Biography: Management Labour and Employment

Akiko Monden is a partner lawyer at Atsumi & Sakai, the first Japanese law firm to create a foreign law joint venture and the winner of numerous awards for finance and securitisation practices. Akiko joined the firm to strengthen the firm's corporate practice, and specialises in employment law for management as well as environment law. Akiko advises both domestic and multinational companies on various employment law issues including restructuring and downsizing, poor performance, health and safety (including mental health, currently a big issue in Japan), overtime payment, outsourcing, personal information, review of employment contract and rules of employment, investigation and measures against misconducts such as sexual harassment, and collective bargaining, and has represented clients in numerous litigation and arbitration cases.

Akiko is a native speaker of Japanese and English. She works and advises clients in both of these languages.

She regularly holds seminars for employment issues in both Japanese and English, and has published numerous articles in Japanese. She has co-authored the Japanese chapter for the Getting the Deal Through – Labour & Employment from 2008 to 2010.

Akiko studied law at Waseda University (LLB, 1999) and graduated from the Legal Research and Training Institute of the Supreme Court of Japan in 2001. Prior to joining Atsumi & Sakai, Akiko was a partner at TMI Associates where she focused on employment matters for foreign clients. She is a member of the Management Lawyers Council (Keiei-Housoukai), the Daini Tokyo Bar Association and the employment and immigration law committee of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association (IPBA).