Trust your gut with your law career in Japan with Bonnie Dixon
Full transcript follows.
Even when your law career doesn’t go smoothly, perhaps you have been laid off or there are other challenges on your path, trusting your gut can help you to find the right way forward. My guest is Bonnie Dixon, the first foreign woman to be made a partner of a Japanese law firm. You will not believe how Bonnie created this opportunity for herself. Bonnie also shows us other ways we can serve our countries, either as a commercial attache in business or in the community as a scout leader.
If you enjoyed this episode and it inspired you in some way, we’d love to hear about it and know your biggest takeaway. Head over to Apple Podcasts to leave a review and we’d love it if you would leave us a message here!
In this episode you’ll hear:
How Bonnie came to Japan for the first time as a child and the influence it had on the trajectory of her life
Surviving two crumbling law firms, but finding her way by trusting her gut
Refusing a job offer but laying a groundbreaking opportunity on the table in return that was accepted
The importance of marketing and networking skills for lawyers and the different ways that can look
Her favourite Netflix show and other fun facts
About Bonnie
Bonnie Dixon is a Partner at Atsumi & Sakai in Tokyo. In 2005, when Bonnie joined the firm she became the first non-Japanese attorney to become a partner of a domestic Japanese law firm since the Occupation of Japan. Bonnie serves clients in cross-border transactions and dispute resolution matters and her practice includes general corporate matters, mergers and acquisitions, employment law, cross border litigation and antitrust matters. She’s consistently in Best Lawyer and other rankings. Bonnie is licensed to practice law in the State of New, admitted in 1982 and is admitted to the Court of Appeals of the First Circuit. Bonnie is registered in Japan as a Foreign Registered Lawyer. She has extensive experience in international transactions, cross border labor and employment, structured finance, banking transactions, investment funds, etc.
Educated at the University of Michigan with a B.A., majoring in Japanese and Political Science in 1978, and the University of Michigan Law School, attaining her J.D. in 1981, Bonnie speaks and reads fluent Japanese and has worked in Tokyo for more than twenty years in the aggregate. Before returning to Tokyo in 2002, Bonnie practiced law in New York City, where she became a partner of Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP, and later of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP.
Recently, Atsumi & Sakai has established an office in New York, to be formally named as Atsumi & Sakai New York LLP. This expansion will be led by Bonnie, who will serve as managing partner of the New York office.
In her spare time, Bonnie produces translations of Kabuki and Bunraku dramas. Her translation commentaries can be heard through the Earphone Guide service available for rent at the National Theater in Tokyo and at the National Bunraku Theater in Osaka. She is an avid hiker and enjoys camping and other outdoor activities. Bonnie was the founder and for years served as the Scoutmaster of Troop 5 of the Far East Council of the Boy Scouts of America. During her tenure as Scoutmaster, Bonnie was the only female scoutmaster of the BSA program in all of Asia. She currently serves as an Assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 5’s female scouts.
Connect with Bonnie
Please email Catherine to be connected with Bonnie.
Links
The Tokyo American Club: https://www.tokyoamericanclub.org/index.php/en/
Connect with Catherine
Linked In https://www.linkedin.com/in/oconnellcatherine/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawyeronair
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/catherine.oconnell.148
Twitter: https://twitter.com/oconnelllawyer
Transcript
Catherine: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode in season three of Lawyer on Air. I'm the host of the show, Catherine O'Connell. Today I'm joined by Bonnie Dixon. Bonnie is a partner at Atsumi & Sakai in Tokyo. Atsumi & Sakai is a full service Tokyo based law firm. More than that it’s the only major Japanese law firm with non-Japanese equity partners.
Currently, the firm has seven non-Japanese partners and eleven non-Japanese associates, in addition to its nearly 150 bengoshi or lawyers who are licensed to practice law in Japan. Atsumi & Sakai is a rare example of legal diversity in Japan, employing registered foreign lawyers and other foreign lawyers from 10 jurisdictions, including New York and other US states, the UK, the state of Queensland in Australia, Germany, Taiwan, India, Korea, and Vietnam.
Atsumi & Sakai also apparently has the highest gender diversity among the largest law firms in Japan, for which the firm has won numerous awards. Well, Bonnie joined the hall of fame in Japan lawyer history when in 2005, she joined Atsumi & Sakai and became the first non-Japanese attorney to become a partner of a domestic law firm, a domestic Japanese law firm in fact, since the occupation of Japan.
That was because legislation at the time for the first time allowed law partnerships between Japanese lawyers and lawyers licensed elsewhere. Bonnie serves clients in the cross border transactions area and in dispute resolution matters. And her practice includes general corporate matters, mergers and acquisitions, employment law, cross-border litigation, and antitrust matters.
She's consistently in best lawyers and other rankings. Bonnie is licensed to practice law in the state of New York and is admitted to the court of appeals in the first circuit. She is also registered in Japan as a foreign registered lawyer. Educated at the University of Michigan with a BA majoring in Japanese and political science in 1978, and the University of Michigan law school attaining her J D in 1981.
Bonnie speaks and reads fluent Japanese and has worked in Japan and Tokyo for more than 20 years in aggregate. Before returning to Tokyo in 2002, Bonnie practised law in New York City, where she became the partner of a firm there, Schulte Roth & Zabel, and later at Morgan Lewis. Recently Atsumi & Sakai has established an office in New York to be formally named as Atsumi & Sakai New York, LLP. This expansion will enable the firm to provide more convenient legal services in North and South America. And that New York office will be led by Bonnie herself who will serve as managing partner of the New York office.
She will be very busy dividing her time between the New York office and the Tokyo office in order to meet the needs of her diverse client base. It was actually Hiroo Atsumi, the Managing Partner of the Tokyo office who was recorded as saying, we are proud that the managing partner of our New York office will be an American woman.
And Bonnie, we're proud of you too. Well in her spare time, Bonnie produces translations of Kabuki and Bunraku dramas. Her translation commentaries can be heard through the earphone guide service available for rent at the national theatre in Tokyo and at the national Bunraku theatre in Osaka.
