About The Firm

David Howard Hitchcock 1832 - 1899
Founder of the Carlsmith Ball LLP law firm
Photo about 1880. Courtesy of The Hawaiian Mission Children's Society

Carlsmith Ball LLP
Hawaii's Oldest Law Firm

Carlsmith Ball LLP, Hawaii's oldest and one of its largest law firms, was founded in Hilo in 1857. Today, with offices in Honolulu, Los Angeles, Hilo, Kona, Maui, Kapolei, Guam and Saipan, this law firm celebrates the approach of its 150th year.

Carlsmith Ball LLP has many events to be proud of in addition to its length and quality of service to the businesses and individuals in Hawaii, among them the first woman lawyer and first woman partner in Hawaii (1888). It is the only major law firm in Hawaii to have created a solid foundation first on a neighbor island, maintaining an office in Hilo in the same location continuously for 142 years.

Forty years ago, at the beginning of 1959, Hawaii was holding its breath for the expected passage of the long-awaited statehood bill. Voters had accepted its inevitability, not unanimously, and politicians were still making deals in Washington. Everyone knew statehood was coming but no one knew when.

In the small city of Hilo, which shared the anticipation, a very small law firm had made itself a presence. Though not yet well known in Honolulu, it was already 102 years old. The ten lawyers and small staff, too busy with the future to consider the firm's long history, were playing with the big boys, and frequently besting them, at least on their own ground. Most Honolulu lawyers, if they were even aware of Carlsmith & Carlsmith Wichman and Case, dismissed them as country boys, small stuff. There was a modicum of respect for senior partner C. Wendell Carlsmith, known to be a shrewd negotiator, who had a way of popping up in Honolulu and even in Washington, D.C., handling legal affairs for the many Big Island sugar plantations. At home his brother, Merrill L. Carlsmith, was an effective litigator. The rest of the firm, especially new partners James H. Case, and Charles R. Wichman, though island-born and educated at Harvard and Stanford, were younger and less experienced.

The firm, without yet recognizing the opportunity, was poised to take full advantage of the new political and economic changes that would come with statehood status.

In 1857, missionary son David H. Hitchcock had made his way from his Moloka'i birthplace to Hilo to start his career in law. Painfully slow at first, his practice increased in the friendly small town atmosphere. In 1888 he was joined by his remarkable daughter, Almeda Eliza Hitchcock, a graduate of the "Ann Arbor Law School" (University of Michigan), and the first woman lawyer in Hawaii. She also became the first woman partner in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Ten years later, she was dead and he was dying, though their law practice remained strong. Hitchcock searched for a new partner and settled on Carl S. Carlsmith, who had only recently arrived in the Islands.

Carl and his wife Nelle arrived in Hilo simultaneously with another dramatic change in political status, the annexation of Hawaii by the United States. The partnership of Hitchcock and Smith - the name was changed to Carlsmith in 1911 - lasted less than two years. When David Hitchcock died, the practice was Carlsmith's to continue.

Where Hitchcock had been a respected "village" lawyer in the old-fashioned relaxed neighborly sense, Carlsmith was a newcomer both to Hilo and to Hawaii. As a new arrival, from Vermont and San Jose, he had to work to earn his acceptance. Not accepted by the larger businesses, he took on the cause of the underdog, creating the firm's early 20th century philosophy of representing emerging clients, clients who were becoming influential as opposed to those already established and secure in the business community. His successful early cases on behalf of non-establishment clients earned him grudging respect from sugar plantation employers who found themselves on the other side and brought him to the attention of their attorneys in larger Honolulu law firms.

In the late 1920s, in the important case Correa v. Waiakea Mill, Carlsmith represented the mill company, demonstrating that he had by then won the respect of his former "establishment" opponents. For the seven years that the case spent in the courts, son C. Wendell Carlsmith cut his legal teeth on the research. Because of this work, he became expert on sugar matters on the Big Island. His subsequent hire by the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association (HSPA) in 1934 changed the course of the firm's development.

