72 LAWYERMONTHLYMARCH 2023 procedures can be time-consuming, Japanese companies have often chosen litigation for resolving disputes, likely due to both the fact that there is trust in the court process and trust that the court will take initiative to encourage settlements within the litigation process. Civil conciliation, in which the court is also involved and aims for settlement in a closed-door procedure, seems to match the needs of Japanese companies, which tend to prefer avoiding the excessive process of proving their claims. In the case of litigation, it is common that the parties need to submit pleadings multiple times, and in some cases, if the legal or factual issues are complicated, it may take years before the court renders the judgment at the court of first instance. Such a procedure is not required for civil conciliation, allowing a more flexible resolution of the dispute. Do you have significant career experience of your own in this area? Can you share anything about it? To date, our team has often been involved in cases that are large in scale and extremely complex, such as accounting fraud, energy-related investments, information technology services and construction projects, where not only legal arguments but also fact-finding to support the claims are often important. In order to pick up meaningful facts and evidentiary materials from a complex series of events, an understanding of industry practices and business models is essential. It is not an easy task, as each case requires a new understanding of the energy industry, the construction industry, the information technology industry, and other businesses. However, in a highly complicated dispute about oil field development that
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