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A full transcript follows.
In Volume 13 of Diversity rocks innovation! we talk to the inspiring Catherine O’Connell, a lawyer and entrepreneur who runs her own boutique law firm, Catherine O’Connell Law, and hosts the podcast, Lawyer on Air. Catherine is originally from New Zealand and has been an inspirational leader as a lawyer in Japan, she has particularly been an inspiration to me during the journey of hosting this livestream and podcast, and also as you’ll find out in the conversation, we have inspired her too!
Join us and listen to this conversation as we discuss Catherine’s amazing career and life as a lawprenuer in Japan!
In this episode you’ll hear:
- About Catherine’s early foundations growing up in New Zealand in an inclusive and supportive family
- How a love of the Japanese language segued into working in tourism, and then moved into studying law
- How an egalitarian philosophy guides Catherine in her use of language and treatment of others
- About Catherine’s passion for encouraging, mentoring and supporting women lawyers in Japan
- Why Catherine decided to open her own law firm and start her own podcast in Japan
About Catherine:
Catherine O’Connell is Principal & Founder of her award-winning boutique law firm, Catherine O’Connell Law. She is the first foreign woman to set up a law practice in Tokyo and winner of the British Chamber British Business Awards, Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2020.
Prior to launching her commercial & corporate law practice in 2018, Catherine most recently served as Head of Legal and APAC Regional Legal Counsel for Molex Japan LLC. She has held senior In-House Legal Counsel positions at global brand name companies Panasonic, Olympus and Mitsubishi Motors, and has extensive private practice experience at Hogan Lovells (Tokyo and London) and Anderson Lloyd (New Zealand).
Her business experience includes promoting legal services to SMEs and women entrepreneurs, legal support for launching businesses/services in Japan, legal & compliance risk-opportunity strategic consulting (pre-acquisition) post-acquisition integration of legal systems and legal literacy, bicultural and bilingual commercial transactional support, transcultural management issues, compliance policies and procedures, ethics investigations, in house legal department operations, management and procedures. Catherine is also the President of Women in Law Japan.
Catherine has lived in Japan since 2002 and is host of the award-winning “Lawyer on Air” Podcast sharing inspirational stories about business and life in the law from women working in the law in Japan. She believes that no two lawyers are the same and every lawyer has an inner lawyer extraordinaire whose story is just waiting to be unlocked. She has three passions: empowerment of women in Japan, wellness and flexible working for lawyers and the intersection of law and entrepreneurship.
Connect with Catherine:
https://www.instagram.com/lawyeronair/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/oconnellcatherine/
https://www.facebook.com/catherine.oconnell.148
Connect with Jackie:
Website: https://en-joi.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackie-f-steele-phd/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/enjoidiversityandinnovation
https://www.facebook.com/jackiefsteelephd
Instagram: www.instagram.com/enjoi_diversity_innovation/
Transcript
Jackie: Welcome to Diversity rocks innovation! Volume 13. My name is Jackie Steele. I’m a long time Canadian political scientist living and teaching here in Japan, working on diversity mainstreaming. And I’m also the CEO and founder of enjoi Diversity and Innovation. enjoi is a Japan based global facing business and we’re working in Japanese and English primarily.
And we want to support corporate leaders and corporations and senior leaders and policymakers to build out what is really a diversity positive ecosystem and corporate culture. And we know that diversity rocks innovation to the core. We are interested really in inclusive innovation that amplifies and supports equality, and that really powers our people systems for personal and collective good and for the long game. We’re building this for the long game, right? As a corporate strategy and as a business strategy. So with this livestream, Diversity Rocks Innovation, each week I have the very wonderful pleasure of featuring collaborators in the enjoi Diversity and Innovation thought partner network.
And we thought partner out loud in an organic setting, just two human beings minus the business cards and any of the sempai kohai relationships or other kinds of social hierarchies that we often can’t seem to get beyond sometimes in Japanese society, and that can limit the open, free of exchange of ideas, and that can really rock innovation.
So we join together just for a moment at lunch hour, every Tuesday at noon in Japan and also this ends up being Monday evenings in North America, for those who are joining, and I thank you for those who are joining from North America as well. And we enjoy just a laid back collegial exchange of expertise, worldviews, identity, and our lived experiences.
So it is my pleasure today to welcome my guest and wonderful thought partner, Catherine O’Connell. I am so excited to host Catherine. She is a pioneer, who has launched her own boutique law firm that has been really successful and moving the dial in a lot of interesting ways. And this new business model that she has launched and has been excelling at here in Tokyo has really inspired me.
And so I also really consider Catherine to be a business mentor, and I love following all that you’re doing. So Catherine welcome to Diversity rocks innovation! Volume 13, and thank you for joining today.
And today I know that I’m excited to share a lot of different parts of your diverse profile and your professional expertise as well. I know you’re a very proud New Zealander. And in fact, I was thinking of you yesterday, cause I went to the supermarket in Northern, rural Nagano, and I could find these New Zealand apples that are called Breeze.
And we purchased them and my kids were ecstatic and them having their apple a day and were like, these are New Zealand apples. Anyhow, I think that I thought of you, and I thought, I didn’t realize that we had, is this a particularly unique New Zealander apple that’s very coveted like the “Fuji ringo” in Nagano and then the wonderful apples here?
What can you tell us about these apples?
Catherine: Well, I mean, there is some truth and I think there’s actually a lot of truth in the apple a day keeps the doctor away. And as you know, New Zealand is an agricultural nation and of course we produce a lot of different produce. Apples have really surged in the last year.
People, I think through COVID-19 especially in Japan, have realized that apples are an amazing source of not only vitamin C but other nutrients. And so there are a number of brands because there are a lot of different producers in New Zealand who are building their own apple export industry under small boutique brands.
