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How important have “soft skills” or personal attributes outside of technical legal skill been to the team’s success, and which “soft skills” do you feel are most important for an in-house lawyer to possess?

Personal attributes outside of technical legal skill are essential to the team’s success. We may affirm that the overcoming of day-to-day challenges is only possible with the development and practice of personal skills, such as: to establish a consolidated chain of trusts with each member of the organisation and enhance the significance of the legal function; to proactively take actions and make changes or create new working methods to improve the team’s performance; to add further value to the businesses by providing relevant legal information in a timely manner which helps the business teams to achieve better results; to provide highly tailored and to-the-point messages in order to convey what is really important to each stakeholder. Our team is constantly encouraged to develop these soft skills in view of the reality of our work, so that we may be more efficient and enhance the company’s results. Our team always bears in mind that a heightened sense of awareness at the individual level is the key to success for any initiative.

How can in-house legal teams be an integral part of their firm’s business? How does the legal team demonstrate its value to the company?

Our team makes a unified effort to exercise mobile, high-quality legal capabilities and further contribute to the entire company. We have three paramount goals: first, contributing as a team member to the achievement of Mitsui’s management and business goals while acting from a legal perspective; second, protecting Mitsui from legal risks and damage to reputation; and third, establishing and maintaining structures and mechanisms to enable Mitsui and its Group companies to avoid and properly manage events and crises that involve legal risks and/or possible harm to our reputation. To achieve such goals, we perform three core functions: one, to provide Mitsui with effective and efficient legal solutions; two, to take appropriate leadership in handling of public crises, litigation and legal matters; and three, to contribute to the improvement of Mitsui’s overall legal literacy and education.

Is diversity and inclusion as a matter of internal policy on the agenda at your company? How much influence do you, as an in-house legal team, have on the diversity and inclusion policies of your organisation?

As a multinational corporation, Mitsui understands the value of a diverse workforce. All of our employees should be able to work with and respect people from different cultures, habits, gender, sexual orientation, religion, capabilities and physical conditions, as fellow employees, business partners and customers, to ensure that everyone has an equal and fair opportunity to contribute their talents and meet their potential. Mitsui creates business innovation in every business area backed by the flexible and challenging mind sets of talented different individuals. Each and every member of Mitsui is an invaluable “individual”. We truly believe that the constant collaboration of diverse individuals can trigger a chemical reaction and enhance our company’s goals. It creates new value which becomes our strength. As legal team, we carry such a sense of diversity and inclusion when dealing with related matters on our day-to-day activities.

Focus on…

TEAMWORK

“Thoughts on Mitsui’s in-house legal team roles and functions”.

We live in an era of paradigm change led by economic impasses, digital transformation and disruptive innovation and business models, in which we believe it is necessary to pursue reviewing the in-house legal team’s roles and functions in a constant manner.

Legal teams all over the world in Mitsui are trying to identify the legal capabilities which describe properly the in-house legal team’s new roles in the current tremendously dynamic era and our team is also participating in this discussion from a local/regional point of view.

Within such context, Mitsui believes that capabilities of “organiser” and “explorer” are one step further to the establishment of legal competencies required for a new era.

Although it may be difficult for everyone to visualise what exactly both concepts entail, one approach would be to think of the design and creation of strong, reliable, effective and efficient internal compliance and governance systems as an example of the “organiser” function, which may positively impact the company in various aspects, such as: cost reduction, increase of efficiency of work, better organisation of the company’s evidences to be presented in lawsuits, among others. A conscious use of artificial intelligence by the legal team may be a key aspect to achieve the purpose of developing such a function.

As to the “explorer” function, in addition to the basic meaning we all can attribute to such a concept and its applicability to the legal department as a basic capability (such as in the meaning of “seeking for new legal strategies”, for instance), we may also pursue a different and interesting approach, by linking it with a “creation” aspect of it. For instance, we may expect legal departments of companies with new and disruptive business models see rulemaking and building a legal frame as the next-generation legal function for new business models created.

Traditionally, legal departments have been taking a back seat role in companies, acting mostly to prevent crises, exposures and litigation, to defend companies in dispute resolution and to make consultation on existing law and regulation. It is time for it to step into the frontline and actively communicate with relevant parties in order to take on the role of “explorer”, for example through rulemaking and developing new business models.

We have not reached the conclusion yet, but this process of discussion is already helping us to see our daily legal work on the ground in a different way and to enhance Mitsui’s new business.