No. of offices 8 No. of employees 626 (Feb. 2014) Date founded October 1, 1990 Founded 1 October 1990 Number of attorneys 380 (Feb. 2014) | No. of attorneys 380 (Feb. 2014) Major practice areas General practice Headquarters Minato, Tokyo, Japan Number of employees 626 (Feb. 2014) Number of offices 8 | |
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Company type Partnership under Japanese law | ||
Tmi associates workshop
TMI Associates (TMI総合法律事務所, TMI Sōgō Hōritsu Jimusho) is the fifth-largest law firm in Japan.
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The firm was founded in 1990 by ten intellectual property specialists who left the law firm of Nishimura & Partners. It grew quickly in ensuing years, with 33 attorneys as of 1998 and 84 attorneys as of 2004.
TMI is headquartered in the Roppongi Hills Mori Tower in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It has branch offices in Beijing, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Shanghai, Singapore and Yangon. It opened its first domestic branch office in Nagoya in 2012. It was the first Japanese law firm to open an office in Myanmar.
The firm has joint ventures with the American law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, the British law firm of Simmons & Simmons and the German law firm of ARQIS Rechtsanwälte. The Simmons & Simmons venture, begun in 2001, was the first registered joint venture between a major Japanese law firm and an international law firm under the attorney at foreign law system. TMI's Singapore office is also shared with Simmons & Simmons.
The firm is particularly known for its intellectual property practice, being ranked one of the top 3 trademark firms in Japan by World Trademark Review and winning the "Best Japanese IP Firm 2013" award at the International Legal Alliance Summit & Awards. In 2010, the firm hired a former head of the Intellectual Property High Court as an advisor. Chambers & Partners ranks TMI as a second tier firm in intellectual property and as a third tier firm in corporate/M&A and dispute resolution.