So that’s one of them and I’m glad you’ve latched onto them, and do let them know on social media how you feel and have your kids take a photo, because they would love that, to see some customer reaction in Japan. Give the love back.
Jackie: I mean, our family growing up in Vancouver, the home healthy snack after school was having an apple.
Right. And so many of the different apples in British Columbia that we can get, you couldn’t get in Japan and these beautifully bright red apples, the breeze. Yeah, my son’s eyes, I want the reddest one. And then he went in there and had a whole like deep dive to see which one that would be. So it was a great success, but I’ll look them up. That’s exciting.
So Catherine, I mean where to begin? There’s so many things that I want to ask and have you share with our listeners. And particularly, I know one of the things that we’ve talked about in the past that really stuck with me, was when you shared about how important so many men were in your life, not only growing up, but also in your career.
And I wondered if maybe we could do a deep dive to go behind the scenes and think about, who is Catherine, when you were growing up as a girl in New Zealand? What was that like? And talk to me more about that.
Catherine: How much time have we got? I think I’m extremely blessed in that I was born and raised in New Zealand to both a New Zealand dad and an Australian mum who obviously fell in love and got married.
And I was one girl amongst three other brothers, two older than me, one younger. And at the time when I was growing up, I was very envious of my friends who were girls and who had sisters. And I didn’t have those and I felt left out, but now I realize how utterly blessed I was to have guys.
And I didn’t really think of exclusion when I grew up. I think I was very much included as one of the boys. And dad would include me in cars, or changing the oil, or we would be in the garden together planting vegetables, or dad would do wallpapering or stippling of the ceilings. And I would be involved in that. It wasn’t, no, you can’t be involved. In fact, I can remember being there when my brothers weren’t, maybe they were off studying or doing something else, but dad and I had this great relationship.
So I think he was very much someone who just made sure that I was exactly the same. And I think that could trace back to where New Zealand was in 1893, the first country to give women the vote and has always really expressed this equalization of women for all of us being human beings. So mum also was a working mother.
She would work, go out in the evenings to work at a restaurant where she was on the till and balancing up the totals at the end of the night. And she would do that kind of work while we were sleeping. So we would wake up and mum was there. Right. And so even though she may have gotten in quite late, she was there for us too.
So a balanced working life between them. And I wish really now I’d asked so many more questions about that relationship, but that’s where I came from. I feel I was thinking about this and the only real exclusion I can think of that comes to mind was, mum being Australian. We went to Australia for our holidays and saw mum’s side of the family.
And my Nana, I remember the day my brothers wanted to go and see Star Wars. It was just out. And so dad took three boys off to star wars, and I got to stay home with Nana, which I really didn’t like, because I felt that’s the first time I felt excluded from a boys movie. As it turned out, I think Dad slept through it.
But later when I saw that series, I was so overwhelmed with how lucky I was that now I’m seeing it. But it was just, that’s really the distinctive thing. I can remember particularly being excluded. And I think my Nana said, girls don’t go to that sort of thing, you guys go off.
And it may be that at the time she wanted some time with me, but that was the point where I felt a little excluded. Maybe I was 12 or 11, I don’t know. But that’s the only time I can really think about not being part of the boys.
Jackie: Interesting. And I think it is, I mean, certainly I would echo this idea of how, what a pivotal role fathers play for daughters in really making them feel like they can challenge anything and that they are given mentoring in so many different things.
And certainly we were three daughters in my family and I was the youngest. So kind of a different dynamic where I had a dad who wanted to play every sport under the sun. And he wanted companions to play with. And so girls, daughters, whatever, it didn’t matter. We were playing sports and that was just what we did.
And so he mentored us in softball and competitive best pitch and soccer and badminton and volleyball and any sport. And even taught me how to gamble and taught me how to play poker. These things that if you don’t get that mentoring, that imprint mentoring from a father figure or a father or someone who engages in those activities and makes it accessible to you, you don’t feel it becomes yours and part of what you’re competent at.
Catherine: So true. And I think dad as well on the sports thing, New Zealand obviously very big rugby nation. My brothers have not really followed in the rugby thing. They’re into other sports like cricket and soccer or football. But dad was very much encouraging me, we’d watch rugby on TV and I knew all the All Blacks’ names and I knew all the team members and that sort of thing was amazing to do as well, the sports stuff.
And the other thing was, seeing mum and dad in the house. And the shared duties that they had. Again when mum went to Australia by herself to see her mother we’d be left with dad. And he tried his hardest to do things that were really great for the cooking. Sometimes he mucked it up. I remember the day he was making a steak pie and he used a sweet pastry instead.
So it was a bit, dad what is this, when he cooked it, but you know, trying to do that and sharing, and he could have equally said, you can’t go or we all have to go. But she did. And that sort of happened several times. And I remember that shared duty that was also just a natural, it wasn’t a woman’s job or it wasn’t dad’s job.
It was so shared. Yeah.
Jackie: With your household running, and this is I think the pain point we see the most in Japan. When we have too strict of division around being limited to whatever gender you are, or what not, you also don’t get overlapping competencies, which I think are really key to the resilience of the household. Maybe this is me having lived through the triple disaster in Sendai, but I’m always thinking, okay, if I’m dead, for some reason, there’s a car accident or there’s a triple disaster or whatever reason, can the household function without me?
And so do we have role coverage that you could survive where one’s spouse replaces the other and has the skills to get by. So it’s not such a specialized division of duties, because I think that really has weakened the household. And we see that lack of flexibility in a lot of Japanese households, which then creeps over now that we’re into two working parents is absolutely the norm in Japan, and has been for many, many, many years.
But the shifting on to household runners, two people who share the household running as parents, and as legal guardians, two heads of the household. I can never find a good expression in English, but in Japanese it’s like, “kyodo daihyo” it’s like a joint representative system and you can do it in nonprofit organization.
