Hey everyone,

How time flies when you are having fun, or so they say. Sorry for the loooong brake, but I have been working on my professional career over the past two years. Since the closing of the courts in Hawaii on March 17, 2020 due to the novel COVID 19 pandemic the courts have been operating on two online platforms. WebX and Zoom as well as in-person hearings under certain circumstances.

As a whole, the option to hold remote hearings was incredible. I observed higher participation from the public than pre-pandemic and from what I hear from many people who appear on either platform say they enjoy not having to travel, it is easier to speak to a judge, and they feel that they are on even playing grounds to the attorneys. Some disadvantages range from the court staff having to learn a new way to hold court proceedings, controlling large hearings, and the basic fact that many people do not have access to a phone or internet. Our Supreme Court has attempted to remedy these issues by allowing people to use public computers at the Supreme Court Law Library ((808)-539-4964) but this too is limited by a persons ability to make a call and travel to downtown Honolulu.

I am proud to admit I appeared on Law Week 2021 on behalf of the Young Lawyers Division Hawaii. Please check out the short video on general court procedures.

https://www.khon2.com/wake-up-2day/law-week-2021-general-court-procedure/

Another quick shout out to myself. I got elected to be Vice President of the Alumni Board to the law school I graduated from this month. Cheers!

Hope you all enjoyed this small post. More to come!

Hawaiian word of the day: kuleana: right, privilege, concern, responsibility, title, business, property, estate, portion, jurisdiction, authority, liability, interest, claim, ownership, tenure, affair, province; reason, cause, function, justification.

We have many kuleana. To ourselves, to our friends and family, and to our community. Please take care of one another and do the right thing.

Mahalo and A Hui Hou,

The Aloha Attorney

Aloha readers,

It has been almost two years since my last entry. I have been completely overwhelmed with balancing my academic journey getting my Masters in Public Health (MPH) and Juris Doctorate at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and developing my professional identity in the legal community in Hawaii.

I wrapped up taking the February 2019 Bar Examination in Hawaii and am a few weeks out before we find out our results.

Let me update you all on the successes of ChadBot (my rightfully named Chatbot). To refresh your memory:

“My second project includes a chatbot that responds to people who access the main legal aid website. The purpose of the chatbot is to communicate with end users who may not know how to navigate the website and find the legal solutions they are seeking. Here at Legal Aid, there are so many people who need help but are unable to get it due to ineligibility, they do not have time to come in, or other factors that prevent them from seeking help. The current site that end users would normally go to is (http://www.lawhelp.org/hi). The intent of this chatbot (or should I say Chad-bot) is to create a streamline process to give end users the resources they need at the starting page.

To create the dialogue and sample chatbot, I used Chatfuel. This program is very easy to use and very user friendly. More news on this chatbot latter.”

Since Chadbot’s inception in July 2017, Chadbot has evolved to being based on Dialogflow and has helped over 1000 users access legal information with brief quires. Chadbot can be found on the at Legal Aid Society of Hawaii website near the bottom of the page.

https://youtu.be/yT58gTXdQb8

Diagramflow is powered by Google’s machine learning expertise AI and allows users to interact by building engaging voice and text-based interfaces.

I am looking forward to updating Chadbot this coming year as I have more time to create more “intents” and dialogue. To my readers who made it this far, id love to hear your successes with AI and Chatbots and if you have any suggestions to improve Chadbot.

Before I leave you for the day, here is the Hawaiian word for the day: kaulike.

Kaulike means “justice” as in Chief justice, luna kānāwai kiʻekiʻe ā kaulike; and pono kaulike, the quality of being impartial or fair. Additionally, kaulike means “balance” especially in regards to science, like a balanced chemical equation.  The word to me signifies how science and technology are inherently intertwined with the law and the pursuit equal access to justice.

Until next time!

Mahalo nui loa,

Chad Au

Aloha and welcome back to my blog,

This blog entry will be talking less about my projects here at Legal Aid Society of Hawaii and more on a greater problem the legal profession is experiencing. Legal disparities that are based on race and ethnicity. Out of that disparity was born “Race-Based Advocacy”, an activity that actively challenges both current and historical barriers that impede equal access to opportunity and advancement by minorities.

