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

To ensure the organisation’s resilience in periods of instability, it is important to proactively find issues and propose solutions, rather than just quiescently waiting for inquiries from relevant stakeholders. In-house legal should not take a solely passive critic or commentator position.

Furthermore, active information gathering, collaboration with other business departments and/or outside counsels and accurate understanding of the company’s situations and management’s concerns would also be an imperative part of establishing solutions when it comes to dealing with discovered difficult issues.

  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?

While there have been various global legal issues that need to be addressed, I have personally been keeping an eye on the potential amendment to the Japanese Companies Act. The amendment itself is still at the preliminary stage, but the amendment could have an impact on Japanese companies’ choice of their organisational structures.

How does your team contribute to the overall business strategy of the company? Can you share an example of a recent legal-led initiative that had a significant impact?

I have been a participating member in the board of directors and the Corporate Officers Meeting (COM), the highest decision-making body of the executive side, as part of the secretariat. As such, in the board of directors and COM, I actively comment on legal issues from the secretariat seat as the legal department’s representative, thereby raising my own and the department’s presence. I provide feedback on my understanding of these management issues to the departments, and, by proactively identifying management challenges and considering solutions from a legal perspective rather than adopting a passive stance, I believe am making significant contributions to the business strategy of the company.