But how do you do that, and build that out in the family, in the household running for duties so that you really get role coverage across everything, right? So then, if one person needs to go on a trip, or is in the hospital, the household doesn’t crumble to a halt because so many of those jobs, the other parent can’t handle.
Catherine: I think the only thing my dad put his foot down on was nappies. You know, diapers in some other countries, diapers. I am not changing those. And that’s the thing he wouldn’t do. But other than that he basically did.
Jackie: What if your mother wasn’t there? There’s just no way around that.
Catherine: I don’t know what happened there, but I think basically he didn’t do that, which is quite interesting.
Jackie: Isn’t it funny that he’d be so squirmish.
Catherine: He was like, he would probably not be very well doing it. He’d probably throw up really. That was what it was. Yeah. Anyway, it’s a great memory to think about that.
Jackie: These things that shape us in these really interesting ways and change our own expectations of certainly how we think about who would we want to share a life with?
What are the values of the people around us? Bring that kind of open-mindedness to appreciating and role sharing, regardless of what body you were born into, I think is so pivotal and important.
And when you were starting out, I mean, you weren’t always a lawyer. So prior to venturing into law, I know you did a lot of other things.
Do you want to share which parts of those parts of your life you feel really, well obviously there’s the connection to Japan that started, and learning Japanese and the tourism piece. Maybe you’d want to share about how that brought you into this connection, long-term lifetime connection to Japan.
Catherine: That was pivotal. I really think if I hadn’t studied Japanese, there’s no way I’d be in Japan now. I don’t think. Because language has really carried me in Japan to be successful here and opening up my own practice or having the gall to do such a thing, to have the spirit to do that. But I think my first career was in tour guiding, and I worked for other various companies such as JTB, and I’d sort of left school not really wanting to go to university.
In fact, I think I found out later my parents didn’t think I was university material, which really gutted me when I heard that, but I think I’ve shown them. Anyway, I didn’t go to university straight off. I went to a language school where I studied Japanese full-time for two years.
I went from the bottom of the class to the top. I loved, loved, loved Japanese, the whole thing about the language and the culture. And so my natural progression then was to go into tour guiding. And at the time Japan was in a wonderful bubble state and they were coming to New Zealand in droves.
I took a lot of Japanese people around New Zealand, and bungee jumping, jet boating, landing on glaciers was my job. And I got paid to do that and see part of my country. And after that it was really during tour guiding, it was a Japanese male who I knew at the time who had done law in Japan and had said to me, why don’t you just, you could go and do something else.
You could be a lawyer, and just speak to Japanese people about law in their language. And I thought, Wow. Could I do that?
Jackie: What an interesting thing for him to just suggest.
Catherine: Yeah. I think he just saw something that I didn’t see. And I also didn’t really realize at the time, how much of a mentor he was. And now I know he was looking back, but you sometimes need someone like that in your life who will show you what you can’t see within yourself.
So through my tour guiding a lot of Japanese had asked me about legal questions. You know, what happens? What’s the court system like? How do people, how does the government make laws? And what happens if something terrible goes wrong and you find yourself in front of a judge? So those questions I had to go home and investigate, and then come back and be able to speak about them on the bus or in the limousine, wherever I was.
Jackie: That’s some pretty high level questions from tourists.
Catherine: So some tourists were lawyers who got married and came to New Zealand. And so they were asking these kinds of questions. So through that study of law, to be able to deliver at my job, I got an interest in law. And so that combination to the mentor, who I didn’t know at the time was a mentor, the magical mentor.
I was then transported back into university or over to university and did law and Japanese. And that then took me into a legal career as my second career.
Jackie: What was the first reason why you chose to study the two year program of Japanese? Like you could have studied any language at that point and ended up doing Spanish and ended up doing tour guiding in Latin America or in Spain or in Europe.
So why, why was it specifically Japanese at the time?
Catherine: I think at the time I’m 16, going on 17 and thinking my aspirations for work were bank teller and working in a stationary shop. Cause I love the smell of paper and ink. Now those are valuable and very, very important jobs. And I now buy stationary like nothing else.
So it’s got my passion there, but I didn’t have any other real vision of what it would be, because I probably around me, did not have a lot of people who were giving information. I know these days we have a lot of people impart information to people as they’re growing up. So I did go, I think maybe it was dad or mum’s suggestion to go down to the technical Institute, the Polytechnic and see what might be there.
And I think when I looked through the column, I thought tourism, oh, that’s a great one. And that’s where the Japanese came into it, to be working in the tourism industry Japanese would obviously be an asset. So I did that as well as studying a travel diploma, and that got me sort of qualified for the travel agency that is JTB where I ended up.
So it was really a discovery, probably a little bit of a push from my family that I didn’t really think about, but that was significant in that tourism industry, New Zealand’s booming in it. You need a language, you need a skill in it. That’s the way it goes. So that’s where it started from.
Jackie: And when you mentioned about the jobs that you were seeing around you that you maybe would end up in, were there conversations with you and your brothers growing up, or with your parents about, what do you want to be when you grow up? And did you find that you had similar conversations or different conversations with your brothers about that? Or was it not discussed?
Catherine: I don’t know. I can’t remember those discussions. I remember that this course that I took was Japanese for tourism and trade. So it was obvious that I was going to end up there. So perhaps it wasn’t talked about, but I do really remember, because I was just such a study girl, I came home and I would be relieved from duties at home, like setting the table, washing the dishes, and my brothers would be doing that kind of work.
I’d do it at other times, but I can distinctly remember them supporting in that kind of way. Probably they were forced to do it by mum and dad, but at the same time, without actually talking about it, I think it demonstrated a support for that. And I won this Japanese speaking competition and got a trip to Japan as a result during that study.
