Global Resources
Masuda Funai is unique among U.S.-based law firms in providing focused legal services customized for global companies with critical business needs in the U.S., such as establishing a U.S. company, negotiating U.S. contracts, managing U.S. employees, and asserting or defending a company's rights in the U.S. The following is a representative sample of the essential cross-border services we provide.
- Negotiating international joint ventures.
- Handling complex M&A and financing transactions.
- Providing immigration counseling.
- Alerting and educating clients regarding sensitive personnel matters, such as sexual harassment, discrimination and employee benefits.
- Intellectual property counseling, including copyright and trademark matters.
- Assisting companies with risk management, including avoiding claims from product liability.
- Advising clients of U.S. laws and regulations affecting international commerce, such as transfer pricing, dumping and anti-trust.
- Prosecuting and defending claims in international arbitrations and lawsuits.
- Handling bankruptcy secured creditors' rights.
- Assisting clients in assuring that their products conform with U.S. energy, environmental and safety standards.
- Providing estate and tax planning for expatriate executives.
Many of our attorneys and staff have international backgrounds and have lived, studied or worked abroad. A number of our attorneys have spent several months abroad, working as in-house counsel for some of our international clients, and several attorneys travel frequently throughout the world to work on various projects and cases. We speak a variety of languages, including Armenian, Croatian, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Ukrainian.
Since 1989, Masuda Funai has had a Visiting Foreign Attorney Program, where an attorney licensed to practice law in Japan (bengoshi) will intern with the firm for a one to two-year period. Many of these visiting attorneys have gone on to pass the New York State Bar Exam while interning with Masuda Funai. This program has facilitated an important sharing of information and insight and has been of great benefit to the firm and our clients, as well as to the visiting attorneys.
We also maintain a network of global contacts in the legal, business, accounting and consulting fields to assist us in representing our clients in other countries. And, Masuda Funai has been a member of the International Network of Boutique Law Firms (INBLF) since 2006. The INBLF is an organization of highly credentialed law firms, located throughout the world, each of which has been identified and hand-selected as preeminent in each firm's respective field of practice.
