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

In collaboration with businesspeople, we have developed the new type of business, ‘Times Platform Service’, which provides our service infrastructure and systems to other brands’ parking and mobility services. Once the platform service is launched, Park24 will acquire large amounts of variable data concerning number plates of the cars that used our parking sites. Driving data from shared cars will also be acquired. This data can naturally be used to improve our IT system or other operations, but it can also be used by or provided to third parties who want to utilise it for their own business. However, this requires us to carefully consider the balance among legal and social requirements relating to personal data, the aims of our business, and the convenience and comfort of our service users. Our legal team has performed excellently in this area and created the policies or set up the internal procedures which businesspeople will abide. With these policies and procedures, our company can commence the new type of business and hopefully will achieve a great success.

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

What topics are being talked about in the world, and what issues are being considered problematic? We try to be sensitive to legal, economic and social trends. BtoC service providers such as us pay particular attention to this point, as our services need to be services that people are happy to accept. The information acquired in this way is then shared among the top management in a timely and appropriate manner to deepen discussions. This makes it possible to make appropriate decisions quickly in times of emergency.

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

As the head of legal, I defended our company against a criminal investigation relating to the Tokyo Olympic bribery scandal, led by the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors’ Office. The investigation ultimately turned out that our company was not involved in the alleged scandal.
One day, our company was raided suddenly by the public prosecutors’ office. From that moment onwards, I engaged in communication and negotiation with the prosecutors, instructed colleagues in the office to protect our company’s legitimate interests against the investigation, worked with the PR section to prepare company statements relating to the incident and collected relevant information from various sources. Eventually, it turned out that our company was not involved in the bribery scandal, but it was a really tough time.

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?
We elect to work with external counsel when the issue in question is highly specialised and beyond our area of expertise. Conversely, highly standardised work can also be outsourced.

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?

Our company, the Park24 Group, is proud to be a business pioneer. In fact, Park24 created the world’s first unmanned, time-based car parking business and developed the world’s first commercially successful car-sharing business. This meant that there was no business model we could rely on and no rules we could simply follow. Thus, we have ‘discovered’ or ‘developed’ the rules and procedures that our business abides by. In other words, we co-create new businesses with other businesspeople.