So I think they’ve had that kind of from afar, but like a cocoon of support around me, whether it not be verbalized. And I think support can often be not so much verbalized, but through action. And I think their actions and the way that they did the home housework things, instead of me, was it was a way of supporting.
Jackie: Kind of a very interesting character foil. Too often what you see sometimes, raised in Japan as a barrier for girls education. The comment we often inevitably get is, we have a daughter, we had a daughter first, and then the son came second. And so many people comment, oh, isn’t that so great, the daughter can help you with all of your household chores.
Never do I get that comment about my son, right? And the idea is also that the daughter is helping on the household fronts. And that gives more space for the son to just really focus on studies, which of course is not the dynamic in our household. They both do the dishes clean up after every dinner, they’re on dishes duty together.
But that has kind of been the stereotypical role division for sons and daughters in Japan that can hold back and give boys a pass on that, not having to learn household chores, because they’re supposed to devote themselves to their studies. And interesting that in your family, you got the pass as the only girl
Catherine: That may be the only girl pass. It might’ve been that. But if I was 17, I guess my brothers were 23, 24. So they were doing university, going off to university and coming back. So they probably had study as well, but somehow I got out of it. Thanks mum and dad.
Jackie: Yeah, you didn’t get to go to Star Wars, but you got a pass on a whole bunch of things. So we have to pick and choose our battles, right?
And so from there, you obviously studied and went and pursued this legal career. And I know you practiced law in New Zealand, but what made you think to make the jump to become a lawyer and move to Japan?
Catherine: I had worked in New Zealand for seven years in corporate, commercial, general practice, had looked after a lot of Japanese, a lot of the big corporates who are big names in Japan, Mitsubishi, Marubeni, Mitsui. They had all operations in Japan and so I started helping them.
But I think after about seven or so years, I think there’s that seven year itch that they often talk about. But one of my darling friends, Tanya, who is probably going to listen to this later, she threw, or poked, or pushed an advertisement under my nose, which was an advertisement in one of the law magazines to seek out a Japanese speaking, or maybe not Japanese speaking actually, Commonwealth qualified lawyer to come to Japan for one year contract.
And that was with Olympus and I did apply for that and get that job. So I have to thank and blame Tanya for bringing me over to Japan. Obviously I did the interview and got the job, but she prompted me. So perhaps again, someone else who is definitely a mentor for me, and I think she is, saw something in me that needed a bit more pulling out.
And so that was instrumental in bringing me to Japan for one year, which ended up being what it is now, 18.
Jackie: Right. A one-year contract turns into 18 and now certainly not all of those years were spent at Olympus.
Catherine: No, there were variations of that as in-house and working in law firms. So I went down to Osaka and spent four years and learnt some of their dialect, working in very manufacturing centric companies, where there were a lot of men.
And we can talk about that.
And also, coming back up to Tokyo and working with an international law firm and then being transferred on secondment to both another Japanese firm, Mitsubishi Motors, then off to London as well. So varied career there. But when I arrived in Japan, Japanese with Olympus wasn’t that important, but as I went through my career and I think this has changed over the years, Japanese language ability has become more important.
And especially for me in communication with everybody in the companies that I’ve worked in. Being a lawyer, people will hold you up to some high pedestal, but having a language such as I did and a good command of it, I could really engage with the guys and I’m talking lots of men that I worked alongside.
And I think from that, they respected me a lot, speaking with them at their level.
Jackie: And so maybe we can dive into that. Certainly I’m very passionate about bringing a lens forward and having a conversation in Japan that doesn’t just think about diversity as women, right? I mean, everyone, every individual, has intense diversities inside their own, what makes them uniquely their individuality.
And as we can move the conversations also include the diversity, not only within women, but the diversity within men. We also, I think for me, the main point there is to then realize how men can be allies for change, and are allies for change, when we identify them and look for them. And I know you had some strong experiences of feeling a lot of mentorship and support, and just very much that the men in the worlds that you were navigating were not necessarily a barrier to your professional development.
And you mentioned the Japanese language allowing you to be on an even par, but it’s also interesting how the Japanese language sometimes can be an impediment to speaking as equals, given the way that sometimes the feminine speak within the Japanese codes plays out.
As a lawyer, because you’re speaking about law and the technicalities of law, does that allow you to use a command of the Japanese language that does allow you a more egalitarian interaction in Japanese? With some of the tropes of the feminine Japanese language that is differential by nature, and the way that plays out.
Catherine: Well, I make a definite point of not using feminine language. I know it does exist in Japanese, but I think also the course that I did in New Zealand is that we were taught standard Japanese.
And so I do not use feminist words or feminine expressions in Japanese, I use standard. And so in that way I could, I think, moderate how I was interacting with both males and females in the companies that I was in. In Osaka, when I went to Panasonic because they have such a strong dialect, I started to use some of the dialect because that’s what the guys were using.
So in terms of communication with men, and with women actually, I worked in Panasonic, I used to wear the company uniform and we would change in the morning, in the changing sheds, or whatever you call it. And we were all using this dialect for comradery and affectionate getting together and getting to know each other.
So I would use that as well. That was the kind of language I would use in order to communicate very well with the men in the company who all use that. And I think they kind of found that quite cute, and I mean that in a good way in that I was attempting, but in terms of going into a feminine realm, I wasn’t using that kind of language.
So I think that may have helped. You’ve made me think about that.
Jackie: Sometimes women, well certainly Japanese women, feel intense pressure to speak with polite language, more polite language. So even if we’re using standard Japanese, it just comes out and is expected to be more polite from women than from men.
One of my graduate students back in the day was doing a thesis on the challenges that women in management in corporations in Japan face because they’re trying to be managers with authority and to communicate and exercise and speak their authority. But they were finding that the use and expectations around polite language would mean that it would undermine, if they spoke in a too polite form, it undermined their managerial authority. And the younger men wouldn’t see them as their boss.