Camille Holmes and her team at the Center for Law and Social Policy identified two strategies which race-based advocacy encompasses. The first is antidiscrimination statutes that prohibit discrimination in substantive areas of law like housing, lending, contracts, property, employment, and federally funded programs. The second is advocacy that identifies and prioritizes the concerns of minority groups and develops strategies which address discriminatory practices.

The full article can be found at http://www.povertylaw.org/files/docs/article/chr_2002_may_june_holmes.pdf

Here in Hawaii, we have been seen as the melting pot of the Pacific. LIFE Magazine declared in 1945 that “there are so many races, pure and mixed, that prejudice for or against any one of them is simply impractical.” However, we at LASH are seeing that one group of citizens come face to face with more prejudice and more barriers to legal help than the rest.

The Micronesian population, which includes a wide range of populations and hundreds of more dialects that have emigrated from Micronesia exceed 20,000 and more than 8,000 have come to Hawaii. With limited access to health care, housing, government assistance, and legal services, obtaining basic necessities can be a mountainous challenge.

Map of the Federated States of Micronesia

In observance of such disparities, Legal Aid Society of Hawaii has taken major steps to guarantee justice for all and has come out with self-help brochures, online videos in two of the major Micronesian languages (Chuukes and Marshallese). On top of that, the organization has developed an outreach unit that visits communities that have high populations of Micronesians to help with government benefits, secure housing and more.

As I have touched upon in earlier weeks, we have been utilizing design thinking to help solve problems and bridge the gaps in the justice system.

Design thinking utilizes seven basic principles: 1) visualize ideas; 2) rapidly prototype possible solutions; 3) figure out the needs, action themes, and values; 4) observe users; 5) be open to change; 6) don’t seek perfection, seek “enough”; and 7) work in interdisciplinary teams.

How would I approach a task to shrink the gaps of legal aid for Micronesian communities? How would you approach this problem? The easy outcome would, of course, be equal access to all with the goal being able to help everyone that walks through our doors. The journey from step A to step Z, however, remains uneasy to articulate beyond having more native speakers join the LASH team.

The low-hanging fruit would be to remove barriers like language and cultural differences and to increases usage and efficiency. But maybe I am just at a mental block right now.

Any food for thought? Perhaps one of you can find the solution.

Mahalo for reading and see you next week where I will update you on my progress with my projects here at Legal Aid Society of Hawaii.

This video may be a hint as to what it might be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u28hmckFx8

Until then,

Surfs up!

Chad Au

Aloha kakou,

There is a ‘ōlelo no‘eau (Hawaiian proverb) that reads “‘Ike aku, ‘ike mai. Kōkua aku, kōkua mai. Pēlā ka nohona ‘ohana.” This translates into “Watch, observe. Help others and accept help. That is the family way.” In a way the ancient Hawaiians had implemented a very modern project management system commonly known as “agile” into their everyday lives.

(In these stressful times, feel free to play the relaxing sounds of waves while you read today’s entry.)

Agile embraces change, even when it comes later in the development stage. There is a strong belief that improvement at any stage leads to a better product. Agile also encourages cooperation between interdisciplinary fields, observing the successes of certain projects and learning from the downfalls from others. The process produces efficiency and quality product. The core principles from the Agile Manifesto can be found at https://www.agilealliance.org/agile101/12-principles-behind-the-agile-manifesto/.

The scope of my project includes three main goals. First, to create a portal that will encourage pro bono activity at Legal Aid Society of Hawaii (LASH). Second, to create a program that can help navigate users on the website get to their resources without leaving the homepage. Third, to help the in-take workers increase efficiency by digitizing all of their resources into one easily accessibly location.

Each of these goals cannot be met without meeting with the key players that they will effect. This means working with the staff and volunteers at LASH on a daily basis. I also meet with my amazing supervisor Sergio once a week to update him on my process and to bounce ideas back on how to improve my results.

These weekly meetings are called SCRUM, another popular framework of Agile in which fixed-length iterations called sprints are used to monitor progress. During SCRUM we evaluate what works, what does not, and how to improve from there. This step is crucial to producing a quality product.

