By Shingo Hattori — Founder & Managing Partner, Hattori LawTel: +81 3 6447 5586 We are honored to announce that Hattori Law has been selected as a finalist for the Asian Legal Business (ALB) Japan Law Awards 2025. This recognition reflects our continued commitment to excellence in legal service and the trust our clients place in us. Being shortlisted among the top legal professionals and firms in Japan is a testament to the dedication and hard work of our entire team. We would like to express our sincere appreciation to our clients and colleagues for their continued support. We also extend our congratulations to all the other distinguished finalists. Thank you […]
By Shingo Hattori — Founder & Managing Partner, Hattori LawTel: +81 3 6447 5586 It depends on the industry of your business, but most of the cross-border businesses move forward following the steps below. 1. Business partner check It’s quite important to do a credit check for cross-border transactions. If your business partner defaulted or didn’t pay, it would cost to collect the debt more than the it happened for domestic transaction. It’s good to take care of payment conditions. You can make the draft easier to collect debts if you draft it appropriately. Cross-border transaction has challenges to collect debts because the judgment by the court in one country will […]
By Shingo Hattori — Founder & Managing Partner, Hattori LawTel: +81 3 6447 5586 Even if you are not sensitive to the latest financial trends, you have heard terms of SDGs or ESG so many times recently. In Japan, the Corporate Governance Code of Tokyo Stock Exchange was revised in 2021 to oblige the listed companies in the Tokyo Stock Exchange Prime to disclose TCFD (Task-Force Climate-related Financial Disclosure) or its equivalent standards. TCFD is primarily for dealing with climate change. This also means that the growing number of people have been concerned with the environmental change. In 2023, Financial Service Agency of Japan amended the Comprehensive Supervisory Guideline for Financial Instruments […]
English Language Legal Representation in Japan: Tokyo Law Firm with Japanese and American Lawyers.
If your company want to expand business to Japan, you have various options to build up your business here.
By Shingo Hattori — Founder & Managing Partner, Hattori LawTel: +81 3 6447 5586 Expert Legal Services for International Businesses, you may have experience negotiating with Japanese corporations if your investment project is in Japan. What did you think of it? Even though you might have thought it was finished, the Japanese company ultimately refused to sign the contract. Are you hesitant to collaborate with Japanese businesses? I think it’s excellent to collaborate with Japanese businesses because, if you start your firm with them, you can have a long-term commercial relationship. How to establish a commercial relationship with Japanese corporations is the issue, though. When negotiating with Japanese companies, there are […]
There are many cases that foreign companies expand their business to Japanese market. While it’s indispensable to pay attention to the regulations and compliance for your Japan business. Let me give you an example. If your American company has expanded business in Japan, it finds violation of regulations for the Japan business. You might consider appropriate measures to deal with it, considering company size, stakeholder positions, and so forth. You might consider making it in public after investigation. In that process, there are three steps. It’s necessary to clarify “what happened” in Japan. While it’s not easy since it happened in Japan where it’s far from United States. You might have […]
Let me give you an example. If you were a hotel operator, you would now be dealing with management contract negotiation with Japanese property owners. You want to rebrand the hotel in Japan. In this case, you can execute the contract in English. Then, you might ask the Japanese business partner to stipulate the original contract version is in English and the Japanese version is just for reference.
By Shingo Hattori — Founder & Managing Partner, Hattori LawTel: +81 3 6447 5586 Japanese lawyers sometimes cooperate with American lawyers not only for the case of cross-border transaction. Recently, there was news about sexual harassment in entertainment industry in the United States of America. Meantime, there were similar cases in Japan. That was sensational since it happened at one of the most famous entertainment companies for boy’s groups in Japan. Needless to say, people have various kinds of measures to opine their thoughts lately. We could find various scandals or deplorable events which might have not been disclosed before the technological advancement of social networking service and so forth. You […]
By Shingo Hattori — Founder & Managing Partner, Hattori LawTel: +81 3 6447 5586 The process of the contract negotiation should be varied for cross border business. You might start drafting an English version first. Or your business partner might start Japanese version and you will translate it later. Meantime, if you have a business project in Japan, you have experiences to execute a contract both in English and Japanese. It’s necessary to understand the content of those contract well. And those contracts state Japanese regulations generally. In that case, Japanese business partners prefer to make Japanese versions of those contracts for their reference. Let me use an example for this […]
By Shingo Hattori — Founder & Managing Partner, Hattori LawTel: +81 3 6447 5586 Cross-Border legal practice is one of the most unique practice areas for lawyers. We don’t have many books for that in Japanese while those contents should have diversities because it depends on the country that your business partner is located. Recently, the number of cross-border transactions is increasing. Those are not only huge projects for huge companies but also midsize or small projects for various companies. Even if the business per se doesn’t have cross-border aspects, it may procure materials from overseas. Currently, it’s quite rare to have no cross-border aspects in every business, isn’t it? Meantime, […]
By Shingo Hattori — Founder & Managing Partner, Hattori LawTel: +81 3 6447 5586 If you have business project in Japan, its contract for the project should be drafted in both of Japanese and English. In that case, it’s necessary to clarify the content of it in your language and to check whether it’s precisely translated. If you just want to overview the content of the contract, it’s possible to use software for translation while you might know that Japanese language is not easy to be translated into English. When you want to review legal risk of the contract draft or negotiate the wording of it, it betters to have a […]
By Shingo Hattori — Founder & Managing Partner, Hattori LawTel: +81 3 6447 5586 If you are a law firm lawyer located outside of Japan and you have a deal related to Japanese Laws, I guess you are facing difficulties to do research Japanese Laws. There are not many Japanese legal materials written in English. As I studied in the United States, I could have found some Japanese Companies Act materials in English written in 80s. While, it was one of the latest ones written about the Japanese Companies Act at that time. One of the reasons is that it’s difficult to translate those in English. Japanese Laws are not easy […]