Grab opportunities in your legal career or create them yourself with Asako Ouchi

Lawyer on Air

Asako Ouchi takes us on an amazing journey through her career so far - you will need to hold onto your seat for this one! Tokyo, London, Shanghai, Tokyo, Asako created opportunities for herself to get what she wanted from her career and she did not let her circumstances get in the way of at least asking. Often this approach turned into an opportunity, so I highly recommend listening to this particular career journey for anyone who is thinking that what they want might not be possible because of a circumstance.

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In this episode you’ll hear:

• How Asako’s grandfather inspired her to look into a career in the law

• Her first miserable attempt at a memo in BigLaw and what she learnt not to do

• What she learnt from her secondments and why she decided to move in-house

• What she wishes she had done as a university student that would benefit her career today

• Her favourite sayings and other fun facts

About Asako

Asako Ouchi is a Senior Attorney at IBM. She undertook study at the Legal Training and Research Institute of the Supreme Court of Japan (2010) and obtained her qualification for Legal Professional Practice from Keio University Law School (Juris Doctor, 2009) and Keio University (Bachelor of Laws, 2007).

Asako joined Anderson Mori & Tomotsune in 2011 as an Associate in their Tokyo office to March 2020 assisting in all aspects of legal issues for Japanese and Foreign clients, with a focus on competition law, corporate law and labor law.

During her time with Anderson Mori & Tomotsune, Asako had the opportunity for several secondments in-house and to a UK law firm.

First she was seconded to the compliance department of a Japanese shipping company for one year (June 2013 - June 2014) to assist with ongoing cartel matters and to help develop better solutions for competition law compliance.

Her second secondment was as a foreign attorney to the London office of Field Fisher Waterhouse (July 2016 - June 2017). There she assisted Japanese companies involved in cartel investigations in the EU and provided seminars for potential Japanese clients explaining to them the effect of Brexit.

Asako also spent time in the Shanghai office of Anderson Mori Tomotsune (October 2017 - September 2018) dealing with multiple international cases in the area of M&A, cartels, and other general cooperate matters.

Asako experienced a further secondment to the legal and compliance department of Novartis Pharma K.K. (October 2018 - March 2020) which led to her being hired by them, in April 2020 as their Legal Counsel and then Senior Legal Counsel in the Oncology Unit (integrated with the Pharma Unit mid-August 2022) before she then joined IBM in April 2023.

In her spare time, Asako enjoys her time going out with her family especially taking time out with her kids and focusing on them. She is also community minded and participated in the school parents board as a meaningful external activity working towards a sustainable future for her community.

Connect with Asako

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asako-ouchi-9082b2232/

Links

Bistro Hutch: https://www.facebook.com/BistroHutch/

Keio University Founder, Fukuzawa Yukichi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukuzawa_Yukichi

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