Team size: Nine

How do you approach managing legal aspects during periods of instability or crisis to ensure the organisation’s resilience?

During periods of instability or crisis, I prioritise proactive legal risk management by establishing clear communication channels and collaborating closely with key stakeholders. I ensure that our legal team is well-informed about the evolving situation and potential implications. Further, regular revisions and updating of our compliance policies as well as conducting compliance training to employees in normal times are also important. This comprehensive approach not only safeguards our organisation but also enhances resilience and fosters a culture of compliance.

Based on your experiences in the past year, are there any trends in the legal or business world that you are keeping an eye on that you think other in-house lawyers should be mindful of?

Use of generative AI in the business fields is emerging and expanding rapidly, so I believe that each company should have its own AI governance structure, mainly led by CLO and/or General Counsel of the company, to promote appropriate, compliant and ethical use of generative AI by the company.

What is a cause, business or otherwise, that you are passionate about? Why is this?

Our company will be partially spun off from Sony Group this autumn, and shares of stock of our company will be listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) without offering. To that end, we, legal & compliance department, are working hard to obtain necessary TSE clearances, prepare resolution documents, create a system for share buybacks, enhance mechanism to prevent insider trading, and revise our internal rules to be more appropriate for a listed company. Direct listing of shares (listing of shares without offering) to TSE is extremely rare in Japan recently.

What factors influence your team’s decision to use external legal services versus handling matters in-house, and what criteria are used to evaluate their performance?

Basically, we handle our company’s (and our subsidiaries’) legal works internally within our department and do not rely on external lawyers. We use external lawyers only for the following reasons: to buy time (especially when a large amount of legal work needs to be processed for urgent cases); to get specialised legal advice in which we are not specialised; or to double-check our legal output for the cases that have significant business impact on the company.