Frequently Asked questions

No. We only do commercial corporate law and compliance. With lots of in-house lawyer experience, we know a lot about different kinds of laws but we don’t do Japanese civil or criminal law, employment law, IP, real estate law (leases), data privacy law, or any kind of disputes. These are all the domain of Japanese lawyers (bengoshi). We leave that to the lawyers who love it and are good at it. If you are a client we can point you in the right direction for help with that.

If your question relates to divorce in Japan please listen to this podcast recording with Yumi Itakura and check the show notes for her list of her recommended resources

If not, we suggest you start here:

• Ministry of Justice

• Tokyo Bar

Updates coming soon for other resources. For free legal advice in a English, visit here.

Yes! What I bring to your table, as your Lawyer on Board, is my years of working in Japan as a lawyer. I love the business culture here. My secret sauce is I am familiar with the approach inside Japanese companies. My ability is to bridge you between your team here and your team there. I help foreign companies to do their business in Japan. I help them to understand the legal system here.

As a foreign lawyer in Japan, I often work with Japanese lawyers because they provide Japanese law advice. I don’t do that. Sometimes the advice can be hard to understand. So I help translate the nuances of Japanese business and Japanese law for you.

When I work with Japanese lawyers as often happens - I shape the responses of the Japanese lawyers into a structure and content that is intelligible and relevant to an offshore company. Many brilliant Japanese lawyers haven't had experience living and working overseas so, in partnership with them, I can help their advice come to life and be presentable for your legal team, your board, and the management team to make the decisions you need to make.

So sometimes my role might be more of a management oversight than a “pencil to paper” pure lawyer advice role, in that I ask the right questions for you to Japanese lawyers, and shape their responses to interpret Japanese laws, and what they mean to you and make the response intelligible for non-Japanese clients.

In my role as a Lawyer on Board – as your outside general counsel – I am typically the one you first call when you encounter business issues with legal implications. Acting as a strategic advisor to you, I work swiftly and effectively to implement the best fitting solutions and resolve the matter at hand.

Outsourcing the following duties, tasks, and responsibilities are typical kinds of work that I do as an outside general counsel/outsourced in-house counsel.

Where I need to I’ll call in my fleet of specialist lawyers to support me:

Examples:

Get the right lawyer to help you be represented in any legal matters during litigation employee handbooks and work rules, IP registrations, data privacy laws, and major business transactions outside my expertise. I don’t do this work but you can be sure I know WHO can in my network.

We don’t do this kind of work in Japan because the Japanese regulations don’t allow foreign lawyers to do this work. Help with these kinds of matters is done by Japanese lawyers. We recommend you try these sources as your first step for help:

Bar Associations in each prefecture provide legal counseling in Japanese. You can call the common number from anywhere in Japan at 0570-783-100, and make an appointment at the nearest Bar Association. So depending on where the Japanese company is based that is threatening legal action, you should contact the nearest bar association to them.

You can also try to utilize the Consultation Services at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government:

https://www.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/english/guide/guide01.html

If you are a New Zealander, the New Zealand Embassy in Tokyo web page lists legal advisory services by Japanese lawyers who are English speaking so they may be able to help.


If your question relates to divorce in Japan please listen to this podcast recording with Yumi Itakura and check the show notes for her list of her recommended resources

GENERAL CORPORATE AND COMMERCIAL

• Commercial and business law

• Drafting, recommendations, and edits for commercial agreements

• Supplier and customer agreements

• Joint ventures & partnership arrangements

• Licensing and permits

• Contractor and employee agreements

• Contract negotiation strategy, and on-the-spot contract negotiation support

• Day-to-day, ad-hoc, and project-based advisory support

• Corporate governance, director, and shareholder obligations

COMPLIANCE AND REGULATORY

• Risk assessments and legal health checks

• Supplier and customer due diligence

• Drafting and refreshing Compliance Policies & Guidance

• Ethics investigations - strategy, interviewing witnesses

• Workshops and training

• Drafting and refreshing your Code of Conduct

• Prudent communications with suppliers/customers

• Specific topics tailored to your industry/sector: (e.g., recruitment industry: process of intake to hire, handling candidate information, commission agreements)

• Privacy regulations, anti-bribery & anti-money laundering

OTHER

• Work with the CEO, in-house general counsel, and the legal department on various general issues, triage and work out the best approach.

• Counseling officers and directors on fiduciary duties and strategic considerations. Often asked to help with the onboarding of new rep directors communications

• Consulting on insights and approaches to business practices in Japan and New Zealand

• Offer legal advice and recommendations to the client.