And so navigating the power dynamics around language politics was particularly challenging for these Japanese women managers who were senior and needed to speak in a way that would command that authority. Right?
Catherine: Right. And so Japanese too, with language that you’re speaking and also written language is different, and you do need to understand and respect that as well. But what I do now is consciously intentionally look at the way that Japanese males, particularly Japanese male lawyers, that are collaborators with me, how they write their emails.
And so I will adopt their style. So I’m writing in a form that is understandable across the board for people in Japanese when I’m writing Japanese, that it’s a male version. And I quite like doing that because the way they write is just straight. It’s not convoluted with a lot of the usual beginnings and endings.
And I feel that’s actually more true to me to be writing in the way that they’re writing. So I really appreciate, there’s one sensei, Dohi sensei who helps me out a lot and his style I really liked. So I try to emulate him. Yeah, I just think again we’ve got that difference between written and speaking.
It’s not to say, I said I didn’t use feminine. And then sometimes with women, I might use it or I might use it just as a little way to just show I do know what you’re talking about. I can use that, but I’m not using it. But depending on the situation, I might use it to be a bit of a sweetener or to be diplomatic and very strategic in how I use it.
Jackie: Right. I found when I first worked at city hall in Japan, it was my crash landing into a city hall hierarchy.
Catherine: Oh I didn’t know that. That’s amazing.
Jackie: Yeah. And it was interesting because I was trying to navigate those dynamics exactly, within the hierarchy where I was expected to use keigo and polite speak for everyone. I was basically the bottom of the bunch. So everyone is above me. But particularly for your kacho and above.
And I remember thinking, I wish to engage and use a more egalitarian Japanese language speaking style, but then it would be misunderstood as, oh, she’s a foreigner, she doesn’t understand keigo. And so I really then needed to show, sometimes I would use it just to show that I did obviously know how to use it.
Catherine: Right?
Jackie: But I’m intentionally attempting to speak in a more egalitarian and flat way in my interactions, even with my kacho, which with some kachos it worked. And with other kachos, you knew that they really resented it. And so learning where those flexibilities were from certain of the superiors who were open to a more egalitarian engagement was interesting.
But it is, I think, an interesting challenge and we do see so many Japanese women who do speak English prefer to move the conversation often in a global context to English, because it comes out more direct and egalitarian.
Catherine: Level playing field.
Jackie: It’s a little bit more of a level playing field.
And so they don’t have to worry about all the formulaic polite speak in Japanese, if they can move the conversation there. And then it feels like it’s less gendered in a way that’s negative, or like undermining women’s authority, I think. And so many, many bilingual and global talented women that I know, certainly talk to me about how they find it’s a strategic advantage to just shift to English, right?
And then they can be on a more even playing field.
Catherine: Language is one thing. But I think it’s also how people maybe have an assumption or a stereotype that we should speak differently or treat men and women differently. And I think that’s probably one of the things that I always attempt to treat men and women in the same way and speak with men in the same way that I would with women.
And I think it’s important. I believe that they are equals in the room with me. I believe I’m equal in the room with them. And so I don’t try to do a different style. It’s the same with all the guys, as it is with all the women. So I think that’s one other point. And in those interactions we are teaching both men and women how to interact with us. And so we set our style. So I think through language and our actions, the way we deliver that to people is going to be heard and observed.
Jackie: And I think we have flexibility because we’re foreign women in Japan, to play around in those zones a little bit more loosely and to role model and to experiment and maybe to innovate linguistically more without getting sanctions so quickly.
I think we probably have a little bit more freedom. And so I think that is an interesting way that we can try and open up some more space so that other Japanese women also have that liberty to say things in different ways and don’t feel those pressures in the room. And that can mitigate things in small ways, hopefully.
You had such a successful career clearly, why all of a sudden did you think, I’m going to branch out and become an entrepreneur and go it alone and all of the risk in some ways that entails? I think that it was very brave and courageous and there weren’t many examples surely, of foreign led law firms in Tokyo, single solopreneurs. I don’t think at the time there were that many.
Catherine: There still aren’t. Well, yeah, I think the numbers of solopreneurs, solo law firm owners, or one or two partners is really very low still in Japan, with foreigners I’m talking about, not Japanese people, with foreigners it’s really down to about under 20, I would think it’s actually under about 10, at least within Tokyo.
And so I had worked in New Zealand. I’d worked in Japan in house for a big company’s head office, right? Those large brands I talked about. I’d also worked on secondment to another firm. I’d worked in London. I had then, after that stint in London, come back to the company, the law firm where I was, and found another job because I was head hunted for setting up a legal practice within a company, an American subsidiary in Japan.
So I felt I’d kind of ticked a lot of those boxes of the experience and not so much a new challenge, but I had enough, I thought, within me to be able to do something myself. It wasn’t that I had a gap, I haven’t done a subsidiary of a foreign company. Oh, I haven’t done a Japanese headquartered company.
Yes, I’d done all of that. So I thought I’d covered things. And so perhaps yes, it is a challenge. And where I left from my previous firm, I did get a payout. After five years of working you can get paid if you leave the company because you pay into a retirement scheme, so I didn’t leave with nothing. I left with enough to establish and keep established for a year.
And that’s really important. And I would say that to people is you just don’t go and do something and think it’s all going to come together. It can for some miracle workers and some of the Elon Musks and those of the world. But it is a risk. But if you’ve got some protection, and you do need monetary support behind you, knowing that I had a year of finance that would be my normal salary, that sort of allowed me to think a little bit differently.
