Kitahama Partners’ Statement Regarding Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Kitahama Partners, with “Together with Clients” as our firm’s identity, has a core philosophy of being a group of outstanding professionals who always do their utmost and think things through for the benefit of our clients. To continue to grow in accordance with this core philosophy, we believe it is essential to ensure an environment where each attorney, staff member, and other members of our firm, with their diverse personalities, experiences, and skills, can always do their utmost to serve our clients. To create and maintain such an environment, we promote the creation of an organization where the individuality of each member of our firm is respected, treated fairly, and included, as described below.
1. Cultivating Organizational Culture
Kitahama Partners cultivates an organizational culture where each member of the firm can freely and openly express his or her opinions and act accordingly.
Since its establishment, Kitahama Partners has provided an organizational culture that is consistent with our core philosophy, where the firm’s attorneys and other professionals, regardless of their position, experience, or age, engage with each other as professionals on an equal and friendly basis, understand and respect each other, and always do their utmost for the benefit of the firm’s clients. Our lawyers do not have private offices. Instead, we work in an open setting, where lawyers, regardless of position or experience, are not prohibited from expressing themselves in discussions, but rather are encouraged to express contrary opinions. We believe that an environment where each member of the firm can feel free to make what he or she considers to be the best proposal for the client will foster creative ideas and make each member’s job more rewarding. In an era that, more than ever before, demands a deeper understanding and respect for diversity, we will continue to maintain and develop this kind of welcoming organizational culture.
2. Respect for Diverse Individuals
Kitahama Partners is committed to maintaining an environment where each member of our firm, regardless of his or her gender, age, family structure, nationality, religion, culture, social origin, or other such characteristic, can play an active role in our firm.
Kitahama Partners believes it is essential to ensure an environment where each member of our firm can always give his or her best effort on behalf of our clients, regardless of his or her gender, age, nationality, religion, culture, or social origin. For example, although for many years the firm has maintained a maternity and childcare leave program for female attorneys and staff, the childcare leave programs is now available to all regardless of gender, and both of these programs have been actually used. In addition, our firm provides strong support in developing opportunities for each member to play an active role in accordance with his or her circumstances including adjustment of workload after returning from maternity or childcare leave, regular individual mentoring by those with experience taking maternity or childcare leave, and providing support for enabling studying or training overseas with family members, including infants and toddlers. We believe that, given that each member of our firm is different, creating an environment where each member can demonstrate these differences is the foundation for always doing our best for our clients and is the source of our firm’s value.
3. Ensuring Psychological Safety
At Kitahama Partners, we do not discriminate in any way in hiring or employment, and we strictly apply a zero-tolerance policy for harassment of any kind, including sexual harassment and power harassment.
Kitahama Partners believes that, to always provide the best service to our clients, it is essential to maintain an environment free from any form of harassment and that ensures psychological safety for our employees. Although to perform our work as professionals a certain degree of mutual tension and rigor is required, we do not condone any form of harassment. To ensure that harassment does not occur among any members of our firm, we have established internal rules for the prevention of harassment, which are revised from time to time to be consistent with the concept of harassment in the current era. In addition, by establishing a consultation and complaint counter at each of our offices, we have a system in place to promptly respond to any harassment that has occurred or is likely to occur within the firm.
At Kithama Partners, we will spare no effort in building an organization that follows this Declaration to be an organization that can add to our firm’s history, provide even better legal services, create innovative value, support our clients who are making great strides in the world, and work for the betterment of society.