Law Offices of Douglas K. Freeman

Douglas K. Freeman has the distinction of being the first American to pass the Japanese bar examination and be licensed to fully practice Japanese law. Mr. Freeman has spent a total of 19 years practicing and studying the laws of Japan and New York and is one of the few attorneys capable of providing fully bilingual legal advice relating to both jurisdictions.

As an attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, he has assisted numerous multinational corporations in cross-border mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings, technology transfers and other business transactions. Mr. Freeman has also advised U.S. and Japanese financial institutions in seeking regulatory approval from the federal banking agencies regarding for their new products and other complex regulatory matters.

Prior to this, Mr. Freeman has extensive experience working with Japanese corporations on Japan law matters at the offices of the late Shunro Hamada, Esq., an esteemed lawyer and former professor at the Legal Training and Research Institute of the Supreme Court of Japan. He has drafted and negotiated Japanese business and financing agreements, advised on intellectual property matters and represented Japanese banks, financial institutions and multinational corporations in corporate, litigation and reorganization matters.

Mr. Freeman was formerly an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo and New York. He is an author of a book, “Challenges of the Legal Elite” (Shoji Homu, 2002), a comparative examination of the U.S. legal education system from a Japanese perspective, which has served as a reference for many Japanese lawyers studying law in the United States.