Midosuji Law Firm was established in 1963 by three attorneys. In the following year, it has expanded to a six attorney operation. Since the beginning, we have taken a partnership model, a rather rare management model at the time, to steadily develop a firm, supported by partners who have pledged and have agreed to share a commitment to any challenge they would undertake in future. Moreover, we were strongly inclined to make the firm truly client-oriented. For example, when we were given an urgent project to file a petition for a temporary restraining order, we dedicated ourselves to file the petition the following morning in order to remedy the issues efficiently as possible. And even when confronted with anti-social forces, we took a resolute stand and carried out our responsibilities. By establishing a law firm near the commercial district of Shinsaibashi (Minamisemba, Chuo-ku), instead of the area close to Osaka District Court (Nishitenma, Kita-ku), we exemplify our prioritization of locational convenience in our clients' best interest. Even today, this foundational philosophy has been deployed, understood, and practiced throughout our firm.
For a law firm, gaining the trust and credibility of clients are definitely the most important. We believe that our philosophy of building a close relationship throughout the process of settling issues and achieving goals is a genuine and honest approach in the development of the firm.
In order to strengthen our client relationship, we must be attentive to our clients needs and establish a thorough understanding of the case. And in the end, we must be able to provide a clear direction to our clients in order for them to receive their maximum benefits. We consider the maintenance and continual growth of our attorneys' professional skills, a prerequisite to live up to our clients' expectations.
The major asset of our firm is unquestionably our personnel. Thus, we value new recruits as well as their training process.
As for recruitment, rather than unnecessarily attempting to increase the number of attorneys, our policy is weighted toward a question as to whether he/she could share with us the same principles and are willing to accept a new pedagogy.
The young attorneys are matched with our veterans who give them guidance through directly involving them in various cases to improve their skills in strategy making, drafting, negotiation, and also skills that are required for courtroom practices.
Providing them with abundant interactions with clients, we nurture their legal knowledge, instinct, and expertise. Hence, at our firm the attorneys grow as professionals, and just as importantly, as people.
By strictly adhering to our principles, our firm has successfully fostered growth and earned credibility, while steadily earning the trust of our clients.
We hope to attain a level of relationship with our clients where trust becomes the rudimentary factor expected in a “best partner”. In the coming years, we will consistently keep in mind our initial pledge, and further continue to build newly found relations of trust.
After Japan's high-growth period, the social economy became highly complicated and diversified. The result was the expansion of clients' needs in new areas of legal services along with the variation in clients' expectations in terms of the content and quality of the legal services provided by the attorneys.
By appropriately responding to the ongoing changes in our social economy, our firm has continually strived to promptly provide high-quality legal services to our clients. As a legal firm, we have practiced the conventional legal services of dispute resolution through litigation, but even more, we have focused on the importance of dispute prevention as well as corporate business and transactional legal services and drafting of various contracts since the early stages of our firm.
In addition, it is only recently that the notion of “compliance” has become recognized for its importance, however, our firm's advisory services in the establishment of compliance systems as well as preparation of the compliance manuals has been around since the beginning for our corporate clients. At the same time, our firm has represented the management side in many shareholders derivative actions and such experience has enabled us to accurately interpret business judgments from a legal perspective. Therefore, we have been able to provide beneficial advice to many of our corporate clients through various methods such as drafting of legal opinions etc. We have also dealt with various bankruptcy cases, including the case where our prompt completion of the civil rehabilitation filing in Osaka resulted in a successful rehabilitation of the corporation, immediately after the enactment of the Civil Rehabilitation Act. In addition, we have provided specialized legal services in M&A and finance areas from the early stages as the demands had increased in response to the changes in the social economy.
These are only some examples among many which demonstrate our ongoing mission, but overall, our firm will continually strive for prompt realization of the needs of our clients, develop legal practices to respond to these needs, and finally, provide a wide range of high-quality legal services in a timely manner.
Our firm had believed that it would be crucial for the firm to remain dependable and established for our clients as well as for our attorneys and clerical staff, providing them with an imperative foundation where they are able to practice their legal services at their best at all times. Therefore, we had placed emphasis on the solidifying our firm's structure. Finally in December of 2002, we incorporated our firm to form Midosuji Legal Profession Corporation as a demonstration of our commitment to further reinforce our strong belief in establishing a dependable legal institution.
And then in January 2003, to further plan the development our firm as well as to adequately meet our clients' needs, we recognized that it would be critical to place an office in Tokyo, where politics, economy and information of Japan had been centered upon.
Since its opening, the Tokyo office had not only been considered merely a satellite office of the Osaka office, but an office with equal significance to the firm. It has been the Tokyo office's duty to appropriately recognize its legal roles as well as the newly arising legal needs in Tokyo, while quickly capturing and processing variety of information to promptly provide professional legal services that meet the expectation of our clients.
At the same time, the Osaka office and the Tokyo office are closely intertwined through collaborative efforts on many cases using communication methods such as TV conferencing as well as face-to-face interactions. The two offices are like wheels on a single vehicle; they move naturally as a unit, and their collective effort enables them to provide the best legal services for our clients.
Through collaborative effort between the Osaka and Tokyo office, our firm will continue to appropriately adapt to the changes in the social economy and to sensitively respond to the needs of our clients, in order to steadily develop our firm and to establish long-lasting “best-partner” relationship with our clients in the following years.