She is an avid hiker as well and enjoys camping and other outdoor activities. Bonnie was the founder and for years served as the Scoutmaster of troop five of the far east council of the Boy Scouts of America. And during her tenure as Scoutmaster, Bonnie was the only female Scoutmaster of the BSA program in all of Asia. And she currently serves as an assistant Scoutmaster for troop five’s female Scouts. Well, that is a very healthy introduction of Bonnie Dixon. I'm very pleased to bring you Bonnie as my guest today and share her story with you. Bonnie, welcome to the show.
Bonnie: Thank you. Very glad to be here.
Catherine: And today, Bonnie, we're going to be talking about your career path, influences along your journey, how you came to be in Japan, your working life here, and being an equity partner in this firm that you're currently in.
And I'd really love you to provide some tips and ideas for the next generation of associates who are coming up the ranks behind you. How does that sound?
Bonnie: That sounds fine. Let's do it.
Catherine: Good. Well, today we are talking online, but if we were going to meet up in person, where would we be? Do you have a favourite wine bar or cafe or restaurant that you love to go to, and what would be your choice off the menu?
Bonnie: Well, if we were going to be meeting in person, I think I would probably invite you to lunch at the American club. That's usually where I meet my business colleagues. It's a very relaxed environment and one can talk for hours without interruptions. So I think that's where we would be.
Catherine: Good. And what would you be choosing off the menu there? I'm a member there as well, so that's a great place to go.
Bonnie: Really?
Catherine: What's your favourite dish or drink off the menu there?
Bonnie: That's an interesting question. I’m rather fond of the California Cobb salad.
Catherine: Ooh, good.
Bonnie: There are any number of favourites and I always recommend to my guests to try the Reuben sandwich, which is quite close to what one can get in New York.
Catherine: Wow. What would you normally combine that with, a Reuben sandwich? Would a beer go with that?
Bonnie: Oh, sure.
Catherine: Yeah.
Bonnie: Absolutely.
Catherine: Oh, great. Wonderful. Well, I look forward to crossing paths with you in the near future again, to do that, that'd be lovely. And so Bonnie too, before we get into your career background, let's go back a little bit to your very early days.
Can you remember what you wanted to be when you were a child?
Bonnie: I always had a knack for languages, so I thought that I might become a teacher. And eventually I was thinking of becoming a translator perhaps, to join the state department. I was very inspired by Richard Nixon's surprise visit to China. And I recognised that in the back of every photo there were these people who quite clearly were the translators and I wanted it to be that.
But ultimately of course, that dream was escalated up to becoming a lawyer. I still do quite a bit of translation work, as you can see.
Catherine: Wow. That's amazing. Yes. It's always those people in the background, we can see whispering in the ears of the celebrities or the politicians, as you mentioned, and we don't really give them enough credit. I think it's an amazing job. How interesting that you picked up on that. That's really incredible. But you did in fact, take yourself into learning Japanese, right?
And studying Japanese. And part of that was when you were studying at University of Michigan and you did a major in Japanese and political science.
Bonnie: That wasn't my first exposure to Japanese. I lived in Japan when I was a child.
Catherine: Oh, tell us about that.
Bonnie: First came here when I was 10 years old, and was brought back again when I was 13 for three and a half years. My father worked for Westinghouse and they built nuclear power plants on the Japan Seacoast just across from Korea.
So you've probably by now heard of these plants, Mihama, Takahama, Obama, Oi. The Oi plant is the one that there's been a lot of discussion in the news about having it restarted. The Mihama number one, and number two plants that my father was involved with building are now being decommissioned and torn down.
But at that time, my family lived in Fukui Prefecture. Nobody spoke English. My brother and I attended a local Japanese school. So I was speaking Japanese by the time I was 16, albeit with a Fukui accent, something close to a Kansai accent. So by the time I got to college to study Japanese, I was already somewhat, if not fluent, at least conversant in Japanese.
Catherine: Wow. That's amazing. What's Fukui lingo for hello? Or do they have something that they always say when they're saying hello to each other?
Bonnie: No, I don't think there's anything like that. I think just the way of making sentences is very close to the accent of the Kansai area, Kyoto and Osaka. So I did speak with that accent at that time, of course, because I imitated the children around me. So it was a little bit weird, now I speak with a Tokyo standard accent.
Catherine: Do you remember when your dad was going to come over to Japan, how you felt? Did it sort of bring up those, having seen the people behind Nixon translating? Did you think, oh, now's my chance? Or do you remember your feelings then?
Bonnie: I was, this was pre Nixon's visit. I'm an old lady. This was a long time ago. When we moved here, no, we had no impression of Japan at all really. We were just curious, the entire family fell in love with the place. So we were very lucky to have been sent here.
Catherine: Yeah. And once you’re here you really, you don't get rid of it do you, from your DNA, you want to come back. And so that then led you to majoring in Japanese and then political science as well.
Bonnie: That's right. And from there I thought that I would go to the state department. In fact, I took the foreign service exam and passed it and thought that I was well on my way to an ambassadorial type of career. But in fact, in those days at least, when you went for your final interview in Washington, DC, they would tell you, you have to sign a waiver that says, well, you know, we might send you anywhere in the world where we want, and we might not send you with your spouse.
And I thought to myself, well, I've been studying Japanese all these years. I didn't do that so I can serve in Africa, I did that so that I can serve in Japan. So I was trying to figure out if there was another way to get into that sort of position. And at that time I was taking a class at the university on nuclear arms control negotiations.
And the lecture of that very day was the role of lawyers in nuclear arms negotiations. And I realised, well, okay, if I become a lawyer, I might be able to get into the state department from another window. So that's why I applied to law school. Not because I wanted to be a lawyer, but because I wanted to be in the state department. All that being said, ultimately I became the lawyer that I am, but I actually feel like I serve my country in the way that I would've wanted to serve my country had I gone into the state department. Because I'm like a commercial attache. I help American companies to do their business in Japan. I help them to understand the legal system here. And I serve my country through the Boy Scouts of America, because most of the Scouts in Japan actually are the children of those who serve in the military.
