Earlier this month, Hawai‘i Women Lawyers held its annual awards ceremony where women both in and out of the legal profession were recognized for their many contributions to our community. The gala was also an opportunity to look back on the organization’s influence in our state since its founding 50 years ago by Rai Saint Chu.
Chu, who started the organization in 1976 when there were only a handful of female attorneys in all of Hawaiʻi, was honored with HWL’s President’s Award.
“I remember in the early days I’d come back to the office after being in court, and I would scream and shout about ‘judge so and so who complained about the length of my dress,’” said Chu, chuckling that she had a good audience at the public defender’s office.
Today, women make up nearly half of Hawai‘i’s lawyers and occupy leadership roles across the bench, bar and community. HWL played a central part in that transformation, as Chu’s vision was straightforward: improve the lives and careers of women attorneys, shape the future of the profession, elevate the status of women, and open equal opportunity for all. From the beginning, HWL mentored young lawyers, advocated in favor of family-friendly policies, and pushed for systemic change. It did more than host luncheons. It built a network that turned individual ambition into collective power.
Chu herself embodied the success she wanted for other young women. Admitted to the Hawai‘i bar in 1972 after earning her B.A. and J.D. from the University of Maryland, she began as a deputy public defender and Legal Aid attorney before entering private practice. She has tried more than 30 jury trials and hundreds of other proceedings, specializing in serious personal injury and medical malpractice on the side of plaintiffs. Yet her impact extended far beyond the courtroom. In 1978 she served as a delegate to the Hawaiʻi State Constitutional Convention, where she helped create the Judicial Selection Commission, the Intermediate Court of Appeals, and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. In 2009, she was elected president of the Hawaiʻi State Bar Association — the first woman of Asian descent to hold the office. She has chaired boards of the Girl Scout Council of Hawaiʻi, Junior League of Honolulu, and Planned Parenthood of Hawaiʻi, and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for women and children through the Hawaiʻi Women’s Legal Foundation.
On April 16, at HWL’s annual awards banquet in Waikiki, Chu accepted the President’s Award with characteristic grace. “To every young girl in Hawaiʻi with big dreams, stay focused and determined,” she told the audience. “Dream boldly, work steadily, and never doubt that your voice matters.”
Those words, spoken half a century after she founded the group, still resonate. The organization’s current president, Alana Peacott Ricardos, put it best: HWL continues to carry forward the vision Chu set forth five decades ago.
That vision — equity, justice, and compassionate leadership — remains urgently needed. Yet the anniversary also invites celebration. A profession that once counted its women in the dozens now counts them in the thousands, and many of those women trace their inspiration, directly or indirectly, to the trailblazer who refused to wait for doors to open. Rai Saint Chu never asked for special treatment. She simply insisted that women receive the same chances she earned the hard way. Hawaiʻi Women Lawyers turned that insistence into an institution. Fifty years later, the results speak for themselves.