I am sure you are asking yourself, “How does Chad do it all? There is so much going on.” Good question. I would be lost had it not been for “Kanban.” Kanban is a Japanese manufacturing system in which the supply of components is regulated through the use of an instruction card sent along the production line. An example of what Kanban might look like will be posted bellow. Of course this is not going to be my actual Kanban board as that would contain tons of confidential information that will remain as such.

I have been using Kanban, sometimes referred to as a task board, to organize my thoughts by reducing complex projects into a simple set of discrete steps. This allows me to track my progress and increases my moral by displaying incremental milestones. If you wanted to check out how you could use Kanban in your own daily life you can check out https://trello.com/ for some inspiration.

The one coconut hanging over my head at this point is the calendar. There is so much to do with so little time.

Now that you have reached the end of my entry, take a minute to close your eyes and continue listening to the sounds of the ocean wash over problems and take them out to sea.

Until next time!

Mahalo nui loa,

Chad Au

Aloha,

Happy Kamehameha Day weekend! For those of you thinking, “what is that?” Kamehameha Day honors Kamehameha the Great, who unified the Hawaiian islands.

Welcome back to my blog on my journey at Legal Aid Society of Hawaii (http://www.legalaidhawaii.org/). As the A2J Tech Fellow, many people have come up to me with their comments on how technology could drastically improve their efficiency. I agree.

FP_HI_LASHlogo2011-2

Legal Aid Society of Hawaii has already committed countless hours to use technology to share legal information in a variety of media. Their YouTube channel can be found at (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCidcoPSY4bRTzf22e2UjxIA/featured) and provides information to viewers in many areas of law.

Please watch their main video that plays on their website below.

One of my projects here at my home base is to develop a portal for pro bono attorneys to use so they can get cases easier and faster. This project is intended to help pro bono attorneys pick up cases that they normally would not have by having all the resources they need at their fingertips, thereby serving more people who normally would not have been helped. The current site that many Hawaii pro bono attorneys use can be found at (https://hawaii.freelegalanswers.org/) and is powered by the American Bar Association.

My second project includes a chatbot that responds to people who access the main legal aid website. The purpose of the chatbot is to communicate with end users who may not know how to navigate the website and find the legal solutions they are seeking. Here at Legal Aid, there are so many people who need help but are unable to get it due to ineligibility, they do not have time to come in, or other factors that prevent them from seeking help. The current site that end users would normally go to is (http://www.lawhelp.org/hi). The intent of this chatbot (or should I say Chad-bot) is to create a streamline process to give end users the resources they need at the starting page.

To create the dialogue and sample chatbot, I used Chatfuel (https://chatfuel.com/). This program is very easy to use and very user friendly. More news on this chatbot latter.

Writing the code for these two projects has quite some challenges. But as one of my favorite musical composers, Stephen Schwartz, once said “every project has challenges, and every project has its rewards.” I definitely see the reward of these two projects and will be working hard to get things done right.

Until next time!

Mahalo nui loa,

Chad Au

 

Aloha Kakahiaka and Good Morning,

Here at Legal Aid Society (http://www.legalaidhawaii.org/), our mission is “to address critical legal needs through high quality legal advocacy, outreach, and education in the pursuit of justice and fairness.“

We help our clients in areas of law that include public assistance, wage theft, consumer protections & foreclosures, fair housing, family law, immigration, landlord/tenant rental housing and much more. We spent the last week taking a crash course on each of these areas to educate ourselves on what are the best strategies in helping our clients. For me it was an opportunity to see where my skills would be best utilized.

Today marks the first day that I get assigned my goals for the summer. Wish me luck!

Mahalo nui loa,

Chad Au

The Aloha Attorney

Aloha awakea,

That means “good afternoon.”

With my last final behind me, I am looking forward to enjoying my summer fellowship with Access To Justice at my home base at Legal Aid Society of Hawaii.

Surfer in the morning, attorney in the evening, and student at night.

On top of being a student, I am a graduate teaching assistant at the school I attend (William S. Richardson School of Law) and just wrapped up a clerkship at the First Circuit- Hawaii State Judiciary.

Feel free to drop by and comment on any of my blogs and I promise I will get back to you within the day.

Mahalo nui loa (thank you very much),

Chad Au

P.S. If you follow my blog long enough, you will pick-up the Hawaiian words/phrases/terminology very quickly.