So I'm serving military and embassy communities through my sort of service role in scouting. So I'm actually doing what I set out to do. I just have a different licence and a different passport.
Catherine: I absolutely love that Bonnie. My mum often says to me, why don't you go and become a member of MFAT, you know, and become an ambassador. And I'm like, well, I'm actually doing it. But I haven't been able to phrase it as well as you just said there, as a commercial attache, and I think that is absolutely brilliant and that we can actually achieve what we want to do, but through different methods.
And I think you've hit the nail on the head spot on.
Bonnie: There are so many people who leave college and don't use, really directly in their careers, what they learned in their undergraduate years. But I do. And also through my translations of Kabuki dramas, I studied classical Japanese literature in college and studied classical Japanese music in college.
All of that is still with me as I produce these translations, which also is a service to the community. I'm quite happy with that continuity.
Catherine: So during your study of Japanese and political science, did you then think about law as a certainty and go on then to do your JD?
Bonnie: No.
Catherine: No?
Bonnie: Really law school was a complete impulse from that one lecture on the role of lawyers in international arms negotiations. In fact, I ran out of that class and told my boyfriend I'm going to law school and ran over to the school placement office and discovered that in fact, it was the last day to sign up for the law school entrance exam.
So I signed up. Oh yeah, it was entirely an impulse, entirely an impulse.
Catherine: Unbelievable. What do you think led you to do that? Is it serendipity that brings that around? That's really incredible, isn't that, to study law on an impulse.
Bonnie: Well, you know, serendipity implies that there's an outside force. I don't think there's an outside force. I think the important thing for all of us is to follow what feels in our gut like the right thing to do. And there's nothing wrong with that impulse. We guide ourselves from inside. It's not serendipity.
It's only a question of whether you are listening to yourself or not.
Catherine: Ooh, tell me more about that.
Bonnie: This is rather, most lawyers are not quite so philosophical, I suppose.
Catherine: Oh, we go philosophical on the podcast, but it’s usually after a little bit of time, but I'd really love to take it there now.
Bonnie: Well, wasn't it Sigmund Freud who said that your first gut instinct is the right one? So you just have to be willing to listen to that. And I think when people are deciding their careers, you'll get advice from all sides. And my feeling is you don't really need that, particularly when it’s unsolicited.
You just, you need to be able to access yourself. One of the things that I appreciate very much in Japan is the ability to visit a temple and sit in a garden and sit there for as long as I need to sit there until things calm down. There's something to be said for the Zen meditative experience, which is not something that I'm particularly into, but I do believe that it's important to sit quietly and listen to yourself.
Catherine: I do agree with you. And I think we probably don't do that enough. And some of the temple gardens and shrine gardens were closed over the last several months, but I think they're reopening now and we can go and rejoin that experience.
Bonnie: When you connect that thought to how my career has developed, you know, the opportunity to join Atsumi & Sakai, the opportunity to become a partner of Atsumi & Sakai, this also came from a gut reaction. The job originally offered to me at Atsumi & Sakai was a job as an English contracts drafts person.
They were number one in securitisation and structured finance when I joined, and I had a lot of experience with securitisation, so they wanted someone to help them draft those documents. I turned down that offer, but what I said, and again, it's instinctive is, well, you know, we have this new law taking effect next April.
If you'd like to let me in as a partner, I'd be glad to go, but I'm not going to go as a contract drafting person. Sorry. And I thought I was declining the offer but two days later they called me back and said, well, we'd like to make you partner. Can you come in on Wednesday to talk about it? And I really hadn't planned on that at all.
And neither had they.
Catherine: No way.
Bonnie: It's true.
Catherine: Oh, that is absolutely incredible.
Bonnie: There was no business plan. There was no recruiting of such a person. It was entirely my gut refusing an offer, but laying an opportunity on the table. And it was really, it was a split second response to what I thought was a lousy offer.
Catherine: My goodness.
Bonnie: I shouldn't say this out loud because I don’t know if Mr Atsumi thinks that.
Catherine: Well he must have, and you may not have voiced it, but I would love him to listen to this later and let you know for sure. But I can see the title of this podcast episode is going to be trust your gut with your career.
Bonnie: It's true. I mean, if you asked me at one point before we gathered here, you asked me what advice would I give to a young lawyer? And I think that is the number one advice is to trust their gut and just go with that.
Catherine: Wow. That is really incredible. Bonnie. You're going through all the questions I want to ask you because it's just incredible what you've been able to do, and be a shining light for everybody. But I didn't realise that you'd really come through what looks very strategic to me. It looks like you did your time in the States, you worked for two really great law firms, you came to Japan, and you started up here. So it looks like it's very managed and strategic, but is that not so then?
Bonnie: No, there's a lot of managed strategy. Of course, you have to put yourself into a place from which you can listen to your gut and be given many choices. For example, when I left law school, I had the choice between going to Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, or Tokyo. And I chose Tokyo because I felt that I needed an internship, the equivalent of a medical residency before I could start my career in New York.
So I came here for three years and worked for what was then Nagashima & Ono, now Nagashima, Ono & Tsunematsu. But you have to, that was strategic. Right? And when I went back to New York, that was strategic. I stayed long enough to get some good training. So of course there’s strategy.
Catherine: And was that training then at Schulte Roth & Zabel?
Bonnie: No. I had a long sort of zig-zagging career in New York when I went back, not that it was any of my fault, but my first two law firms crumbled.
Catherine: Oh.
Bonnie: I had to move on. When we talk about Nixon going to China, I very much admired him for doing that. And my first law firm in New York was Richard Nixon's old law firm, which was at that time known as Nixon Mudge Rose and changed names to Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon. And I was immediately put into the aircraft finance and project finance group because in those days the Japanese were financing everything. Every deal had Japanese parties. So it was expected that I would be using Japanese in my daily work. So I was trained to finance aircraft and did that for many, many years. I moved on to another firm, Breed, Abbott & Morgan. That was an aircraft specialty firm, they crumbled, and then moved to Schulte Roth.
