We are a partner-led, dual-qualified practice built around two things most foreign GCs actually need in Japan: management-side employment defense, and an outside General Counsel who answers the phone personally. Productized retainer tiers. English-default delivery. No hand-off to a junior team.
Your Japan subsidiary is past the startup stage — it has employees, contracts, a lease, and the occasional difficult personnel situation. You need counsel who can operate independently, communicate directly with headquarters, and be trusted with the matters that actually carry risk: a contested termination, a Labor Standards Inspection visit, a restructuring headquarters wants handled quietly and correctly.
Terminations, restructurings and redundancy design, harassment investigations, Labor Standards Inspection responses, work-rule drafting, and settlement negotiation — handled exclusively from the employer's side. This is the work that generates the most legal weight for foreign-owned Japan operations, and it is where we spend most of our time.
For companies that don't need — or can't yet justify — a full-time in-house lawyer, we function as the Japan GC: contract review and drafting, governance and statutory housekeeping, lease review, vendor negotiation, and a direct line to headquarters when something needs explaining in plain English.
Client identities are withheld as a matter of course. The pattern below is representative of engagements we handle routinely.
Multinational SaaS provider — multi-year management-side employment defense, including Labor Standards Inspection follow-up and fixed-term-to-indefinite conversion analysis under Article 18 of the Labor Contract Act.
Foreign-owned advertising and communications agency — Japan restructuring and severance design coordinated with APAC headquarters.
European logistics / SaaS group — multi-year retainer covering Japan operations generally, including settlement negotiation and termination work as it arose.
We publish three retainer tiers, a 90-day market-entry package for new entrants, and a standing Employment Crisis Response add-on. No one-off pricing negotiations, no surprise invoices — and the substantive work inside each tier is bespoke and partner-led.
Explore retainer tiers & pricingHajime Iwaki is admitted in Japan (1997) and California (2004), with two decades of corporate practice at international firms — most recently as a partner and Head of Corporate at DLA Piper Tokyo, and previously at O'Melveny & Myers.
We do not represent labor unions or individual employees. Every engagement is aligned with the employer's interests, without conflict of loyalty.
When you engage this firm, Hajime is your lawyer from the first call to the last filing — not a partner who introduces you to an associate after the pitch.
Several of our retainer engagements have run for five, seven, and nine years. Most new clients arrive through a referral from a current client, a foreign law firm, or a former colleague.
A 30-minute introductory call to understand your business, your legal exposure, and whether we are the right fit. No commitment.
Schedule an introductory call