Carlsmith Ball Hires Michelle Kim Stone In Honolulu Office

Carlsmith Ball LLP is pleased to announce that Michelle Kim Stone is now Of Counsel in the firm’s Honolulu office. Stone brings two decades of senior leadership experience, providing some of Hawaii’s largest companies with legal guidance in the areas of banking, corporate, employment, construction and real estate law. 

During her most recent role as corporate counsel and director of legal operations at ProService Hawaii, Stone built a consultative service program which resulted in clients qualifying for over $40MM in Employee Retention Tax Credits. She also played a key role in developing several services and education tools to advise clients on COVID-19 and vaccination policies, FFCRA leave, federal and state UI benefits, PPP applications, reopening business strategies, and PPP loan forgiveness applications.

She previously served multiple roles while at American Savings Bank, including as its General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, and was instrumental in the bank’s growth and success. She’s overhauled and refined the bank’s online policies and procedures, customer communications process, vendor management program, records management program, levies and liens processes, and much more. As the senior vice president, director of alternate channels strategy, Stone spearheaded the bank’s consumer channels strategy where she boosted call center performance and initially led a team that was responsible for the replacement and integration of the bank’s new ATM fleet.

Prior to her time at the bank, she served as a litigation associate at Starn O’Toole Marcus & Fisher and Bays Deaver Lung Rose & Baba. At the firms, her areas of practice included commercial real estate litigation, residential real estate, construction litigation, trust and estate litigation, and real estate contracts and transactions. 

Stone received her bachelor’s in English literature from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and her J.D. cum laude from the university’s William S. Richardson School of Law. While attending law school, she was the two-time winner of the National Native American Moot Court Competition and a two-time recipient of the Edmunds Award for Civility and Vigorous Advocacy. She currently serves as a board member of the Hawaii Justice Foundation. 

“Michelle is an accomplished attorney who brings a wealth of knowledge and judgment to the firm and our clients. Her time spent and positions held at some of Hawaii’s largest and significant companies, coupled with her private practice experience working at other law firms, are an invaluable resource,” said Jon Yamamura, chair of Carlsmith Ball. “We’re excited to welcome Michelle to our firm.”