And at Schulte, then the largest bank in the world, Dai Ichi Kangyo Bank, had just bought CIT, which is an aircraft leasing company. So I then launched into a career representing Japanese banks for them. So what really killed it was 9/11 because all the Japanese banks had offices in the world trade center and they just pulled out.
And then there was the Asian financial crisis going on at the time. So it was obvious that I needed to follow my clients back to Japan.
Catherine: Right. And so you came back then in 2002. And how did Morgan Lewis come up? Was that already something that you were looking into before coming back, or you saw an offering, or again, did you put yourself in a place where you could listen to your gut?
Bonnie: Well, it was obvious that I needed to get back to Japan. So as I recall, I responded to a headhunter's request for an interview. They had a Tokyo office at the time and they were looking to beef it up. They hired five of us to come over and sort of kickstart the office. I wasn't happy there, so moved on to Dorsey and Whitney’s Tokyo office.
And after that, unfortunately, Dorsey decided to shut their office in Tokyo. So I was left looking for another job, and that was when I found the Atsumi opportunity.
Catherine: Right because before when you had worked at Nagashima Ono and then you were at Morgan Lewis, were they quite different then experiences and the kind of work that you were doing there?
Bonnie: Oh good. Heavens. Yes. You know, even now my work experience is very different from what it would be in a big law U S firm. For one thing, most of the work that I attract is inbound. It's governed by Japanese law, which of course I can't practice because I'm not a Japanese lawyer, but what I can do for my US clients is shape the responses of the Japanese lawyers into a structure and a content that is intelligible and relevant to an offshore company.
Most of the Japanese lawyers haven't had experience living and working overseas. So they don't understand that things that are very obvious here, like that the document needs to be sealed by a representative director. We don't have such things. Or in the United States, we have a uniform commercial code that we use for establishing security interests.
Here we don't, we have different security interest systems for each type of asset. So that kind of interface. And the litigation system for heaven’s sake is entirely different. Right? We have no discovery in Japan, so all of that needs to be managed. So it's more of a management job than a pencil to paper job.
Catherine: Hmm. I love how you say that shaping the responses though, of how Japanese laws are interpreted and what they mean here into making it very intelligible for your clients who are in the states. And I can see you’re going to be doing more of that now that you're going to be in between New York and Japan.
But I'm going to go back to that amazing time when you did get that phone call.
Was that from Atsumi?
Bonnie: No, actually there was a headhunter involved.
Catherine: Oh, right. Okay. So when that happened, what did you think? I mean, that's just incredible that after a day or so, you'd get this turnaround on, I'm not doing that, but I want to do this. And also, did you know about this law changing at the time? Is that something that was around at the time? I'm trying to think back.
Bonnie: Oh, yes. Oh, that was big news. There had been considerable pressure from the US state department, from the EU, to allow foreign law firms to have Japanese partners. All of the literature at that time was made on the assumption that the Baker McKenzies and Clifford Chances of the world would then be able to have Japanese partners on an equal basis in Tokyo.
We had until that time a system of a captive Japanese law firm that you did a joint venture with, and many of the foreign law firms had that. And we had that at Dorsey and Whitney, Baker McKenzie, and all the major law firms had that, but they couldn't, there were a lot of rules about it and they couldn't fully integrate their billing and practice systems.
So the new law, when it took effect, was drafted in an egalitarian way so that Japanese law firms could have foreign partners in them. But nobody thought that a Japanese law firm would do it. Everybody assumed that this was entirely for the benefit of the foreign firms to have Japanese partners.
So from day one, when the announcement was made, that we had registered on April 1 when it was possible to do it, that sent ripples through the legal system here because it created an entirely new career track for foreign lawyers that hadn't existed until that moment and made the law relevant to Japanese law firms in a way that nobody had expected. So it was groundbreaking, quite literally.
Catherine: Yeah, it is groundbreaking. It's such, you're such a trailblazer, but the firm has to and should be holding that very, very proud. And since then, what happened next? Who was the next person to be you, shall we say? Do you know who was second and third and how long that took?
Bonnie: Oh, well I think the next second and thirds were at our firm. There are a variety of foreign lawyers who use the title of partner. You don't have to be. what I am in order to be a partner. You could be a contract partner, for example, as a registered foreign lawyer. And there have been those, for example, Nishimura has them, other firms have them, Anderson Mori has them.
But I think the big difference between our firm and the other firms is that our foreign lawyers actually have management responsibility. I have portfolios of things that I do on an administrative basis, not merely being managing partner of the New York office, but I have influence. I have the ability to express my opinion, then attend partner meetings and influence how the battleship of the firm moves one way or the other.
I think that that power is quite limited for foreign lawyers at other Japanese law firms. If it exists at all. And it's not only me at my firm who has that sort of influence there, there are others as well. So it's quite a challenge for the firm. It's like living in the United Nations really. We have more jurisdictions in our firm than I think exist at many of the major US law firms.
I mean, to have 10 or 12 jurisdictions working in one office and we're all rather sort of caricatures of ourselves, you know, I'm the New York lawyer. I'm very opinionated and I tend to open my mouth in partner meetings.
Catherine: Good. We need that. And so how did you shape that position? I mean, after that call and getting that all arranged, how long did it take for that to actually come to fruition? And that you started from the day that you had that call?
Bonnie: Someday somebody needs to take Mr. Atsumi out for a beer and ask him what it's been like living with me for the last 17 years.
Catherine: I might do that.
Bonnie: I feel that it's a little bit like having a tiger for a pet, you know? I think I walked right in from day one fervently on a mission. I had a vision for the firm, which I expressed to Mr. Atsumi in my early interviews with him, which is that we were a smaller firm compared to the so-called big four, right? We needed to be nimble and we needed to be flexible and we needed to be able to offer services that were not going to be offered by the larger firms.
