can you show the slide? We have two or three slides here and one of them is for volunteer legal services. So on the flip side, you know, of that, what happens if no instrumentality of the state or with the state or supported or funded by the state provides volunteer legal services or legal services calling for the community? What happens with, I guess, number one, it means that people do not have legal services because they can't otherwise afford it. But what does that do in terms of the social fabric of the state? I mean, a lot of the programs we try to keep developing new programs, keep spreading our clinics around the neighborhood, you know, going to neighbor islands. And with lower funding, we're going to have to cut those programs. I guess the access to justice was just going to only decrease over time. It will just be harder for a lot of the people to address their legal issues. And one of the issues that we see a lot is for someone to pick up the phone and call DVAC, call legal aid, call volunteer legal services. That's already a huge step. You know, it's that first step, picking up the phone call. And even if we don't have those services, it just, it even cuts it down and they already have, you know, a sense of insecurity. And then if they don't have those services, they get, you know, pushed around or refer here, refer there. And they really get lost in the system. And sometimes they will just not address their problems. And it'll, when they do call us back, it might be a year later. And maybe we could have helped them with their judgment, you know, six months ago, but now they have a garnishment against their wages if they are working. And so I know for at least VLSH and a lot of the organizations that we work with in the community, we also not only want to help with their legal services, but we want to educate them. And that's, I think, a really big important part, education and outreach to let them know that there are these services so they don't end up in a position where they are really are lost and have nowhere to go. And, you know, they're just, well, sometimes it can be, it can be really critical. I remember a case where these people took out a mortgage with a really voracious type of mortgage and it was in the day of, maybe this still is the day of non-judicial foreclosure. And the mortgagee mainland company was sending them all these, you know, registered letters, certified letters, and they were ignoring the letters. They didn't realize that under non-judicial foreclosure you can get a letter and that's the end of you. And one day another couple showed up and took over the house because they had not had any legal services. They ignored the letters. Nobody was there to advise them how dangerous it was to ignore the letters. So it could be life or death. It was for that family. It was really terrible. So I think the ability to look at your website and call you up on the phone and to ask you a question like that for free anytime is extremely valuable for people who don't otherwise have the benefit. Right. And for our clients, when they call our office, like you said, a lot of times they may get a letter and they don't know what it means, but it looks bad. And so they put it to the side. They may throw it away. It's maybe the third or fifth one and they just don't want to deal with it. Hopefully they kept a copy because what we do is when they do do an intake with our office, we like to ask for any relevant information, any relevant documents. And so when they do talk to the attorney, the attorney's actually received a copy of that ahead of time will request all those documents and we do an intake application with the client. So when the attorney does speak to the client, they have already a background, a little bit of what's going on. And so they can use that time most efficiently. Usually we just set aside 45 minutes an hour for each client. So they have a very thorough amount of time that they can share their background, what's been going on, maybe updates in the last one they spoke to our office. So both parties have most efficient use of that time and they can get, they can ask any additional questions. They can flush out any more details. Sometimes the attorney can even walk them through some forms, you know, help maybe, oh, this is the next thing. This is the next thing you need to file with the court. How about write documents? How about write a will? Yes, we do that too. We'll send the client a questionnaire, ask them what they have intense of, you know, what they want to distribute, you know, their decisions for like a health care directive or power of attorney who they may want to leave anything to their family members or close friends. And we'll send that questionnaire over to the attorney and the attorney will give them a call, kind of flush out any additional details and we'll actually draft the will power of attorney health care directive for the client. Okay. How many volunteers do you have at any given moment? We have almost about 200 in our pool of attorneys. Honestly, how do you handle? How do you manage 200 attorneys? I mean, they have trouble doing that in the firms, the commercial firms in town. How can you do it? We have a fantastic staff. We follow up with attorneys. We say lots of thank yous, a lots of mahalo. We send them a little cute little gift sometimes and we have a little volunteer appreciation gift, give parties for them before COVID. And we just really appreciate the time. We also, you know, once a year at the pro bono celebration every October, we do honor a volunteer or a firm. And we just really encourage and I think one of the best things about volunteering and the easiest way to spread it is just like any kind of good restaurant in the neighborhood. It's a word of mouth. Many volunteers have had a great experience volunteering with organization and they tell their friends or their colleagues, they recruit some of the younger attorneys. We have some attorneys who have been volunteering for us for over two decades and we also have some attorneys who may have just graduated a year or two ago and are just getting into volunteering. Why do they do that? Why do they do that? I mean, you got to put a cap on it. For example, if I'm trying to earn a living in a private practice, you know, like Clarissa does, you know, why do they do that? Why do they shear off the time for this and how much time can they afford to put into it? Do they all have sort of budgets expectations or what? It really is up to them because in Hawaii, pro bono is not mandatory. And I've been asked before, should we make the pro bono, you know, mandatory 50 hours, 60 hours? And it's not. We have a guideline, which is rule 6.1 of professional responsibility, where the court, Supreme Court recommends that we try to aspire for 