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Carlsmith Ball LLP, Hawaii's oldest
and largest law firm, was founded in Hilo in 1857. Today,
with offices in Honolulu and nine other locations in
Hilo, Kona, Maui, Kapolei, Guam, Saipan, Los Angeles,
Washington, D.C. and Mexico City, this international
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, Charles
R. Wichman, and Donn W. Carlsmith, though island-born
and educated at Harvard and Stanford, were younger and
less experienced.
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