So at that time, my vision of the go-to firm in that regard was a firm called Mitsui Yasuda and they had been largely absorbed by Linklaters in this movement for Japanese partners to enter foreign firms. So there was no longer the Mitsui Yasuda independent firm out in the market. And I wanted us to be that. So I came in sort of with an idea that we needed to do some heavy marketing.
The firm did not have a lot of experience with marketing. Their marketing was limited to putting a notification of their address and capabilities into Martindale-Hubbell or something like that. And I set out right away to create deal lists and CVS for lawyers, they had never done any of that.
They had no PR department, they had no experience with arranging a seminar for example. I helped them to organise their very first client seminar. And, and as far as marketing offshore, nobody was doing any marketing offshore. I was the one who would get on a plane and fly to New York and run around and pass business cards.
So I became sort of the face of the firm internationally. That took a lot of energy. And it largely flows from the experience that I gained in New York. In New York marketing is a big topic. They provided us with training seminars, associates were trained, there was a women's marketing seminar. They paid money to send me to Washington DC, to go to a seminar on marketing.
The Japanese law firms aren't doing that. But I came to the firm with that background and with that training, with all the training materials in my drawer, and started sort of whacking away at the problem. Now we have a full fledged PR department and I mean, you can see from our website and from our awards.
I assist the firm with responding to rankings requests. I attend the interviews of the rankings when the ranking personnel are interviewing bengoshi. I'm really very active in that. And I'm very proud of it. I can see the impact of that movement. It started the day I joined the firm.
Catherine: Right. And as well as the firm, you would have had to have had a lot of contact with the ministry of justice too, it would have been new for them to try and tackle all of this as well. Do you remember anything coming up at that point with the regulators?
Bonnie: No, well, there were a lot of rules and regulations at that time, much of this was new, but I didn't personally have to deal with the MOJ on any of it. My lawyers went to bat for me. We have, one of my favourite stories about Mr. Atsumi is that there was a time when consideration was being given to liberalising the rules that govern foreign lawyers.
And I think, from the recent past that there have been some changes. Mr. Atsumi and I were invited to testify at the Japanese bar association, and we wrote out our talking points and we practised them, and we had them written up in an outlined form and walked in there and gave our discussion all in Japanese.
And when it came time to Mr. Atsumi, he went off script and he put down his paper and he said, basically, look it, there was a time in the United States when black people had to ride in the back of the bus. And that wasn't fair. And all that I am asking is that I want to ride in the front of the bus with my foreign lawyers.
Catherine: Woah, I have goosebumps.
Bonnie: So did I, I couldn't believe that after all that practising and all those meetings and all those outlines, he went off script and said that. And at the end of the discussion, someone on the panel from a Japanese trading company raised his hand and said, I want that law firm. So there you have it.
That's my law firm in a nutshell.
Catherine: That is fantastic. Do you think this is the accomplishment that you're proudest of?
Bonnie: In a world where I have many accomplishments to be proud of, I suppose yes. Yes. And the thing that I'm very proud of, and it's not me that I'm proud of, but rather him and the rest of the firm, is that the fact that I'm female had nothing whatsoever to do with the decision to hire me in the first place.
Right? And there's never been any gender discrimination whatsoever at the firm. And for heaven sake, what Japanese firm, other than ours, would make an American woman to be managing partner of their New York office. It's just unthinkable, right? His decision was made entirely on the basis of the skill and appropriateness of the staffing for almost anything.
I mean, in fact, another story that I have from my early days at the firm, I went to my first partner meeting probably a week after I joined. And I was sitting in the room and I looked around the room. There were so many women in the room. People often misunderstand that I'm the only female partner at the firm or the first female partner at the firm. I'm not.
When I arrived, the partner meeting was 30% women. I forget how many partners we had at that time. But I ran out of that room and ran into Mr. Atsumi’s office. And I said to him, my goodness, we have to get this in the magazine. We have to get a rating from Martindale Hubbell. We need some diversity publicity here.
There are firms who would hire you just because, and this was mind you in 2002, before the whole gender diversity statements in pitches had not yet even started.
Catherine: Yeah.
Bonnie: And he looked pretty stunned when I was standing there and he looked up at me and he said, but Bonnie, he said, I was just hiring good lawyers.
To him it didn't matter that they had 30% women in his firm. And by the way, we still have 30% women in the firm. It just doesn't matter. And it matters elsewhere in town.
Catherine: That is really, really incredible. And what a person to be working with every single day. I think that's so fantastic. Anything else there, Bonnie? I mean, you mentioned other accomplishments that you're proud of. Tell me about those.
Bonnie: Well, you know, the other accomplishments that I'm most proud of are not necessarily my legal accomplishments. I'm very proud of having served as a scout master and starting up a troop. I think I was a very successful Scoutmaster troop. Five was then, and still is, one of the largest troops in the Kanto plane.
And everyone agrees it is one of the most successful troops in the Kanto plane, if not in all of Japan. So I'm very, very proud of how I lead both the youth and the families. Scouting is supposed to take you beyond what you think you can do. And the challenge of hiking, backpacking, camping in the rain, those challenges grow you.
I had been a cub master before I was a scout master. So I raised many of these boys from when they were six. As well as their parents, you know, they came to me when their sons are six, not even able to put up a tent. And by the time we formed troop five, these people are teaching merit badges. So the youth and the adults were both raised into this.
I'm very proud of that.
Catherine: Fabulous. What is it about starting up a troop, and also similarities to being a leader lawyer? Are there some similarities there for you? I think taking you beyond what you think you can do is one thing. What else is there?
Bonnie: Well, actually, you know, the scouting program is very roles oriented. The merit badges are very roles oriented. You have to do it in a certain way. Also as a lawyer, we learn to build relationships with people, right? We have to build relationships with our clients and with the opposing party in a negotiation.