I was still very nervous. I had no idea where it was going to end up, but if you don’t try it, where’s it going to land otherwise? If you try it and it doesn’t work, you’ve done it, but I never want to be on my death bed saying, wow, imagine if I’d tried that, and I hadn’t. So it was important to me to just try and see.
And I think through a lot of friendships and colleagues helping me out, a lot of those men as well, helped me set up my foundations. My business sent clients to me. My first clients came from male referrals. Incredible. So it was an attempt to do something different and also just utilize all of the experience I’d had up til that point to do something different.
And during my time in my last corporate job, I had experienced the fact where I had no staff member and needed someone to come in and help me, just a part-time business, part-time way to help me in the business. And I couldn’t find that kind of person. So that’s the kind of law that I wanted to do, was to be somebody who could help and support businesses that don’t need a full-time lawyer or can’t afford the account.
So that’s the kind of business I do now, which is quite revolutionary and still very unique in Japan, is to do that kind of service where I help businesses and other in-house counsel who are overworked and understaffed to sort of bridge them and help them in that way. And I love it because I’m still getting the juice of in-house legal work because I’m working with in-house councils, but I’m also a law firm and work with individuals as well and help them create their businesses.
Jackie: I would think that really it gives you such a resilient business model because you have such a diversity of potential clientele, both the corporate side, if it’s supporting a client on a part-time basis or secondment, but also diversity of other clients. And if we’re thinking about diversifying a new clientele base, so that during a pandemic if one dries up you have other options to keep you going, surely that’s such a strength of your business model that I take inspiration from.
And I sort of thought, there’s so many companies in Japan who probably aren’t ready to invest in a head count for an in-house D&I person. And frankly, there’s not that many diversity experts in the Japanese market ready to be hired into those positions. So that really is when I went, oh, wow, external legal counsel is what Catherine is offering for the market in Japan as a niche.
External D&I counsel could be something that enjoi offers to companies who need support. They need expert guidance. But they’re not ready to have the full head count and the lifetime employment hiring burden.
And so when I thought about that I had a whole eureka moment after thinking about it and reading your business proposition and what you do and how you phrase that. Now I understand where maybe enjoi can have a contribution in this particular market to support a variety of clients. So thank you for that.
Catherine: Very glad to hear that. And I think when you first told me that I was like, oh my goodness, I can inspire beyond law! Because my vision for Japan is to open it up more to lawpreneurs, legalpreneurs, and have more people being able to do this kind of business, but it takes a little bit of a change to the regulations.
The Ministry of Justice needs to really make that different so that it’s more expanded, and allowing people to have this flexibility, and law firms changing the way that they operate. And there’s been some developments around that to make working in the law a little bit easier. But I’m hoping to see more of that, but I’m really glad that that’s been an inspiration for you.
Jackie: So brilliant that you, because you had done so many diverse roles, you could see the need in the market.
Catherine: Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly right. I could see the gap was definitely glaring and right there, and so that’s a reason why I did it. And there were people who said that’s crazy. And there were people who said, wow, I’d never do that.
But I’ve said this many times that I think it’s really a reflection of that person’s risk level rather than my own. And at the time I took it as, gosh, really? Am I doing the wrong thing? But through executive coaching, and other building of muscle, I realized that in fact, it is just information that we receive from people and that that kind of view is really their view.
They’re just pulling it out and also mirroring, as a mirror on top of you and expect perhaps that you’re feeling that way. Whereas actually it’s just really them.
Jackie: Frankly, people who are pioneering, who are leading a new path, particularly in the business world, but in any world, it means that you’ve seen something that nobody else is really realizing is needed on the market.
And certainly I think your depth of experience meant you could see that there is room for a highly expert, niche, specialist, lawpreneur role to compliment and to support other parts of the Japanese legal market that other people are just not seeing. And certainly for D&I, that’s where I see that there’s such a huge demand for D&I in Japan.
And I feel like there’s not enough people to do it. For me to go in-house for one company maybe doesn’t make sense because then you help one company, but you don’t really move the dial for all of Japan. And I would love to support a variety of stakeholders with the expertise that we can bring so that it’s broader than just maybe one client or one company or one entity.
Catherine: I think the good side of the Ministry of Justice and the way the regulations are is that we’re all collaborative. So I’m only allowed to do certain areas of the law. So I am destined and need to collaborate with others.
And so when I have an IP, intellectual property, question, I’m asking one of my IP lawyers who happens to be a male Japanese. When I’ve got higher level civil code or commercial questions, I’m asking the lawyer that I mentioned to you before. When I’ve got employment matters, when it’s an employer matter, I will go to one of the guests who’s on my podcast.
And if it’s smaller, looking after the employee side, I will go to Chiba sensei who defends employees. So again, I’ve just mentioned a bunch of people and most of those are men who are still supporting me very fully in my business. And so it’s an ecosystem that’s also growing in that I can’t do everything, but I know who to go to, to get that from.
Jackie: And it’s beautiful to be able to have and build expertise sharing. And I mean, I think the whole value, right? The diversity rocking innovation pieces that we bring in, all the different expertise, and of course social identities, lived realities. We want to bring all of that into the pie and the conversation, because we get better ideas brainstorming and solutioning. Definitely for that.
I am fascinated to see Catherine, your role modeling for this new business structure, because I think women have been so underrepresented within the field of law in Japan and the number of women lawyers is very low. And perhaps one of the, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but one of the differences that I would see is, having women realize they can set up their own boutique and that there is more of a market for that, I would imagine that that could potentially really unleash more interest of women to go into law school, women to become lawyers.
And to know that they have options outside of a ridiculously long facetime corporate job, where they really have to work themselves up the ladder and put in insane hours in a work structure that might be in their minds incompatible with having a family.
Whereas if they’re their own bosses as an entrepreneur, I think that is the best of both worlds for women to find absolute choice.
