|
have to, but it's sort of saying— encouraging you, saying you should do
<br />that. You want to improve the legal profession, donate 50 hours of your
<br />time a year, 25 hours providing direct legal services to the indigent or
<br />poor, 25 hours doing community based activities like donating your
<br />time to you, you know, helping out the AYSO soccer organization, your
<br />kids' school organization, the YWCA, that kind of thing. There's also a
<br />provision in there that says that you can report these hours and should
<br />report the number of hours —all attorneys should report these hours
<br />every year. The reality is out there. There aren't that many attorneys
<br />who do their —who fulfill these obligations and do their pro Bono work,
<br />all right? People are busy. If you're in private practice, it's much
<br />easier—you've got to feed your family and you know, maybe there's
<br />just maybe a lack of interest out there of people wanting to do things
<br />charitable, you know, or for whatever reason. It's not my position to
<br />judge that, but the reality is, it's not happening. The Chief Justice,
<br />Ronald Moon, is being a big proponent of pro Bono. He came to the
<br />Big Island a few weeks agoI think I cited that in my letter. He's
<br />pushing for pro Bono, he's encouraging the lawyers, come on, get with
<br />the program. He's always said, let's improve the image of the legal
<br />profession. He's sick and tired of the lawyer jokes, yeah. He's sick and
<br />tired of people making fun of lawyers. Mr. Kawahara is laughing, only
<br />because he was my teacher at Hilo High School, and he knows what I'm
<br />talking about. But you know, now there's talk about the Supreme Court
<br />amending the rule, not making pro Bono required now, but at least now
<br />requiring the reporting of hours. So that's the first step, we see that as
<br />the first step. Okay, how does this affect government attorneys? There
<br />are —there is a group of government attorneys out there, not in our
<br />office but on Oahu, who are taking the position that government
<br />attorneys should be exempt from the pro Bono requirements. Their
<br />argument is this: Well, we should be held to a different standard,
<br />because—because we're government attorneys, we shouldn't be
<br />forming these attorney - client relationships with people that may have
<br />issues before the government, the state or the county. Or, we get paid so
<br />little anyway, it's ridiculous to accept that we should do additional
<br />work. I even heard one attorney say, Oh, what we do is pro Bono,
<br />serving as a government attorney. Okay, whateverI'm not
<br />mentioning names, but whatever. We talked about it in our office. You
<br />look at like —Bobby Jean Leithead -Todd is here, okay. You talk
<br />about —you talk about a government, someone who has dedicated their
<br />lives to government service, who's foregone the opportunities of private
<br />practice to make the, quote, big bucks, dedicated to provide serving the
<br />community as a council member, now serving in our office. All right?
<br />That's the type of attorneys we have now, because we talked about it
<br />and we said, we're not going to try and weasel our way out of this.
<br />7
<br />
|