 Aloha. Today is Life in the Law and my guests are, and this is Carol Monly, and I have two wonderful guests. Sida Yabi, who is a former president of the Hawaii State Bar Association and an attorney in private practice, and also co-chair of this year's annual Bar Association dinner. And Jody Lee. Jody is the current president of the Hawaii State Bar Association and is also a deputy attorney general in the State Department of Taxation. So welcome both. Thank you. Carol. This program is called Inside the Bar 2016, and you both have had many years of experience in our Hawaii State Bar Association. I know Jody, you've been also the president of the Young Lords Division, is that correct? Yes. Okay, so tell us a little bit about the Bar Association. How big is it? How long has it been established? So the Bar Association has about 8,000 attorneys total right now. It was established in 1899, so it's about 117 years old, incorporated in 1985, but unified in 1989. What does that mean, unified? Unified means that if you pass the Hawaii Bar Exam and you become licensed in the state, you are automatically a member of the bar, you pay dues to the Bar Association, you also pay dues to the Office of the Spinnery Council and a couple of other organizations. It's all unified. There are other voluntary bars, which would be like our county bars, Maui County Bar, Big Island has two bars, West and East, Hawaii Island, the Kauai Island also has their own bar, but those are voluntary and the HSPA is a mandatory bar. So the lawyers on those islands are automatically a part of the Hawaii State Bar Association, but then can voluntarily join their own Island Bar Association? Yes. I see. There's also, I should say, the Federal Bar Association, Korean Bar. There's other smaller voluntary bars, but the HSPA is a unified mandatory bar of the lawyers in Hawaii. Okay. I know there are two sections, one is the young lawyers and one is the, what do you call the other section? The division. There's a young lawyers division and then there's the senior council division. I see. And how many are in the young lawyers division? You know, I was trying to find that out, but I wasn't able to get that info. If you're an attorney below the age of 36 years old or within the first five years of passing your first bar, you're automatically a member of the young lawyers division. And then the senior council division is, and I forget, is it 50? 50 and above? Okay. I'm not sure. It seems very young. It's on our website and I know I'm getting close to it. 55 and above. Okay. All right. So we've had about 8,000 lawyers now in the bar here at 2016 and Sid, when were you president of the bar? I believe I was president in 1994 and some years ago. Okay. Right? So 20 plus years ago? Yes. And do you recall at that time how big the bar association was? Probably at that time it was about 5,000. Okay. So we've increased by about 3,000. Yeah, 3,000, yes. So over the years, Jody have you and Sid seen a change in a focus, in the focus of the bar association in terms of how it serves our legal community? Well, let me start off first. I think when I became bar president, one of the items that was occurring to attorneys in general, not only locally but nationwide was what one would define as lawyer bashing and there were so many jokes about lawyers and I think one of the reasons why is the legal community was not reaching out as much as it should do to provide legal services to those who were unable to afford legal services and I think the one item that I had advocated is we started thinking of doing more pro bono type work and I know it's... Do you need to find pro bono? Pro bono is basically providing legal services to those who do not have the financial power without to afford them and I think that's one of the items that I try to promote and I think in subsequent years the judiciary has really promoted that. I think it was under Chief Justice Moon who had made it not mandatory but strongly recommended that we do at least 50, minimum of 50 hours of pro bono services a year and even with retired justice Simeon Acoba he advocated the access to justice and that has provided access to those who, primarily who go to court who are not certain of how to handle themselves and primarily in district court that there is a room that is available for them to seek the services of an attorney who is available to provide them with legal counsel. In fact when he first started that was a few years ago and the firm I was formerly associated with called at that time Ayave Chung, Nishimoto, Sia and Nakamura. We were the first firm to sign up in January of 2014 I think, it was 2014 and I attended several times out there and I found it very rewarding for myself to be able to help people. I think from the time I served as president of the Hawaii State Bar Association we've come a long way in providing pro bono services to the public. Can we do more? Yes, but I think we've gone a long way. And Jody I know that we provide these pro bono services through many avenues right, one is through private firms right like Sid just mentioned but what are some of the other services and programs that the Bar Association supports or uses to provide services? The Bar Association actually has several programs where we go out into the community and do either education for students or as Sid was mentioning help other adults. I think probably the biggest one is during May there's Law Week, it's, I think it's actually. Well May one is Law Day right? Right. Around the world. Law Day. So in Hawaii we kind of stretched it out into a whole week and I was a part of this this last Saturday lawyers will go out into different particular usually like a shopping center and set up a table and anybody can walk up and ask general questions about law. We aren't creating an attorney-client relationship but it's legal information and a lot of times that's all the person kind of needs because they're not sure if it's really a legal problem that they have or their friend has but they they're not sure what to do so a lot of it is just listening, issue spotting, kind of helping to guide them in what way they need to go and then if you do