Catherine: Right. I agree with you. I think that’s why I mentioned more lawpreneurship or legalpreneurship as it’s also called, but I’d also love to see more intrapreneurship. Companies and law firms that are allowing lawyers within the company, allowing lawyers within the law firm to do their own projects.
And if you listen to Hitomi, who’s one of my guests on the podcast. She found that within herself to do that and suggest legal tech as a project and hydrogen as a project within her company, her law firm. And I think that’s amazing. She’s a young lawyer, but if it’s coming from inspiration of lawyers themselves, you can’t just wait for the company or wait for the law firm to do everything.
You’ve got to actually do that yourself. But I love too that the big four in Japan, and they are always the first movers. If they do it then other companies and other law firms will. They’ve been really getting into bigger D&I initiatives. They’ve set up flexible working within their companies and within the law firms, obviously that’s driven by government, Japanese government policy, but also the number of foreign law firms, which are challenging them in that area.
You’ve got new childcare subsidies that they’ve been setting up and mentorship programs. And I think there’s still more to do on that. So mentorship is very much partner to associate, but I think if they do reverse mentoring, associate mentoring the partner, there could be some interesting things there. And with the subsidies and the remote working and flexible working, I think they can still ramp that up a little bit more by offering part-time work because that’s not quite there yet, remote working and less hours, but not quite to the part-time part yet.
So I think flexible work is going to be the biggest game changer in Japanese and foreign law firms here in Japan going forward. And you’re right about the numbers, in 1950 there was only 6 [01:13:00] female lawyers amongst 5,000 lawyers in total. That is 18%. In 2020 there are, within 7,400 lawyers in Japan, there’s 400 odd women.
So there’s much, much more now. And I think foreign lawyers too. There’s a bigger number as well too, but still the needle hasn’t quite moved as much there as it should have. And I think there’s been a recent Japan Federation of Bar Association’s report saying that the needle has only really moved 1% in the past five years.
So it needs to go further.
Jackie: Yeah, indeed. Well, and I think having those role models, and that allows me to pivot towards what I think is your most recent innovation in what you’re doing is of course your new podcast. And I think what’s so lovely about your show is you’re really featuring women lawyers, and putting a spotlight on the fact that this is a profession that absolutely women should aspire to. I mean, personally had I not gone into academia, I would have been a lawyer. I mean, that would have been something that I certainly enjoyed and I love the law to this day and constitutionalism, and took it in that direction academically instead of doing the practical side of using law as a lawyer.
But I think the law is so exciting and I think it’s so integral to building a democratic society. And having a sense of what are the values that bring this community together, this country together, what do we share in common, hold in common and how do we treat each other within this space? And for me law is a source of emancipation that I hope we get more women engaging in and seeing that as a career.
So talk to me about why and how you suddenly decided to create Lawyer on Air. And I love the name. Where did that come from?
Catherine: Yeah. So lawyer on air really was a name that I coined [01:15:00] during last year, during the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020. And I found I was on air a lot and I just put it on a light board behind me and it stuck, hashtag lawyer on air.
And then when it came to thinking about the podcast back in 2018, if you look back on a podcast I did with Jayne Nakata, Transformations with Jayne, I talked about wanting to do a podcast because I wanted to be like her and like others at the time. Sarah Bull had one out, and I said, I want to be like those ladies doing it, but what have I got to talk about?
I didn’t just want to talk about the law. And I mean that in terms of law can be quite dry and I don’t know how I can make that exciting. But in talking with the wonderful Jayne who is now my podcast manager and producer, we had a brainstorm and I said, I’d really like to talk with Japanese and foreign women who are lawyers in Japan, but is that too niche?
And she said, no, that’s it. And she sort of got this feeling and she said, that’s the one to do. And so we worked on it further together and it’s developed into that. So it is story sharing with Japanese women lawyers and foreign women lawyers working in Japan who are working in-house and in law firms.
And it’s really been such an amazing thing. We’ve had five recordings so far in this first season of 10, but I love looking at the analytics. And the analytics, not only do they show it’s being heard globally, like South Africa and Ireland and Iceland, as well as the typical Japan and Australia, New Zealand, but the number of the gender of listeners, 50% are women and 10% are non-specified.
And I don’t know what that quite means. But 39% are men. So you could add that 10% on and make it 50 50, or it could be that it’s around that amount anyway. 40% are men. And when I’ve been at some of the occasions recently where I’ve been able to speak to men face to face, even outside of state of emergency, they’ve told me they really enjoy it and they’ve liked and subscribed and shared with their colleagues.
And these are men who are working in corporate jobs here. They’re not lawyers. And so they have said to me, they’re getting insights into the world of women that they would never have been able to get before. And that gives me chills. I mean, the fact that they are taking the time to listen to it, they’re enjoying it.
They’ve also said it’s quite a light hearted stage, it’s not heavy and dull and boring. It is very well pitched in that it makes it very approachable for anyone to listen to. So I really love those comments. And I really think Dom and Tim and Joshua and Scott and Doug, and all of those people who have said those lovely comments back to me, Martin, that all means so much to me that they have been faithful men who’ve been following.
So it’s for women. And the reason I’m doing it in that focus is that women in Japan who are lawyers don’t really get their voice out there very much. So this is a way for them to tell their stories, talk about leadership, talk about their passions, mentorship, how they’ve come up through the ranks, and also we have some fun topics that we talk about too.
So it’s just been really amazing as a project to do. Apparently I’m the first lawyer in Japan to do a podcast. And I’m saying, well, just do it. If any other lawyers are out there, I throw the challenge down, try something, do something, and express yourself some way through this kind of medium or another kind of medium.
Jackie: I really want to circle back to your training. And I think this is so fascinating to see how; yes, of course you’re this superpowered lawyer that you are with all of your expertise, but at the same time the versatility that comes because you also did tour guiding, you also understand hospitality, you understand accessibility, you can bring in all of that training you had in your previous activities and trainings to this blend of making law approachable, accessible, right?