• Identify, manage, and monitor any potential legal issues and offer guidance to the executives and employees on how to comply with the law.

• Offer assistance by joining your board as an advisory member or as an independent director (especially great for overseeing local operations when you are out of country)

• Provide various legal services, such as contract drafting, contract review, corporate governance procedures, and more.

• Help with administrative work, including electronic document reviews, legal transcription review, and confirmation of legal translations.

• Develop disclaimers

• Help you find the lawyer to set up your company if it’s a startup. I help companies that are already set up. But if you need establishment support then I know who to ask. I’d be the one to help you as a business owner understand the importance of having an LLP (Limited Liability Partnership) or the impact on you

• Lawyers bridging roles if you’ve lost a lawyer to pastures greener and need someone to keep the legal fires stoked while you find a replacement. If you ask me to help with a bridging role (between an old in house lawyer who left and another who’s just been hired) I can onboard and brief them on the legal work, key players in the business, issues in the past

• Assist the company in developing employee handbooks that explain legal matters.

• Work with various business lawyers to draft compliance plans.

Competition is really just a myth. I don't see it that way. I’m a collaborator and a relationship builder. There are enough clients for every lawyer in town. I’m not the lawyer for everyone. Nor do I want to be. Nor do the regulations allow me to be. My clients seek me out because of the way that I do things. Other people may ask me how I do it, consult with me on how they can do it too and I may share that information. But they will do it their way and I do it mine. That is what makes me unique and my offerings unique in the market. It’s what makes me confident and satisfied with what I can do to help my clients to give them the advantage that I can give them and it makes me confident that I choose who is right for me to work with.

YES, I AM FLUENT IN JAPANESE, AND I DO UNDERSTAND JAPANESE CULTURE

What that means is:

• I can understand what’s going on in a business meeting in Japanese and provide my point of view

• I can review Japanese contracts, documents, PowerPoints, and other business/legal materials written in Japanese

• I can interview job candidates in Japanese and speak with witnesses assisting in investigations in Japanese helping them to speak their voice

• I can converse in business Japanese without difficulty

• I can do training in Japanese, give a speech or perform as a panelist in a panel discussion

• I taught the first-year Japanese language course at Canterbury University and The Christchurch Institute of Technology

I understand Japanese culture:

• It comes from my experience of engaging with Japan from my pre-lawyer days when I worked for JTB and jumped on a bus each week tour-guiding Japanese visitors all around New Zealand, talking to them in Japanese, bringing high school students and Mayoral delegations from Christchurch to Kurashiki on Sister-City exchanges

• It comes from my experience as a registered Police and District Court translator, translating in the law courts and at the police station, for Japanese victims and also for Japanese who got into a bit of trouble and had to appear before the police or judges. Japanese and foreign clients tell me they truly value my capability in Japanese language and my understanding of Japanese culture. I bundle up these language and cultural assets as a benefit for you working with me to leverage your legal options.

No, we are not recruiters. We are a registered law firm and CO is the principal of the law practice. We are Registered in Japan and in NZ and we advise in NZ law. We also have access to Japanese lawyers who we contract for additional services.

Yes I host a podcast called Lawyer on Air and I co-host another podcast called Jandals in Japan.

LOA is all about Lawyers on Air - where I pour you a glass of wine at my favorite virtual wine bar in Tokyo while you listen to inspirational inside stories from my guests, as we relax and talk about what it’s like in life, and in the law, for women lawyers in Japan.

Jandals in Japan is the best new show about doing business in Japan, bringing the Land of the Long White Cloud, Aotearoa New Zealand, to the Land of the Rising Sun.

We are here to help unveil some of the Kiwi success stories and share them as we really noticed Kiwi businesses are so quiet about their achievements and the amazing products that they have managed to get into the most difficult marketplace in the world.

Yes! Some people like my podcast so much they got inspired to want to do one too

Together with my podcast manager and producer, we together consult on what you need

To get you started, guide you on your first bundle of episodes (if you have 5 or 10 topics or guests, that’s a Season right there!) and help with the tech – that messy bit that can stop you from kicking off your podcast just like it did for me for two years till I met Jayne.

Connect with us here to book a consultation.

Hourly billing is traditional for lawyers but can be a bit confusing and a bit outdated in our view and we believe it is not the only way to work as lawyers.

We find that seeing a day fee or a retainer or fee for the work (flat fee) better aligns our expectations more clearly with our clients for the kind of work we do. Fixed, staged, and retainer fee methods are options and we will discuss with you the best option for the work we do for you.