need to hire an attorney the Bar Association does have a lawyer referral program too. So we can also help people to get in touch with an attorney in that particular practice area. So they can call into the Bar Association and say I have a particular problem and ask for a referral. Yes. What are some of the other programs that the Bar Association is? And part of what the volunteer legal services of Hawaii does and I'm on that board and some of our funding is obtained through the Bar Association through its Hawaii State Bar Foundation and we have what we describe as these pop-up clinics and different areas like they have in Waipao, I think I believe that I went to the Waipao one, Kalihi one I went to and then in Waipao they had it at one of the facilities there and they have a number of attorneys who would show up primarily on Saturday it goes from nine to twelve and their flyer sent out through the community to let them know that there will be attorneys providing legal services without any charges and that has been an excellent excellent way I've done a several of those and you would be surprised a number of people who appear to seek help and I think for most of them I don't think we can help all of them but for most I think we do a terrific service in providing them with legal counsel which they otherwise could not afford so that's one of the services that the volunteer legal services of Hawaii does and receive some funding through the Hawaii State Bar Foundation. Good. Did you know that the VLSH was actually came from the Bar Association? Were you right? Yeah. That's right I should have mentioned that. That's a good point because so you have the Bar Association which is a professional group of lawyers, non-profit, but separately then you have these community organizations like Volunteer Legal Services, Domestic Violence Legal Clarence House, Legal Aid Society. So they are all individual non-profits is that correct? Yeah correct. And then they all look for funding in different ways but include the services of lawyers either in-house or perhaps through volunteers like you who help their clients or their interest base to go out and community and serve. Is that right? Yes. I see. So it's not a formal relationship it's more they stand alone by themselves but use the lawyers in our community to help. There's kind of a boat I guess I see like Legal Aid and VLSH will have their own lawyers and their own programs and stuff but they also do help like they mentioned the access to justice rooms the staffing is done by Legal Aid or coordinated I should say by Legal Aid they will use volunteer attorneys but if they can't get anybody they will send their own attorney or sometimes the executive director of Bar Association will go down and cover. So it was kind of a coordinated effort between the judiciary, the legal service providers, the Bar Association just to get attorneys in to staff the rooms and make sure that there's enough coverage. I want to say that VLSH or Legal Aid does the training I think of the attorneys who are going to be in the rooms and I think they put together the materials. Yes we did get some training from Legal Aid in fact before our firm appeared to provide services to the access for justice room. Someone from Legal Aid did come to our office and on a Saturday presented the instructions because most of us for the art firm, my former firm we did not do much of the so-called district type court work and so they came and instructed us on several areas where it's typically the common complaints that they're faced with for closure, summary possession, you know matters of that nature, collection matters and so they gave us an excellent instruction and how to handle these matters and so I thought that helped me because I don't do collection or summary possession but at the end of the three-hour session with the instructions received I knew enough to provide I thought reasonably good counsel. And we also do this on the neighbor islands for different yes yes the neighbor islands are called the self-help centers and there's one in each of the main courthouses. Yeah well this brings up a perfect segue into the one of the activities of the bar association which is the upcoming annual dinner right so tell us a little bit about that and I know Sid is co-chair and of course your president so tell us when is the next when when is this annual bar dinner so August 20th mark that on your calendars please yes and the name of the dinner is motions mirth and madness and what is the theme of the dinner this year Sid? It roasts to honor CJ Ron Moon in fact Ron Moon was a former part of mine many many years ago right and Ron Moon is now a retired Chief Justice yes yes and so this roast tell us a little bit about the roast well it sometimes you want to say it's a roast or perhaps a toast depends on how these speakers who are coming will say so to me come in to the dinner and you will see whether it's going to be a roast or toast but it's basically to give tribute to CJ Moon who served on the Supreme Court for about 17 years prior to that time he served for about six I think six years at the circuit court level and has accomplished much and I think one of the tributes to him was the naming of the Kapolei Judiciary Complex as the Ronald T. Y. Moon Kapolei complex and and the reason I think senator at that time former state senator Colleen Hanabusa recommended that the name of the Judiciary Complex during Kapolei be changed because of his dogged effort to get funding for the construction of the facility out in the Kapolei area yes that's great well we're going to take a short break right now and come back and talk a little bit more about the annual Hawaii State Bar Association dinner and its beneficiaries how it's going to help the community and also more about inside the bar we'll be right back hi my name is Aaron will as you are watching think tech Hawaii calm I am the host of the show rehabilitation and coming soon you can watch us live at think tech Hawaii calm at 11 a.m. on Tuesdays I will see you there Aloha I'm Kaui Lucas host of Hawaii is my mainland here on think tech Hawaii every Friday afternoon at 3 p.m. start your