In scouting, it's the same thing. You have to build relationships with the people who join you to lead the troop. You have to build relationships with the youth. You have to build relationships with people who are outside the troop, the people who manage the council and the district and the camping activities. So you bring to the program all of that background. I think being a lawyer was very, very helpful to setting that troop on the right path.
Catherine: Well, you're now setting another troop on the right path by this office opening in New York. Are you excited about this?
Bonnie: Um.
Catherine: Pause. Stop recording,
Bonnie: I don't know what to say, because this has been long in the planning and we were just about to set up when COVID hit. So it hasn't been optimal.
Catherine: Right.
Bonnie: I finally, again, thinking from my gut, I finally just reached a point where Delta was beginning to settle down last fall. And I just said to the firm, I'm going to New York, I'm opening the office.
And I left last December and rented space. And I think the day after I signed the lease on the space Omicron hit and everybody in New York scuttled into their apartments, like cockroaches, and we're still living with Omicron. And even though New York is opening up, and the rest of the world is sort of opening up, things are difficult in Japan.
It's difficult to travel. I was not going to do the government hotel quarantine game. Right. So it's not really up and running yet. My Japanese partner, who's supposed to go with me, doesn't yet have his visa. So am I excited about it? Yes, but we're still not at a stage when we can optimally do the marketing that we need to do and the service that we need to do.
So it's still a bit on the shelf.
Catherine: I'm going to switch a little bit here and ask you a few more of those tips. You talked about some tips for success as a lawyer, but how about for success for you as a lawyer in your firm? What's been your guiding spirit? I know you've got your gut there, but what are the tips for success if people were going to be thinking about your firm, for example, from your experience?
Bonnie: Every lawyer is different. I think what I would like to see and which I don't see enough of, and this is a comment generally about Japanese firms as well as foreign firms is, I'd like to see more, if not emphasis, at least, permission for younger lawyers to engage in marketing. I did engage in marketing when I was a younger lawyer.
And I think you know, for example, that I was the founder of the Roppongi Bar Association. Do you know that?
Catherine: Yes. Yes. Actually, I do know that. But it's not anywhere that I could find to verify it.
Bonnie: Oh, no.
Catherine: Right. That is true.
Bonnie: It's true. In 1982, there were four of us who gathered together and we didn't know how many foreign lawyers were in Tokyo at that time. And we said, well, you know, let's just send out faxes. In those days it was faxes. Let's send out faxes and see how many people we can gather at a certain bar in Roppongi on a Thursday night. And when we go out there, there were maybe 50 or 60 people there. We were all flabbergasted. We didn't realise there were so many foreign lawyers in town, and this was long before there was any legislation that would have allowed foreign lawyers to practice. So we were all working as sort of semi paralegals.
And from that, we continued to have meetings once a month on a Thursday evening and, you know, Roppongi Bar Association, the bar literally means that bar where we gathered, it's not a bar association,
Catherine: But it was a good pun. Right? A good play on words.
Bonnie: Yes. It was a very deliberate play on words. At that time, everyone was afraid. The Japanese law firms were very afraid of the foreign lawyers coming in.
They thought that you know, the Clifford Chances of the world were going to come in and devour Japanese law firms and all the Japanese law firms would disappear. So people were afraid to go to these meetings. We used to have them in a bar that was way down a side street. People were literally afraid that the ministry of justice would come and take pictures of us. It was quite interesting times.
But fortunately I worked for Mr. Nagashima, who was at that time, probably the most powerful Japanese lawyer in town and he protected me. So that's how I became and remained the president of the organisation for the first several years because I could send faxes out of his office and nobody would have challenged me.
But the reason why I mentioned this in the context of marketing is because I was very young then, I was in my twenties. And some of the people from those days in the Roppongi Bar Association are my friends even now. And some of them are my clients even now. And if I had lived with the view that as a 25 year old or 26 year old one cannot, or should not, or doesn't have the resources to market, I wouldn't have those clients.
I wouldn't have those relationships now. So for the young people, the people they know are a different generation from me. Those people are not necessarily going to make a relationship with me from a marketing point of view. We need the young people to be out making a marketing relationship with other people their age.
And I fear that many law firms, including sadly my own, unless I can move that piece of the battleship. Many young people have the feeling that they are not supported or encouraged to do the marketing that I think they need to do for their futures. So I'd like to see more of that. I'd like to see more young people in any firm taking responsibility for their own marketing.
Catherine: Yeah, I think what should the profession then be focusing on these younger people, if it's about marketing, should they be trying to activate that within their firms or just doing it themselves in their own way, coming up with their own plan, how would they approach that?
Bonnie: Well, I'd like to see more marketing training. But people need, again, you need to be sort of a self starter here in the marketing world. You know that, I know that. When I was an associate in New York, for example, I used to take my vacations and fly to Japan. And partly because I love Japan, partly because I left a boyfriend behind, but at the same time, I would make a list of all the Japanese companies that I had worked for since the previous year.
And I would go round and visit them and go have coffee in their offices. And invariably, I would come back with at least one piece of business from those vacation trips. So I went to Paris on my honeymoon and visited French law firms. You always say it's a mindset. You have to have that in your mind.
Catherine: Well, maybe that's an opportunity for you and me to gather together, collaborate and help some people with marketing. Cause I love doing it. And you know, I'm out there a lot on social media, Instagram, LinkedIn, trying to do that. And obviously I guess this podcast is marketing to a certain extent.
It is viewed as that by some people, although for me, it's really opening up stories for women and showing us how they can do careers like you. But that could be something we collaborate on at some point, if you'd love to do that.
Bonnie: The most important message I would give, I think for young women, oddly you and I would be surprised by this, but there's a survey out there that says that many women are afraid to market. And I don't understand that fear. And I assume that you also don't understand that fear, but I think that women can be very successful at marketing.
And I'd be curious to know exactly what they're afraid of.
Catherine: Also what their definition is of marketing. I mean, is that going to drinks with guys at a restaurant and then after parties, or is it something different, more strategic, in a way of presenting webinars or doing interactive round tables or workshops and things like that? What is marketing? What's the meaning of it?
