What are the key projects that you have been involved in over the past twelve months?

We have continued to invest aggressively in the last twelve months, but this period has been more notable for the IPOs and M&A exits that a number of our portfolio companies achieved. For instance, Figure Technology, a U.S. fintech startup that has revolutionised capital markets with proprietary blockchain technology, went public on Nasdaq in September 2025. In May 2025, Moneytree, a Japanese personal finance management service/financial data provider, was acquired by MUFG Bank. Most recently in April 2026, sustainacraft, a provider of carbon credit generation support and natural capital due diligence, was acquired by Deloitte. As we have only been in existence since 2019 and this is the first wave of exits from our portfolio, we designed and implemented an exit policy/strategy from scratch. I was responsible for the legal and regulatory aspects of the new exit policy/strategy, including publicity guidelines, an insider trading policy and a process for handling investor KYC, as well as addressing cross-jurisdictional issues due to our portfolio covering a range of countries from Japan and the US to India and Singapore.

Please describe a situation where your advice had a significant impact on business outcomes or objectives.

A number of our deals encountered challenging US bank regulatory-related issues, and I effectively coordinated with MUFG’s internal bank regulatory compliance team, in Tokyo and New York, and outside counsel (in US and countries like India) to make sure that the structure of each deal was compliant from the U.S. bank regulatory perspective.

Have you had any experiences during your career as a lawyer that stand out as particularly unique or interesting?

I am the first in-house counsel at my company, which meant that I had to design legal operations from scratch and do so fast. For instance, when I joined, there were multiple NDA templates, and the Japanese and English NDAs were inconsistent. I had to quickly figure out a good template, that the business side would find easy to use, and establish an efficient internal approval process. I also saw that outside counsel selection was ad hoc, often based on personal relations rather than on objective strengths of the counsel or whether that counsel was the right fit for the matter at hand. I also had to identify the right AI-based legal tech solution to manage a rapidly growing number of transaction documents, which were getting too wieldy and sometimes lost. Not many in-house counsel have this kind of experience.

In addition, it is still rare in Japan for a reasonably successful partner of a major law firm to go in-house. I recall that some of my lawyer friends thought that I would regret moving to MUIP. That I took that risk makes me a fairly unique lawyer.

Are there any upcoming challenges that in-house teams should be preparing for over the next twelve months?

Law has been a protected profession in most countries and, as a result, lawyers have been shielded from competition. I believe that AI will destroy this protective bubble by democratising law. For instance, AI-based legal tech is empowering non-lawyers to do things that used to be in the province of lawyers. For instance, as a VC, we prepare materials for the investment committee when we are about to make an investment. In the past, I would have to spend a fair amount of time reviewing a non-lawyer’s summary of the key terms of the transaction and key issues raised during due diligence. Thanks to Copilot, for example, the quality of the summary that a non-lawyer can produce has dramatically improved in recent months, with the result that I now need to spend minimal time reviewing a non-lawyer’s work.

In the startup world, I see that legal tech is starting to blend with adjacent verticals, and there are some fintech startups that are beginning to provide legal tech solutions. At my company, I am situated in the fund management division, and my team consists of non-lawyer professionals, e.g., Japanese, U.S. and Korean CPAs, tax accountants, valuation experts, etc. I believe that traditional boundaries around categories like “legal department” and “law firm” will begin to disintegrate, and lawyers will need to work with non-lawyers more closely than ever.