powhuna weekend off with the show where I talk to people about issues pertinent to Hawaii you can see my previous shows at my blog kauilukas.com and also on think techs Aloha everybody my name is Mark Shklav I'd like you to join me for my program law across the sea on think tech Hawaii calm Aloha welcome back this is Carol Monly for today's edition of life in the law inside the bar 2016 and I'm here with my guest Jody Yi who is the current president of the Hawaii State Bar Association and said a Yabi who was a president in the 1990s and is currently the co-chair of the Bar Association's annual dinner so before we went to break we talked about the annual bar dinner and it is honoring the sheer CJ Ronald Moon who did a lot for our community in terms of as you said opening up the Kapolei area and was there any other particular theme or or important goal that his particular court or time well there's a number of cases that he's famous for but I don't think I want to go through so many of them but there are a number of cases that people have talked about Supreme Court cases but I think one thing that he did do he expanded the judiciary and what was in dire need was better facilities and during his administration you had a new judiciary complex on Kauai and I think on Maui was it no not on the big island yet new judiciary so he really pushed hard to get funding for the judiciary to have better facilities to properly serve the community so I think that's one area that he really strongly pushed to get better facility for the judiciary as well as expanded the number of judges that you know we needed because you started to have special drug court so that was a big thing for him to drug court where you had certain positions open to have that particular judge handle drug court matters because you know other states we have the drug problems and you needed to address them so his push was to have a judge that would handle not exclusively primarily a drug court and I know a lot of the family court programs have been developed under him yes they have and we talked about earlier how bar associations one of its primary focuses is to help the community and we talked about different organizations and so I understand the bar association has some beneficiaries of this particular dinner right we're all gonna have fun but the purpose is to actually raise money and what where does the money go Jody so the beneficiaries for this this year's dinner as we mentioned the access to justice rooms on Oahu there's also those health centers on the neighbor islands the girls court is another big beneficiary and the primary beneficiary is the Hawaii state trial judges association to educate and help our judges to I guess self educate as well as teach each other I see so I think that's it tell us a little about the girls court I've never heard of that well girls court is one of the specialty courts like Sid mentioned and it's focused or I guess the attention is to girls and to help them to bond and to develop in ways that are not necessarily able to be addressed just by one court hearing so these are girls who come in through the system because of some infraction or something and then as opposed to being mainstream through the main court system they are segregated into a girls court and get more support the juveniles I'm not sure if it's a age but group or how they're selected but they take them to do events together and kind of outside and to give them more support as opposed to I guess just being alone in a court proceeding I see sounds good and is it only on this island or is it on I know there's one on Kauai too I'm not sure about the other neighbor I see how how are the ticket sales going well the ticket sale is going very well and where is it going to be where's the dinner going to be at the White State Convention Center on August 20 starts at 5 30 so it should be a great event for great beneficiaries and that's the importance of that dinner the dinner primarily is to raise funds so that we can fund various organizations who can serve the community in providing legal services so I think the purpose of it is great I understand that the there's a Hawaii State Bar Foundation also that helps administer the funds is that the nonprofit right the bar association itself is actually 51c3 by the end of the IRS code but there another related organization is the bar foundation which is the 51c3 so it's designated a charity by the IRS any donations would be tax deductible it has a different board a different mandate and so they work together to put on events but they are separate entities it's kind of a tax thing but on the plus side of it it means there's so much more attorneys involved to help out to figure out who's gonna get grants and who's good to be the beneficiaries and etc great so I tell us in general the recent of course news about lawyers and the fact that lawyers are having there are many lawyers right now and law schools are typically in the news are some are shutting down or reducing the size of their classes bar passage rates are lower the cost of legal education is higher have you seen how that's impacted our Hawaii State Bar Association actually it hasn't really impacted us in Hawaii too much we were concerned when we heard about the law school numbers going down but it seems like our law school has been doing pretty well they also since are you a graduate of our law school I am I'm a proud graduate of the Richard William administration school of law sorry it's been a while but since that time they've actually added on a summer program they've actually ended on the part-time evening program so they do have a lot and even the class sizes are much bigger than when I was there and it wasn't as long ago as some of my colleagues well I know you have two dollars you graduated from the law school right yeah my number one and two both graduate from the William S. Richardson school of law and I have spoken to the Dean of Soifer and I believe this is one of the few law schools in the nation that has not been have seen the significant decline in application so the applications is still high and as far as I'm concerned my two daughters received an