Bonnie: Well, that's an interesting thing to talk about because you and I, I think, have very different approaches to marketing. My approach to marketing has always been very personal and very social. Something like the Roppongi Bar Association is emblematic of how I market. I market in a party context or a dinner context.
I don't market through webinars or writing articles or LinkedIn. I market by person to person and word of mouth. And that's where I think women can be very, very successful. When I was in New York. The PR departments, for example, had tickets to hockey games and tickets to basketball games and tickets to baseball games, but they did not have tickets to opera or tickets to ballet.
So the PR system was skewed against me. I had to go out and buy my own tickets if I wanted to take someone to do something that wasn't sports-related. I think that has changed somewhat in the years since I was in New York. But when I was being trained, the entire system was skewed against women. There was also the assumption that because a lot of women were going in-house that women should market to women in-house.
So what did they do? They set up a spa day. I don't know why they set up a spa day. What do they think that women enjoy standing next to each other while they're getting their nails cleaned or getting their hair washed, et cetera? You know, that doesn't make sense. That's not how I market even to other women.
So I think that women can easily find a way to market. It doesn't have to be the same way that the men market.
Catherine: Are you allocating certain times of the week or calendar, for the so-called marketing, the person to person, word of mouth, getting together and going for dinners and parties, and connecting to people one-on-one? Are you allocating that in your calendar or is it just as it comes up, being purposeful about it?
Bonnie: That's an interesting question because I'm not normally purposeful in that way, I just grab opportunities when they come to me. But I will say that during COVID I was very purposeful about it because I live in a house that has a deck and I can invite people to my home to be outdoors, to share a meal.
And I started having these deck parties every week, sometimes twice a week with only six or eight people. And I would mix up the people who came. So my deck became the only place where people in business could market to each other and exchange business cards. And I would have theme parties, a women's party, for example, or a party for people in a certain type of practice.
For example, people interested in litigation arbitration or transactional lawyers or whatever. And the parties became so popular that I regularly get emails from people asking when is the next one? And sometimes I would tell someone, well, you want to have a party? You invite five people and I'll cook the dinner.
So I would meet new people that way. That was very purposeful. And I think for all of us who were regular attendees at those parties, it contributed very much to our sanity during the COVID time. And I'm personally very grateful that I was able to have those interactions in a way that was as safe as we could make it.
Catherine: Wow. Yeah, that sounds like fun. Gosh. So how are you setting up your day then? And what's your routine look like?
Bonnie: Well, this is interesting. And I think with COVID and teleworking, many people might be able to emulate this, but my clients are mostly in the United States, a few of them in Europe. So I'm up early in the morning. Normally I'm awake by 5:00 AM and I'm on email and conference calls, certainly not later than 7:00 AM.
And that lasts until maybe 10 in the morning when New York begins to go to sleep. So then I have a few hours when I can manage my personal life and go shopping and go to the dry cleaners or whatever. By two or three in the afternoon I have to be back on because clients in Europe are waking up and then I'm on until maybe nine o'clock at night.
I may have a call with someone who's in New York, but generally I try to do that during our mornings. So I have a very flexible schedule.
Catherine: Is there anything that keeps you online that you wouldn't be able to live without?
Bonnie: You mean technology?
Catherine: Yeah.
Bonnie: I'm an old lady. I was trained without technology. Well, I must say the internet has made life ever so much easier. You know, when we didn't have internet in those days, you'd be up until four o'clock in the morning, sending faxes or delivering packages to a federal express delivery service.
So the internet has made it possible to communicate without that pain.
Catherine: Sure. Wow. Yeah. Are you like me? You keep a sort of paper schedule diary as well as your electronic one.
Bonnie: I have not during COVID. But I usually find that when I'm out and about, and sitting at a dinner with someone, I like to have access to the paper one for planning purposes, but that hasn't been necessary during COVID when we're not doing so many of those dinners, right?
Catherine: I do love the paper one because over these last two years, it's very hard to remember when did something happen so I can flick back.
Bonnie: Oh yeah.
Catherine: And it's just been so brilliant for that. But I did want to also ask you at the end of the day, though, when you're winding down, if you're not having a 9:00 PM call with New York, what is your favourite thing to do?
Bonnie: I don't know. I think my brain fries, so I might read a book or I might simply have a glass of wine and watch TV for a while.
Catherine: Yeah, that sounds good. Is there anything else there that you want to say about your outside activities? I know you do this translation, and you might want to speak a little bit more about that and what that brings to you in your life.
Bonnie: Oh, the Kabuki and Bunraku translations are so much fun. Unfortunately, they're not doing them right now because we're not letting tourists into Japan that we're preparing for the next phase of translation. So I'm working on something now. So we're getting ready for the possibility that tourists will come back.
I think it ties me very much to what I studied in college and what really gives me pleasure in Japan. It's wonderful to be in the theatre when I do the translations. I go to dress rehearsals as well as opening day. So I have an opportunity to see plays repeatedly, and I can kind of check out from the business world for a couple of hours while I'm working on this.
So it's very relaxing. It's stressful in some ways making the commentary, but it's very relaxing to be in the theatre. I love it. I love the music. I love the sound of it. I love the smell of it. I love everything.
Catherine: Yeah, it's almost like, well, why couldn't we have the translations for foreigners who are in Japan? I mean, aren’t there 2 million of us.
Bonnie: I agree with you. I agree with you. Not all of us are in the Kabuki theatre all the time. I completely agree with you.
Catherine: And record it so that we can actually view online. I know that people are coming in, but there must be recordings of the performances that would still be able to be used. Or perhaps that's not quite, I'm maybe thinking too generously there.
Bonnie: Yeah. Yeah. All of that is very much controlled by the folks who own those. So we don't have access to that, though you can buy DVDs. And occasionally they've been releasing just like the opera releases from time to time, a movie version of a Kabuki play. But they don't make that generally available to the public easily.