And in terms of making it something that people aren’t intimidated by or scared off by. And I think that blending of your professional training and your upbringing and your shared solidarities with women and men that allows this podcast I think, to really role model that. Particularly what’s exciting, I think, is that for the men who do watch and for the women who watch and for the nonbinary people who are watching, they can see excellence in a variety of different colors and a variety of different women’s experiences.
And I think that showcasing, and certainly the enjoi thought partner, this livestream is trying to showcase those individualities that are so interesting and thought leading and pioneering for what they bring to the table. And those varieties of excellence, they matter to innovation.
And I think your podcast is really showcasing all the different, excellent women lawyers to challenge the stereotypes around what is excellence and what is like “yushu”? When you say to someone, I’m going to interview a lawyer, who do you think? Do you think of a woman? Do you think of a man? What is the profile you see?
And I think this really challenges our minds. If we can follow the podcast, and I encourage everyone to follow the podcast Lawyer on Air as well, to really be inspired by the diversification of excellence and what that means, and why it’s important to innovation.
So I’m super excited about your podcast.
Catherine: Thank You. I think the other one that I really love is Counsel. It’s a podcast by Mel Scott. She’s based in Australia and she is doing brilliant things with male and female lawyers. And I really encourage people to listen to that one as well.
Thank you. And we’re looking to do more transcripts and ways in which people who are physically affected through blindness or deafness to be able to also have access to this.
So we’re working on that kind of accessibility as well, and I think that’s actually inspired by you, Jackie, because you’re doing that or have it in your plans I believe. So that’s my inspiration, mutual inspiration.
Jackie: Reverse reverberation, maximizing the mediums that we can share our content and I didn’t ever think to put this live stream as a podcast until Jayne said, well, yeah, we can just convert it. And then we’re using it and expanding for people who want to listen, but don’t want to necessarily follow a video. But also the transcripts, yes, for sure. For people who have an application that would read the transcript to them, if they’re hard of hearing or if they’re blind, then that’s another accessibility tool.
Awesome. I didn’t know that. Thank you.
I would love to invite your closing message or takeaway. I think certainly we both love Japan and have high hopes for more diversity and more celebration of women’s leadership, of diversity, and of all the talent that really is in Japan, to make a Reiwa era, that’s going to just really be a shining example of what we can build.
Do you have a message or take away about the law in Japan, or is it about inclusive leadership for Japan? What kind of closing advice or insight might you want to share?
Catherine: Well, that’s a hard one, but I would say we’re only on this planet to live one life, but there’s different ways to lead a life that can be very successful and enriching for you.
So I would encourage lawyers in Japan to do something that they’ve always thought about doing, and haven’t had the courage to do it. Just try it. I’d really like to see more of that flexibility about one’s way of approaching their life. Give it a try. That would be my encouragement for lawyers within Japan.
For women and men, I think, as I said up at the top of the show, it was about treating people the same. So the person who comes and cleans at my apartment gets the hello and goodbye from me as does anybody else that I work with. So I treat anybody along my path the same way.
So I’d say, when you’re in your next meeting and you think you’re surrounded by a lot of men, what do I do? Just treat them exactly as you would, any of your friends or family. And the reverse, if you’re a male amongst a bunch of women, don’t think, oh, I’m the only guy in the room. No need to say that. Just be yourself and be respectful to people in general. So those would be my two touch points.
They’re not amazing, brilliant messages, but they’re really I think quite wholesome. And also getting back to basics on those things, treating people equally, but also within one’s career, going and doing things that are a little bit different, a way that you can be intrapreneurial or entrepreneurial would be my last message.
Jackie: Wonderful. Well, you know, respect for difference is absolutely what we believe in. And certainly if we can move the dial and have more innovation from all walks of life and everyone during their one single life on this planet to bring their radical individuality as I like to call it, or their zone of genius to the table to enrich humanity.
That’s their moment. Right? This is the moment. So I totally agree. Those are excellent takeaways. So thank you very much, Catherine for wow, so many things that I’m going to go back and reflect on further from this conversation and I’m sure our listeners also have learned lots. If you haven’t checked out Lawyer on Air, please do so.
Share the love with the podcast and listen in to really be inspired by so many different inspiring women lawyers in Japan who are excelling.
On that note, thank you for joining and of course you would know that our guest next week for Volume 14 is Bryan Sherman.
He is the founder of Gramercy Engagement Group and also the author of “Eigo de Jinji”, which is a big brick of a book about HR. Wow. Congratulations to him and his co-author. And so we’re excited to welcome Bryan next week. So please tune in. It’s always at the same time, Tuesdays at 12:00 PM over the lunch hour, and I’ll just close with a few offerings from enjoi.
Of course, we have a multidisciplinary team; practitioners, DNI experts, Japan experts, and we really want to help companies in Japan power their people systems to make good for profits, good for people, and good for the long game in terms of business strategy and building equality and companies so we have more innovation.
I benefit and I have the wonderful experience of having a tremendously diverse group of people who support the enjoi products and this livestream in particular. So I’m going to share in the end roll the amazing number of individuals who really have brought their genius forward to support this live stream.
And on that note, I always also include, and invite everyone to take a pause, a little refresh before we start our afternoon. And so please join me in listening to Andrea Menard’s wonderful, beautiful song called Evergreen. She’s a leading Canadian singer and songwriter. And I think the song really highlights that our lifespan is long and we’re going to have many iterations of ourselves and many different times and ways that our identities evolve over that lifespan.
And so if we can embrace all of those adventures, I think we can live the most full and thriving lives possible. So stay tuned and enjoy the song and the end credits. Thank you everyone for joining