50 hours a year. We're happy to say we have many attorneys who volunteer way more than that. And we have some that volunteer, you know, maybe 5 to 10 hours a year. But at the end of the day, any of those hours makes a huge difference in the community. And what our office does is we try to offer different spectrum of volunteering opportunities. So you don't feel committed to, I have to take a Supreme Court case, or is it only just, you know, making phone calls from your office and volunteering? And so they want to, they want to give back. So, Angela, if I, if I have my 50 hours that I run out of, run out of the 50 hours, and I'm in the middle of writing a will, for example, what happens then? Somebody else takes over from me, or I come back next year, what do I do? No, there's no cap on how much pro bono you can do. We hope that the attorney will finish each project or each case that he's assigned and be finishing that will power return your healthcare directed for that client. It doesn't mean that you stop at 50. You're always going to be my safety net. Nancy, let's go to you. Let's talk about domestic violence. You know, one, one thing is clear, very clear that in the COVID, when people are cooped up in their houses or apartments with a lot of people, maybe sometimes too many people for the number of rooms, they get very antsy. And sometimes they get violent. They would not necessarily be violent at ordinary times, but they might get violent during COVID. And you must have an increase in the amount of business you have, do you? We are very, very busy at the Domestic Violence Action Center right now. But I want to clarify something. The coronavirus and the pandemic and the stay-at-home directives have not turned people into abusers. My husband didn't turn into an abuser. What has happened is that when you live with a person who is abusive and you are directed to stay at home with them, you're in great danger. And the risk to your safety increases dramatically. So we're really not talking about the circumstances creating abuse. We're talking about situations where abuse was present and now the victim and survivor is a prisoner behind closed doors suffering in silence. So what do you do? What does the DVAC do in terms of the intake and the action? Well, we've made a lot of adaptations to the way we are able to communicate with people who are staying at home. We added immediately to our communications vehicles. We added a text feature and a chat feature because if you need to ask for help or create a safety plan or understand what your options are, you are unable to make a telephone call with an abuser standing nearby. But with people working from home, they can be on their laptops or their computers if they have them. I think many of the issues that Angela mentioned earlier about access to devices was also true for victims of domestic violence. But if you are working from home, you probably have a smart phone, possibly a laptop, and you are able to reach out and get information. We are in full operation at the Domestic Violence Action Center. We're considered essential workers. And so we have not shut down our operations at all. We also tried very early on to encourage the community to reach out to people that they know, who they may have had concerns about but have never mentioned the issue of domestic violence before, and to let them know that they have some concerns. They want to serve as support for them. If they need help, they are available to help. So we've tried to saturate the community with information about the availability of the services Domestic Violence Action Center provides. We've partnered up with a lot of community agencies. We provided information, for example, at all of the community food drives. We partnered with the food bank, the Hawaii Food Bank, so that we were present and available to provide information and safety planning. The court calendars governing temporary restraining orders are in motion, and so our staff are assisting people, file petitions, and go to court to get restraining orders. So how many volunteers you have? We don't work mostly with volunteers. We have a full staff of attorneys and paralegals and advocates who help survivors navigate their way through the system, whether it's through the court system or child welfare system or the financial assistance system, law enforcement system, healthcare system. So some of the work obviously is legal representation. We also have a legal helpline. Angela was talking earlier about people being able to call for information. We have a lot of people reaching out, like I said, some by text, some by chat, and some by telephone. So how many cases do you handle in a given year with your existing staff? There are 50 people on staff at the domestic violence action center, and we assume and calculate that we're assisting about 5,000 island families and survivors in a variety of different ways. Again, some of it's in the court system and some of it's in any other number of ways that they need help. Our contact with clients increased 545 percent between July 2019 and July 2020. So our active outreach to clients on our case increased 545 percent. That's how much assistance people need right now because of the terror and the danger. Have you broken that down? Like from say February till now? That'd be about half of that. Well, we have data by the month, but that is just comparing one month, which is July, July 2019 and July 2020, July against July. But we have broken down the activity and the level of service and the level of request each month since April. So April through August of 2020, we have a breakdown of how many children on our case load, how many client contacts, how many safety plans, how much DV education, how much legal information, because the community needs to know that these are life-threatening and life-altering circumstances right now. The trauma that people are living with is unimaginable if you haven't experienced it. What is your funding come from? We rely on funding from the federal government, the state government, the city and county of Honlulu, foundations. We've had a really delightful response from our community allies and individual donors. We've tried to remain visible so people know we're here to help and we need your help in helping the community. So of course we can't have any events this year, so we're really trying to ramp up our visibility. Experiences and opportunities like this morning with you and Angela and Clarissa is very, very important for the audience in the community who are at home or at work trying to figure out how to get safe when they have to go home. Angela, you know, we have the mystery guest over here, Clarissa Malinau. And could you talk about her a little bit and tell us all why she is the mystery guest who we have