Catherine: Well, hopefully the tourists will be coming back soon. I know there's a lot of talk about tour groups coming through and perhaps tour groups that could visit the theatre might be able to take advantage of what you're doing. The great work there.
Bonnie: Yes. We're getting ready for that.
Catherine: Well, Bonnie, is there anything that you've done in your life so far that if you had a chance to do differently, you'd do it differently, or would you rinse and repeat what you've done?
Bonnie: Yeah, Lord. Honestly, I don't have any regrets about any of the decisions that were made.
Catherine: Fabulous. If you were not a lawyer though, do you know what you would be? Would it be a translator still, do you think, or ambassador, or would it be something else?
Bonnie: A translator or a teacher or perhaps I might've made a different choice and be working for the state department. I would have done something like that.
Catherine: And what advice would you give to someone who wants to get to where you are and do the job that you are doing now?
Bonnie: Well, you're right. If someone is in law school now thinking of going into an international legal career, I'm the poster woman for that, right? It's bicultural, it's bilingual, I travel all the time, I have responsibility, I've interesting cases, I'm the poster girl. I think my most important advice would be to get good training at a good US law firm before launching on a career that emulates mine.
Regardless of what jurisdiction you might be thinking of going into, at the end of the day, the training that you get in the United States, can't be duplicated offshore from the United States, or for that matter anybody's home jurisdiction. If you're going to provide cross-border advice, you need to have a really solid background in your own legal environment.
So I would suggest at least three years of training before launching on the international piece of the career.
Catherine: Great advice. And I'm going to ask you one further question about whether if you could be instantly an expert in something, what would that be?
Bonnie: Cooking.
Catherine: interesting.
Bonnie: I was such a busy single mother full-time lawyer, that it was all I could do to get food on that table for the boys. And I would like to know more about the creativity of cooking. I have a girlfriend now who is a wonderful cook. I watch her all the time. I learn from her. I tried to emulate her. Of course, now my sons are grown and they've gone off to the United States for college.
So I do have the time to play with cooking. And of course, with COVID we're at home all the time, but if I could know more instantly, that's what I would want to know more about.
Catherine: Fantastic. Wow. I love cooking too. I didn't used to, but I do now. It has come together over the pandemic.
Well, we're going to head into the quick fire round where I wind up the episode with each guest.
Can you share a podcast or a book that you are reading and maybe a podcast you're listening to that you recommend?
Bonnie: The thing I've been recommending to all my friends is from Netflix. There is a series, only six episodes of it, called pretend it's a city. And it's basically a monologue by Fran Lebowitz. If you're not from New York, you might not recognise her name, but it was directed by Martin Scorsese, whose a friend of hers.
And she talks about New York City and what it means to be New York City and the essence of New York City. And she is spot on, absolutely spot on. Pretend it's a city. If you love New York I recommend that.
Catherine: I do. I have only actually been to New York once, and I have to go again. This is really bad to admit that to you, Bonnie, but hopefully I can go again. That sounds amazing. Pretend it's a city and I have heard of her before, but I didn't realise the connection there, but that's fantastic. I've noted that down.
Okay. Your favourite saying, koto waza or English saying that you have?
Bonnie: If you stop, you're dead.
Catherine: Mm Hmm.
Bonnie: That came from the father of my children, his father used to say that if you stop you're dead.
Catherine: Okay. So that's why you keep going.
Bonnie: Hm.
Catherine: If you were given the opportunity then to spend a day with someone, either living or dead, who would that be? Nixon,
Bonnie: Um, that would be an interesting one. Wouldn't it?
Catherine: Nixon, and Dixon. That sounds good. Have you ever thought of that?
Bonnie: No.
Catherine: Is there anyone there from history?
Bonnie: That actually would be very interesting because, in fact, he was a brilliant lawyer. He was slammed over the Watergate thing, which was very disappointing to me. But he was no fool. And I think that would be an interesting conversation.
Catherine: Hmm. Interesting. Okay. Well, what's something about you that a lot of people don't know? I didn't know you hosted those deck parties. That sounds like fun. So what else? Anything else?
Bonnie: All right. Here's something, that I play shamisen.
Catherine: Oh, I did not know that. That's amazing. So you learnt that along the way as well?
Bonnie: Yes. It's one of the reasons why I enjoy Kabuki. There are several different types of shamisen, but the one that I studied was the Nagauta genre of shamisen. That is the type that appears on the Kabuki dance stage.
Catherine: Oh, right. And a bonus question, Bonnie. One thing you are deeply grateful for right now.
Bonnie: My children.
Catherine: Oh, lovely.
Bonnie: Yeah.
Catherine: Thank you. Well, Bonnie, we have come to the end. I just thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you. And as you just said, we could do another episode or two on the topic, but I really thank you for coming on Lawyer on Air.
Was it your first podcast?
Bonnie: Yes.
Catherine: Oh, fantastic. It's been such a joy to have this in-depth conversation with you. And so many gems. Because you've shared such an inspirational story of your career, trusting your gut, not only being that first non-Japanese attorney to become a partner in a domestic Japanese law firm, but also the path that you've carved from there.
And the obvious relationship that you have with your firm that is just built on friendship and trust. I've really not had that I think with other guests. And just love to hear that coming straight from you from your heart.
Thanks for taking the time to share your wonderful story. And so if listeners want to get in touch with you, could they do that through say your business email address?
Bonnie: Sure. I always respond to those emails. I'm frequently asked to give advice or comment on something. So I'm very glad to do that.
Catherine: Okay. Great. Well, we'll finish it up there. Thank you again for being my guest on season three of Lawyer on Air. And to my listeners, please do like this episode, subscribe to Lawyer on Air, so you don't miss out on hearing the next episode.
You can actually go over to my web page and leave me a voicemail. I love hearing people leave a voicemail to actually tell me what they thought about, and heard and loved, from the guest and what they had said. So please do go ahead and share the episode with someone you might think will enjoy listening to it, to lead an inspired, wonderful, lawyer extraordinaire life. That's all for now. See you on the next episode. Cheers, kampai and bye for now.
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