What are the most significant cases, transactions or projects that your legal team has recently been involved in?

Our legal team supports the group brands on a number of free-standing store projects across prime locations in Japan. Our legal department assists the group brands with contract preparation and negotiation in both Japanese text and English, as we liaise with the legal departments of the brands in France, the USA, Italy, Switzerland and Spain

Could you share an example of a time when your team came up with an innovation that improved how your legal team works and did not come at a large expense?

Like many organizations, the covid pandemic has caused our legal department to rapidly adopt the use of Zoom and Microsoft Teams, which is now enabling us to better share legal and compliance practice across our team. We are also able to better share knowledge with case studies for our Japan group employees in office and stores across the country.

How important is choosing to work with external lawyers who align with your company’s values?

We are believers that more diverse companies outperform their less diverse peers. We prefer to work with external law firms who promote diversity (including gender, ethnic, and cultural diversity) and inclusion also.

How do you suggest in-house lawyers build strong relationships with business partners?

In-house lawyers must spend time getting to know their business partners, regarding the climate surrounding the business, their key projects, their challenges, obstacles, and people. Emails and Teams chats are a very efficient means of communication, but it is good to call, zoom video call, and meet in person regularly to get to know one another better. If in-house lawyers are offered the opportunity to accompany their business partners on trips and meetings, they should accept as many opportunities as possible.