Faculty & Staff

Dina

Shek

Legal Director, Medical-Legal Partnership for Children in Hawai‘i
Faculty Specialist

Degrees

BM, New England Conservatory of Music, 1993
MA, San Francisco State University, 2003
JD, William S. Richardson School of Law, 2006

Biography

Dina Shek is a licensed attorney in the state of Hawai‘i.  She is a proud graduate of the William S. Richardson School of Law where she serves as the Legal Director for the Medical-Legal Partnership for Children, a program she co-founded in 2009.  Dina is also a clinic instructor.

Prior to entering law school in 2003, Dina spent nearly ten years as a community organizer, educator and advocate for social and community justice.  She has extensive development and fundraising experience, all of it on behalf of the public sector.  Dina holds a Master of Arts degree from San Francisco State University in Ethnic Studies (Asian American Studies) where she taught “Concentration Camps, USA” and completed a thesis titled, “Re-visiting Japanese American Redress: Loyalty and the Exclusion of Expatriates.”

Dina has received numerous awards and distinctions for her social justice work including the Samuel Soifer Social Justice Award, the Justice Edward H. Nakamura Memorial Scholarship and the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association Law Foundation Scholarship.  In 2012, Dina was named the Rhoda Lewis Award recipient presented by the Hawai‘i Women’s Legal Foundation, and she received the Distinguished Service Award from the Japanese American Citizens League (Honolulu Chapter) for her work with Micronesian communities in Hawai‘i.  Hawai‘i Business Magazine featured Dina as one of their “20 for the Next 20: People to Watch in 2013.”

Publications

  • Centering Race at the Medical-Legal Partnership in Hawai’i, 10 U. Miami Race & Soc. Just. L. Rev. 109 (2019) HeinOnline | SSRN | ScholarSpace
  • Building a Patient-Centered Medical-Legal Home in Hawaii’s Kalihi Valley, 78 Hawaii J. Med. Public Health 55 (2019) SSRN | ScholarSpace
  • Health Care for Micronesians and Constitutional Rights. Hawaii Med. J., 70 (11 Suppl 2), 4–8 (2011) SSRN | ScholarSpace
  • Clinics-in-Common: Creating Uncommon Professionals, 8 Am. Psychol. Ass’n 356 (2011) ScholarSpace
portrait photo

Contact

Office phone: (808) 956-5577
Phone: (808) 688-3313
Fax: (808) 956-5569

dshek@hawaii.edu

Office

Files

Classes

Course #Class TitleSemesterYear
530
Spring2011
590U
Spring2022
590U
Spring2020
590U
Spring2019
590U
Spring2018
590U
Spring2017
590U
Spring2016
590U
Spring2023
520P
Spring2015
520E
Spring2014