Carl's two sons Wendell and Merrill, born in Hilo and educated at Stanford, joined him as full partners in 1932. Together the three created a solid client base, including much of sugar management that had dismissed the elder Carlsmith. Much of this was due to aggressive pursuit of the sugar industry. New Deal legislation designed to protect independent sugar growers opened the door for Wendell Carlsmith, then a 31-year-old unknown, the only lawyer in Hawaii who knew the sugar system intimately, to participate in writing new laws and regulations. He came to know personally the leaders of Hawaii's economy. The National Labor Relations Act, designed to protect workers from management, opened the door for mainland unions to start organizing sugar, pineapple and waterfront employees. This was Wendell's opportunity to become an "instant expert" on labor law, on more than one island.

Meanwhile, Merrill Carlsmith's bulldog litigation won case after case at home in Hilo. He also gradually took over the land law practice that had been his father's specialty.

As the elder Carlsmith aged and the two sons increased their management, a policy of creative expansion led to the foundation of a new firm structure at the end of World War II. When Carl Carlsmith retired in 1947, the firm was poised for renewed risk taking as the territory was poised for statehood. Territorial-era clients included Inter-Island Resorts, keystone of the firm's early expertise in resort development, Hawaii's largest industry. This was followed by Kapalua Land Company and other resort clients. For contracting and construction company Dillingham Corporation, another early client, Carlsmith lawyers were involved in many projects, notably the construction from scratch of the harbor of what was then the Emirate of Kuwait. For this international project, Wendell Carlsmith traveled to that Arab State, and also worked with the London firm of Freshfield's. Post-statehood the firm was increasingly active in land development, doing the legal work for the first condominium in Hawaii. 

Finally, in March 1959, word came from Washington of the passage of the statehood bill, and bonfires were lit in Hilo, as elsewhere, to mark the celebration. Carl S. Carlsmith, newcomer in 1898 who must have joined the crowds of people then swarming in downtown Hilo to talk of the passage of the Annexation Bill and its implications for the future, died in 1959, the year of statehood for Hawaii.

Through their client base, the firm was ready to participate in the post-statehood development of Hawaii. Even before that landmark political event, Wendell Carlsmith had been spending much of his time in Honolulu. The Carlsmiths had opened a Honolulu office in 1957 with Charlie Wichman as lead attorney, and in 1959 the firm was renamed Carlsmith & Carlsmith Wichman and Case. From then on, growth was explosive. Jim Case, who had trained all young lawyers in the Hilo office in a kind of "apprentice system" moved to Honolulu in 1965 to become managing partner. Full partners were added, associates hired, and the firm outgrew its first two Honolulu office facilities at astonishing speed.

In the late 1970s, a long-range planning committee under the leadership of Tom Van Winkle and Larry Okinaga studied the possibilities for an international firm concentrating especially on opportunities arising from the new economic connections of "Pacific Rim" countries. As a consequence, the firm increased its stake in the larger arena, and has represented many Asian clients doing business in Hawaii.

In 1977 the Kailua-Kona and Guam offices were opened; new offices in Maui (1983), Los Angeles (1985) and Saipan (1986) positioned Carlsmith attorneys to better serve its Pacific clients. The Kapolei office was added in 1993 to respond to the needs of that new community.

The 1983 merger with Ferenz and Williams, a Guam firm operating there since the 1950s, and the addition of the Saipan office were part of the Carlsmith strategy to expand services into the Pacific. The strong Guam and Saipan offices, dominant firms in their geographic areas, are able to use the specialized services of Hawaii, California and D. C. based Carlsmith lawyers to augment their legal services to Micronesian and Pacific island clients.

The 1988 merger with the Los Angeles firm added a vital group of Spanish-speaking lawyers with a solid Latin American practice.

The 1990 merger with the Los Angeles and Long Beach firm of Ball Hunt Hart Brown & Baerwitz added partner Joseph Ball, respected trial lawyer who had been special counsel to the Warren Commission and a former head of both the American College of Trial Lawyers and the California Bar.

Though "third generation lawyers" Case, Wichman, James W. Boyle all practiced law until late 1998, the firm is now in the hands of the "fourth generation," led by Chairman Tom Van Winkle. Now, 142 years after its modest beginnings, Carlsmith Ball, the oldest and one of the largest law firms in the state, enthusiastically continues to serve Hawaii and its far-flung interests.

Copyright 1999 Suzanne Espenett Case
This article originally appeared in the October 1999 issue of Hawaii Bar News