Patricia Mau-Shimizu

There it is, through the window behind Patricia Mau-Shimizu’s desk: the state Capitol building. The former chief clerk in the state House of Representatives left that post after 30 years. But Mau-Shimizu, now executive director of the Hawaii State Bar Association, worked most of her career as a government attorney and can’t quite get the lawmaking business out of her blood.

Looking at the Capitol as the session started, she imagined the flurry of activity she was missing.

"On opening day, many of the legislators invited me," said Mau-Shimizu, 59, now officially a state retiree. "And I said no … I feel I have to just stay away."

She confessed, though, to sitting nearby on some lunch hours, waving at former colleagues.

The bar association is in the news generally only when there’s a judicial candidate awaiting its recommendation. But Mau-Shimizu realized soon after starting there in October that its duties are not well understood by some of the lawyers themselves, let alone the public.

For one, the association is barred from testifying on most issues, other than judicial nominees (the confirmation of Maui Circuit Court Judge Mimi DesJardins was the first review process finished on her watch).

But as a private citizen, Mau-Shimizu, a kidney transplant recipient now two years post-op, is happy to rally behind legislation supporting the creation of a new transplant center, replacing the one at the now-closed Hawaii Medical Center-East. She remembers the anxiety of those years when she waited on tenterhooks for her operation.

"I didn’t know if I was going to be able to see my daughter graduate from college, or law school," she said. "For the 400 people on the wait list right now in the state of Hawaii, for a kidney, it’s really tragic that there are people donating organs, and it’s going to the mainland."

QUESTION: Wasn’t it stressful clerking for the Legislature during session?

ANSWER: It was very stressful. And a lot of people don’t appreciate the support staff. They put in hours and hours of work. Legislative support staff across the nation are exempt from the fair labor standards laws. We have to abide by minimum wage …

Q: But not OT?

A: Not OT and comp time. … When there’s a midnight deadline, the people may come in maybe an hour or two later but they would stay until 3, 4 o’clock in the morning, because we process the documents. Everybody drops off their documents at midnight, but you gotta put it online — we always want to put it online within an hour to keep people abreast.

And the print shop people … I used to joke with them, because there’s no machine to collate the bills, and they would walk around the table to collate the stacks. … I used to joke, they would walk from here to Waianae, every day.

Q: Got any reflections about the state’s movers and shakers to share?

A: At my retirement party it was my opportunity to tell people about the wonderful people I worked for.

From Herman Lum, I found out about the Democratic Party revolution of ’54 … Patsy Mink was my boss, she was (City Council) chair at the time. Anybody who worked for Patsy knew she didn’t sleep. …

From Speaker (Henry) Peters, he helped me from the transition from the staff to administrator. After that was Richard Kawakami. Brilliant man, a man before his time. … He had it all planned. He said, “The Legislature cannot concentrate on too many big things at one time,” so he had a five-year plan, a vision.

After that was Danny Kihano. From that man: compassion. … I learned that you take the punches, but you protect your family.

And after Kihano comes Joe Souki. People don’t realize, tremendous sense of humor. From him: True Democrat … he walks the walk. He’s willing to raise taxes for social services.

And with this speaker, Calvin Say: We met in high school. … from him, he really hit the numbers. Any number in the budget, he remembers it. … He really trusted me. I would pitch him a proposal. I would wait, and he would look for me and say, “Go for it.”

Q: About your new job: How would you describe the association’s function?

A: We’re a creature of the Hawaii Supreme Court. The Hawaii Supreme Court sets our parameters and created the Hawaii State Bar Association when they unified the bar. All people who want to use the term “attorneys” or “esquire” have to be licensed. …  (Reading from the court rules:) “The purpose of the Hawaii State Bar shall be to aid the courts in regulating, maintaining and improving the legal profession, and the administration of justice and advancements in jurisprudence, and in improving relations between the legal profession, the public and the various branches and instrumentalities of the state.” …

They set the rules for the admission of the bar. With their assistance and with the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, they ask us to ask on the registration form certain items, such as disciplinary actions in other jurisdictions. They ask us to check on the mandatory continuing legal profession, if they’ve met the requirements. And the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, we collect fees through the renewal process to fund their operation. They ask us for things like the residential addresses of attorneys.

So a lot of the information that the HSBA asks, it’s not necessarily for our purposes.

Q: The court wants it?

