The Law & The Land

Attorney Lea Hong leaves a longtime career in law for more gratifying work in land conservation

photo: Jimmy Forrest

When Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing partner Lea Hong left the firm in August to become head honcho at the nonprofit land conservation organization The Trust for Public Land (TPL), she got one heck of a parting gift. The presiding judge in what was the most complicated, lengthiest pro bono case of Hong’s career issued a ruling in her favor.

It was a ruling that Hong says was gratifying, to say the least: “I worked for over two years—more than 500 hours—on that case (in which she represented a trio of Big Island community groups suing the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy), so that judgment was really rewarding.”

And timely, too. The ruling, issued just days before Hong’s big move, was a fitting end to a storied career in environmental law and litigation. In her new capacity as Hawaiian Islands program director for TPL, Hong will be pastures away from the frenzied world of courtrooms and legal briefs (not to mention the financial perks that accompany it), but it’s a change that she’s more than ready for. “I’ve been here less than a month and I love it already! Yesterday I spent my entire morning visiting a site in Moanalua Valley,” says Hong. Now that sure beats a day in litigation.

HB: Can you give a little background on TPL?
LEA: The Trust for Public Land is a national nonprofit. It has special expertise in working with different community partners—federal, state, county governments, community groups—in facilitating and acquiring land from willing sellers for public use. So our mission’s a lot broader than the Nature Conservancy. We don’t only concentrate on habitat. We concentrate on anything from a community garden or a little park in an urban area, to vast watershed or forest lands. In Hawaii we’ve preserved over 30,000 acres of land since 1979. The largest project we completed in Hawaii was Wao Kele o Puna, which was close to 26,000 acres.

HB: So the trust is an actual landowner?
LEA: Sometimes we hold land for a long period of time because the seller needs to sell right away. For example, with the land surrounding Pu’uhonua o Honaunau (also known as the City of Refuge) on the Big Island, we held onto that land for five years. We purchased it in 2001, when there was a threat of development, and we just recently transferred that land to the National Park Service, once they got their funding appropriated for the acquisition. And in some cases it’s just an immediate transfer, where we’ll do a back-to-back closing. The purchase and sale agreement is with us, but we’ll transfer it immediately to the management entity, which would be either a government agency or a community that has agreed to manage the property.

HB: Fresh on the job, what do you see to be your biggest challenges?
LEA: I think the biggest challenge is to figure out when to say no, because there’s so many projects that come our way. I’ve only been here for three weeks, but I’ve already had a number of people approach me on different projects. Like one or two projects a day. So I’m just evaluating them and figuring out what our priorities are and what we can invest our limited resources. Where can we get support from all the different agencies and funding sources to preserve the land? How do you decide what project you need to make that investment in? I think that’s the hardest part—learning when to say no.

HB: You left a partnership at a prestigious law firm for a nonprofit organization. Clearly, the work here means something to you.
LEA: I’m from Wahiawa, which is pretty rural. I grew up in a time when you walked down to the stream and you swam in the stream. You hiked down to the reserve area and hiked around. So I really do have a strong belief that the land and culture and people are all related. And if you don’t preserve really important parts of our land, part of our culture, our heritage, part of who we are is also gone.

I worked at Earth Justice as an associate attorney between 1993 and 1995, and through that work, and also during my time at Alston Hunt, I really felt the most personal satisfaction out of cases involving communities or people who were very close to land that they were trying to protect or manage in a more appropriate way or a better way. When I felt like I was contributing to that, I just thought, “Wow! That was the greatest feeling. To have people come up and really thank you for helping them preserve an area that maybe their family used for years and years.” So when I was approached about this job, I was like, “Oh my god, yes!”

HB: Was the decision really that simple?
LEA: (Laughing) It was a difficult decision. I think some people thought it was really strange. Outsiders, I think. People who know me really well within the firm were sad, but supportive. I definitely hesitated a lot because it’s a substantial difference in pay. I’ve been at Alston Hunt for over 10 years. I was a partner. I had built up a bit of an environmental and cultural resource practice area and I had a group. But the more that I thought about it … I began thinking, ‘I have 25 more years of a career left. In the next 25 years, what do I want to do? Do I want to keep doing litigation?’ Because it’s a lot of fighting, fighting, fighting. It can be very acrimonious. Very long term. Very expensive. And at the end of the day, it’s sort of the last man standing in terms of how expensive and time-consuming it can be.

I really thought, ‘I’m not sure I want to do that for the next 25 years of my career.’ I want to be able to look back at the end of 25 years and be able to say, these are things that I’ve done and these are the places or communities that have been preserved. And have I made a positive difference, as opposed to, just made a lot of money.

I think maybe that just goes back to, just growing up in Hawaii and who my parents were. My mom’s a teacher, my dad was also in public service in the government—a judge. And he worked for the Ariyoshi administration as an attorney general. So I think that with that sort of history, you want to give back to your community. You don’t want to just take the money and run, so to speak.

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