On the road
The road trip starting in Paris was supposed to end in Australia, but a hitch in Calcutta landed Laurent Dubois in Tokyo instead.
“My brother said we should go to Australia – possibly even migrate,” recalls Dubois, who had been practicing law in France for a couple of years when the idea came up. The adventurous youngsters fitted out a minibus and, together with the brother’s wife, began the journey of a lifetime – through Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Nepal, and at last to India’s Calcutta (Kolkata). There they intended to put the vehicle on a ship to Australia.
“But,” says Dubois of the expected service, “there was no such thing.” Besides, Australia’s borders were practically closed in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. Dubois parted company with his relatives.
“I wanted to find my own road,” he says. The new path included Burma, Laos, Thailand and, completely by chance, Japan.
“A travelling companion said he was going to Japan, so I went with him.
There was no philosophy behind it,” says Dubois, who now heads the law firm Cotty Vivant Marchisio & Lauzeral in Tokyo.
A few months later, he returned to France to continue his career as a lawyer, but after two years he knew he was not happy there. The interest in Japan and its culture resurfaced. There were fascinating contrasts.
“In France, we have a strong elite. The strength of the system comes from individualism and personal responsibility. We are trained for debate and to demonstrate that we are the best,” he explains. From this standpoint, he adds, “Japan was contrary to everything I had learned, so I was very curious. I was amazed that it works.”
Another factor was the absence in Japan of an equivalent to Christian moralism, of which the philosophically minded Dubois had grown tired.
“Here, people take the world more or less as it is,” he says. “There is not the same gap between precepts and reality. Social rules prevail, not moral rules, with a strong sense of collectivism.”
He took up the ongoing task of attempting to understand.
“It was, and is, a permanent challenge for me,” Dubois says.
After a year in Tokyo with a consulting firm, he was hired as a legal attaché at the French Embassy, and at last was able to study Japanese efficiently. Five years later, in 1985, he left the embassy and established his own consulting firm. In 1988, upon Japan’s anticipated opening of the legal profession to non-Japanese, he began representing both Japanese and French interests as a gaikokuho jimu bengoshi (registered foreign lawyer)
That was at the peak of Japan’s economic bubble, which duly burst in the early 1990s, causing a precipitous drop in Japanese investment in Europe.
“I began working much more for French companies coming to Japan,” Dubois explains. “Part of my work involved Japanese law, and so I began to work in association with a Japanese law firm, TMI Associates.”
That relationship lasted until the Japanese law was changed, in 2006, to allow foreign lawyers in Japan to hire Japanese lawyers. That was when Dubois established the law firm he now runs with partners in Tokyo and Paris.
The road through Calcutta to Tokyo, back to Paris and to Tokyo again was destiny, he says. Dubois found what he wanted, and it consisted mostly of work.
“I don’t believe it is important to have hobbies,” he says, when asked about leisure activities, though he does enjoy hiking and is an avid reader.
“I am very interested in philosophy, and read a lot when I have time. I am very curious to understand the world in which we live.
At 63, retirement is a remote concept.
“I don’t even think about it. I am not interested,” he says. “My plan for the next 10 years is to continue doing what I am doing now, with a bit more emphasis on free time, in order to read more.”
The practice covers mergers and acquisitions, energy projects, intellectual property, employment and commercial litigation/arbitration.
Dubois says he is motivated by growth opportunities for the law firm, with new activity in such areas as energy, materials, software, animation (where two French companies have substantial investments in Japan), food ingredients, technological niches (such as adhesives for the electronics industry) and robotics.
In addition, Japanese companies are once more venturing abroad.
“At present, 80% of our business is in dealing with European investment in Japan. We want to have more of a balance,” he says, adding that the firm has welcomed a new French partner who specialises in offshore investment and recently hired a Japanese lawyer. “I believe in Japan and now I am investing.”