A: The court wants it, and the Office of Disciplinary Counsel. Having gone through this renewal process, for attorneys we’re just like the IRS. They rant and they scream, and they say, “Why do you need this?” … Attorneys don’t see the distinction, that the Hawaii State Bar Association takes its orders or direction from the Supreme Court. …

A lot of the attorneys, I understand they’re stretched for time; not all attorneys earn over $150,000; I have a lot of solo practitioners I have to consider, government attorneys. I understand their time constraints.

The court, not HSBA, recommends that active attorneys contribute at least 50 hours of pro bono work, not necessarily direct client services. For government attorneys, it may be giving lectures on how a bill becomes law, or maybe talking to nonprofits and explain the legislative process. …

Recently the Hawaii Supreme Court came out with the rule modification that said we still recommend you do 50 hours of pro bono work, but if you cannot, if you can contribute $500 to a nonprofit organization that delivers legal services.

Q: Your high-profile function comes in when it’s time to pick a judge. Can you explain how that process works?

A: After the Judicial Selection Committee sends the list up to the governor or to the chief justice, and they make their selection as to who the nominee will be, the HSBA is notified. Immediately thereafter, we write a letter to the nominee saying we would like to have an interview.

We put on our website, we tell them we’re going to solicit comments from the bar itself, which is kept confidential. Obviously, if it’s a trial judge and you’re a trial attorney, and you had experience with him or her in a lower court, you want everything to be kept confidential. So we do collect that information.

The nominee him or herself also will provide us with the application they submitted to the Judicial Selection Committee. … So after we get all these documents, HSBA appoints a three-person review committee from the board of directors, and every time a nominee comes up, it’s a different set of three people. And they get the emails, they get the comments and they will sanitize it, they will put it down but they will remove the names and any identifying things. They submit a report to the board itself as to what was said, what was in the application, are there any inconsistencies or any red flags.

Then the board will set up an interview with the nominee. And actually, the board interview is like a dry run. It’s a rehearsal, right before they go before the Senate Judiciary Committee. So it’s a dry run because we’ll try to vet the issues.

Q: Do you purposely try to ask questions you think the Senate will ask?

A: It’s not purposely; it’s things that come up in this solicitation. If we’re going to get it on this level, they’re going to get it at the Senate, and much more, because it’s going to be all in the open, it’s going to be posted on the website. So it’s kind of like a dry run for the candidate, so he or she will know where the balls are coming from. We don’t orchestrate between the Senate and HSBA board of directors during the interview process, but it pretty much tracks, having just gone through Mimi’s (DesJardins) process.

The biggie is the retirement of Associate Justice (James) Duffy. We have that age requirement, and, from a personal standpoint, it’s ridiculous. So Justice Duffy will turn 70 this year. That is going to be, No. 1, big shoes to fill and, No. 2, there’s going to be a lot of information, a lot of comments. Pretty much that type of nomination, there’s tons of people that want to submit because they have a track record.

Q: You raise the question of the mandatory retirement of judges, as a personal opinion. Does the HSBA ever do advocacy work or take official positions on these issues?

A: We’re prohibited — it’s called the Keller case — because we’re a nonprofit. It’s very narrow as to what issues the HSBA, as a unified bar, can voice, in public, an opinion on. So a lot of times people want the HSBA to take a position. My predecessor said they were under tremendous pressure to take a position on the civil unions bill. Right now, I have many attorneys in the bar wanting us to take a position on the mortgage foreclosure bills that have been introduced, but we are prohibited from taking a position.

Q: What kind of nonprofit is the HSBA?

A: A 501(c)6. And we are going in for a 501(c)3, so we’re going to create a nonprofit foundation. So whatever money we collect through fundraising can be tax-exempt. … It’s a courtesy to the bar president, he or she is able to name the beneficiaries of the proceeds, 50 percent of the proceeds which we raise at the dinner. Previous recipients have been Legal Aid and other agencies.

Q: The foundation will have its own mission, right?

A: Hopefully all the legal service providers have gotten the message: There is no intent for the HSBA to go in to compete for grant monies with our legal service providers. … But we do believe there may be niche grant monies that we can apply for that the local service providers cannot.

Q: Are there any ideas of what you could do?

A: Actually, that’s what I’m doing research on. When I go to the ABA meeting, I’m going to be talking to my counterparts.