HON. DAROLYN LENDIO HEIM

Hon. Darolyn Lendio is a District Judge of the First Circuit, State of Hawaii. Born and raised in the plantation town of Waialua on the island of Oahu, she started her legal career in private practice at Goodsill Anderson Quinn & Stifel as an associate attorney and in 1989, was a founding partner of the Honolulu law firm of McCorriston Miller Mukai MacKinnon LLP, specializing in complex civil litigation in numerous areas of law. 

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In 1994 at the age of 35, Lendio was appointed as the first Filipina Director of the Department of the Corporation Counsel for the City & County of Honolulu and was recognized as Outstanding City Administrator in 1995. She returned to the McCorriston firm as a partner following her City appointment but left private practice again in 2006 where she served as Vice President for Legal Affairs and University General Counsel for the University of Hawaiʻi System and as the University of Hawaii’s Interim Executive Administrator and Secretary of the Board of Regents for nearly a decade. In May 2017, she was appointed to her current position in the Hawaii State Judiciary.

Throughout her career, Lendio has served on numerous committees, boards, and commissions, including the Judicial Council, the Permanent Committee on Rules of Civil Procedure and Circuit Court Civil Rules, Honolulu Police Commission, Honolulu Charter Commission, Commission on Judicial Conduct, American Judicature Society, and the Court Annexed Arbitration Program, serving as both an arbitrator and an arbitrator mentor. In addition, she is a member of the Hawaiʻi Filipino Lawyers Association, Hawaiʻi Women Lawyers and the American Inns of Court, James S. Burns Aloha Chapter.

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She graduated from the University of Southern California with her A.B. in Journalism and Political Science and obtained her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.  She was named to Best Lawyers in America in 2005 and obtaining a Martindale-Hubbell AV rating in 1999 and AV Preeminent rating in 2015.