not yet heard from today? Yes, of course. So coming up in October of every year is what we like to call the pro bono celebration, pro bono month. We like to extra celebrate our volunteers. And so volunteer legal services' honoree this year is Clarissa. And the reason why we chose Clarissa is she has donated so much time in volunteering at our office specifically for one of our programs called the Reimplement and Community Service Program. And this program is where we convert old traffic fine tickets to community service by there allowing people to get their driver license and back and they can find a job, many jobs and require them to be able to drive and they they could drive to visit their families, they could drive to visit their child visitation times. And so this program has actually been one of our most popular programs, especially from we work with a lot of the shelters and transitional homes. And so Clarissa has volunteered for so many cases for that program over the last two years. And last year she was actually appointed as per DM judge at the district court. And so she couldn't volunteer for this program anymore. But she still continues to volunteer by recruiting additional volunteers. She and Judge May earlier this year led a training for volunteer attorneys so they can be a volunteer attorney for this program. And while she couldn't volunteer directly for this program, she's actually sat as the judge for this program at district court and she continues to volunteer for our family law clinics every month. And those are the clinics where a client can speak to a volunteer attorney used to be face to face at our office. Now it's over the phone. And they can talk to an attorney for about an hour each. And so Clarissa volunteers every month for our family law clinics. And so we wanted to take this time to recognize her and say thank you so much for all the time that she's invested in voluntarily good services. And on behalf of the board and the people that we help we really want to say thank you Clarissa. How much of what Angela said you agree with 100% Okay Clarissa it's time for rebuttal. I know I may be biased. Yeah tell us about your experience with providing volunteer services. Well you know meeting Angela through volunteer legal services and her staff she had mentioned early is that's what makes it easy you know they're welcoming they're warming and they offer different areas of ability to volunteer meaning as she indicated earlier if you can't take a case fully all the way up to the hearing to the appeal process if needed you definitely doesn't restrict your ability to still provide some form of volunteer service for the person in need whether that's information of how to read a form information of where to go to get more information to address their particular needs whether it's for adoption or for you know filing for divorce. I mean people generally just need to know where to begin they need someone to listen to their needs of what they're feeling in that moment and to be able to commit to that is so rewarding and that's what's really important is I think for some people we get so bogged down and okay what is the solution right now and sometimes what people need is they just need to be heard they just need to be heard that they went through point A through point Z and it's been very frustrating process they just need to be heard about what more can they do they need some compassion they need a lending ear and then at that point when they're ready to take on some solutions we can provide solution oriented advice to them whether it's court appearances possible appeal assessment of a document leading them to other attorneys who have advice in the area. You're a solo lawyer you do that for a living then you're also a volunteer so how would you compare the kinds of cases that you get from the one side or the other side I mean is one category more interesting more challenging you like one more than the other generally what I think it's they're sort of an interplay you know the clients that I represent you know generally in my private practice come from areas where they're being charged with a crime or in both adult or even as minors but what's interesting is that you're talking about people who are human beings that have other facets of their life that also have issues you know whether it's parental termination of parental rights whether it's losing custody of their children because you know now there's domestic violence involved you know in the household and there is not a case where you sit back and go oh it's just single narrow specific area they all overlap somehow and I think that's why I best gravitate towards being able to take particular individual and understand their needs because it's different areas that I have come to understand through my private practice that are all interrelated people have kids people have spousal issues people have financial problems people lose their homes people you know can't afford to pay the rent now they have unemployment due to covid I mean they have scarcity of food to provide a nutrition to their children let alone pay their bills I mean it's just an endless interrelated issue for a lot of people and so it's been rewarding to be able to come to an area such as vlsh to provide that in a wide spectrum so as an honoree I mean you must be very gratified that you've been acknowledged and so my last question to you Clarissa is how do you feel about that how do you feel about being treated as an honoree especially at the celebration of honorees on October 9th it's one that's very rewarding and you know during this time I don't I'm not one to always take credit for myself this really is a community led effort you know we can't do it if non-profit organizations are not there to able to provide that access to justice if places like divac are not there to provide the services that these people in our community need we're all one community so on behalf of all who have contributed and the work that Angela and Nancy do for our community I think we all should be honored actually and and but yet I will say I do appreciate well you know I was about to close up here but I just want to add a thought and that is you know we have the challenge of COVID in addition to our other regular challenges we have the challenge of a non-economy where people are really really worried about how they're going to eat that's another challenge and therefore you guys all of you you you bring something to the what do you want to call it the community table you provide services and support that keep us going I mean it's hard enough to keep a society together but it's harder if you have hunger it's harder if you have COVID it's harder if you you know have all the problems we have and you're you're it's cutting edge I would say