Court Procedures

We assist our clients with court procedures.

There are two main types of court procedures: mediation and lawsuit, and two types of courts: general courts and family courts that handle family matters.

Since the Japanese law generally requires the issues of family matters should try to settle the dispute through the mediation process, the mediation is widely used in family courts, such as divorce, child visitation or inheritance related cases.

In such a mediation procedure at a family court, mainly two mediators consist of a male and a female besides a judge mediator start to hear the circumstances of the disputes from the parties. Since the mediation procedures at a family court are not expected to make fact-finding pursuant to any evidence filed by the parties, usually no special legal knowledges are inevitable and many parties file the petitions for the mediation and attend the mediation procedures by themselves.

Our assistance for court procedures can be provided either by advising our clients out of court, or by representing our clients in any court procedures on clients' behalf.

Out of court assistance

Some of our clients have time to prepare for and attend any court procedures by him/herself, whereas they may sometimes need to hear and get help from legal experts.

If such a need arises, we can assist our clients as an out of court legal adviser without representing our clients in the court.

Our assistance will be limited to give advice on any legal issues that our clients need to hear the legal interpretation of appricable laws and we do not prepare any documents on our clients' behalf; however, by using our assintance only when the clinents need, our clients can keep costs down.

In court representation

We assist our clients in any court procedures as their reperesentative. Our such assisntance includes analysis of the case based on the results of hearings from our clients and reviewing any evidence provided by our clients; advice on the plan for dispute resolution through a court procedure; and preparing for any documents to start court proceedings, or to respond in any court proceedings initiated by the counter party or parties of our clients.

Since only the parties involved know any histrocal facts that occurred between the parties in dispute, we need our clients' cooperation when we prepare any documents in response to any claims and allegations insisted by the counter party or parties in the course of the proceedings.

In addition to any conciliation or mediation procedures in the courts for seeking amicable solutions, many disputes filed as a lawsuit case seeking a judgment are resolved by settlements based on the courts' proposals. We also advise our clients whether or not the clients should agree to any settlement offers by the courts' proposal.