Yoshimasa Furuta

Key practice areas

Arbitration & ADR; compliance; corporate governance; litigation 

Introduction

Yoshimasa Furuta is a partner and the co-chair of the dispute resolution group at Anderson Mori & Tomotsune, a top Japanese law firm with a pan-Asian presence. As a specialist in litigation, commercial arbitration, mediation and other dispute resolution procedures in both the international and domestic spheres, he is recognised as a leading lawyer in those fields in key industry and peer-reviewed rankings, including ALB Super 50 Disputes Lawyers (Asian Legal Business), Band 1 (Chambers Global), Thought Leader (Who’s Who Legal) and others.

For more than 30 years, Yoshimasa has represented domestic and international clients in all kinds of business disputes. He frequently handles complex, multi-jurisdictional disputes and in a wide range of subjects, including sales of goods, distributorship, technology licensing, intellectual property infringement (patent, copyright, trademark, know-how and unfair competition), labour & employment, corporate management, complex financial products and other business transactions. In addition to counsel work, he regularly acts as an arbitrator.

Currently serving as an executive director of the Japan International Dispute Resolution Centre and a director of the Japan Association of Arbitrators, Yoshimasa is also a member of the ICC Japan Arbitration Committee, the Management Lawyers Council and the Ministry of Justice’s Legislative Council. Previously, he served as a secretary at the Legislative Council of the Ministry of Justice (2008-2010).

An influential thought-leader, Yoshimasa has taught subjects such as civil procedure, international litigation, international arbitration, commercial transaction and legal ethics at a number of universities, including as a professor of law at Seikei University (2003-2011) and the University of Tokyo (2013-2016), as a visiting professor at Columbia Law School (Spring 2016), as well as an adjunct lecturer at Rikkyo University, Keio University and Tsukuba University. He also frequently publishes on matters related to cross-border litigation and arbitration as well as on matters of Japanese law and procedure. 

Yoshimasa is a graduate of the University of Tokyo (LLB, 1988) and Harvard Law School (LLM, 1995; Addison Brown Prize, 1995). He is admitted to the bar in Japan (1991) and New York (1996). In addition to his native Japanese, he is professionally fluent in English.

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