excellent education from the William S. Richardson school of law and in general how is Hawaii as a little community keeping up with the changes in technology in the law in terms of rapid use of whether it's social media or research things like that it seems I mean this is not scientific but anecdotally it seems a lot more lawyers are telecommuting or working out of their houses especially from what we understand the neighbor islands lawyers who are taking the professionalism course have commented that they're moving here from other states working on Maui for example telecommuting law is a profession that we can do sort of quite a bit of it actually I guess remotely and they like our lifestyle and they want a better quality of life for their family so again it's anecdotal it's not scientific but it sounds like that's also brought in a handful at least each professionalism course so that we kind of like keep our barred membership up I know you're you said you work for the state your attorney general is that also true in the state attorney general's office that you're able to work remotely not right now my understanding is it was discussed but they haven't gone that way yet I mean there is a whole lot of email in that sense we can check our emails remotely most of us do especially during leg season we have to check our bills but technically right now we're not supposed to be doing all of our work from home for example but I should say too I do have I do know of at least one person in my department who has had health issues and does a lot of work you know from home with her secretary in the office and emailing things back and forth and and I mean it's not all of us sit in one firm or one floor like back in the day now it's but how about a mediation and sit because I know you do a lot of mediation now have his technology changed the way you conduct I think the mediation is basically remain the same you you know meet get together so you do have people present at a conference where you meet although I did do a mediation with a federal mediator on a employment issue a number of years ago where we went to a federal court and we're looking at that fellow on on a TV on a screen and he was able to settle the case after six hours so that worked and I thought wow that was interesting not to have the person physically present but I don't see that happening often that was a rare occasion basically technology you get your briefs through the email which typically you don't need hard copies anymore but I think to have the mediation be successful you really need the physical presence of the parties so that you can actually have their communications with them I think that that's a preferred way of doing it does the bar have a section or a committee on focusing on technology we do have a technology section committee yeah and what what some of the things do you know what some of that what they're working on some of the interesting things that we can look forward to is members of the bar I hate to admit it but I just found out that we apparently have some kind of Twitter feed that I have not been participating in because I don't really know what that is yet and I'm just moving forward that's a good I found this yes just so I could text I'm up to texting tweeting is yes I've heard it's not twittering it's tweeting yes but right verb okay so this bar does have a Twitter feed if you're interested please contact them and ask them about it because I'm I I still have to figure it out myself right so what's the bar association's website so for people to HSBA.org HSBA.org there's a lot of information on there about open judicial positions and application deadlines the upcoming events upcoming CLE that the bars putting on CLE continuing legal education right bar dinner how to buy tickets to the bar dinner right or make a donation make a donation absolutely so another association and of course our state were so uniquely situated here in the Middle Pacific how has that impacted with the globalization of the you know world economy have you seen an influx of more opportunities for our lawyers to do international work or vice versa international other lawyers coming here to seek our lawyers to help them well a bar does have sister relationships with bars in Tokyo the Daiichi Tokyo bar is one of our sister relationships there's another relationship with some I think few cities in China and around the Pacific so our attorneys and you know the foreign attorneys have been reaching out and making connections part of it translates into trips back and forth to meet each other when they come here we host them and then when our delegation goes over there we get hosted and it helps because then they know who practices in this area they can make a contact pick up a phone and call different people okay we have a few you know we have a few firms that from the mainland that have branch offices here so but I have not seen a significant change and on an international level you have more in the really state area where attorneys here are doing some international really state law working with other countries like Japan the Asian countries okay we just have a few more seconds and I just want to put up a picture of Dan case who recently passed away one of our senior members of the bar and who was one of our living legend lawyers whom we highlighted last year and I wanted to say just to say a few words as we close about well we lost a good family man a civic leader and a very accomplished attorney I had a good fortune of knowing Dan and had a few matters which I dealt with him and from my personal experience and comments I've heard from others he is very prof he was a very professional person civility to the nth degree and it was just a class classy person and he certainly was involved in a lot of civic organizations and devoted family member he is a wife Carol they were married for 61 years yeah well he was a role model to all of us to many of us and we will miss him on behalf of life in the law and think tech kawaii want to thank said said a yabi and jody e wishing you the best of the bar association dinner and this year at the bar association thank you Carol thank you