Toshihiro Maeda is a lawyer based in Tokyo who practices with Nishimura & Asahi, one of Japan's largest law firms, in banking, finance, and cross-border financial transactions. He has also taught at Keio Law School and serves as chief representative of the firm's Shanghai Representative Office.
Education
Maeda studied law at the University of Tokyo, where he received a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1986. Founded in 1877, the University of Tokyo was Japan's first imperial university and has long been one of the country's leading training grounds for lawyers, officials, and scholars.
He also trained at the Legal Training and Research Institute of the Supreme Court of Japan. Established in May 1947 as a training facility affiliated with the Supreme Court, the institute conducts research and training for judges and provides judicial training for legal apprentices, including new attorneys, prosecutors, and judges.
He later pursued graduate study at Cornell Law School in Ithaca, New York, where he earned a Master of Laws degree in 1994. Cornell Law School is part of Cornell University and offers graduate law programs for lawyers trained in other legal systems.
Career
Maeda's documented career began in New York, where he worked at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom from 1994 to 1995. The firm was founded in New York in 1948 by Marshall Skadden, John Slate, and Les Arps, and it became prominent in corporate takeover and mergers and acquisitions work during the 1970s and 1980s, an area that its early associate Joseph Flom helped develop. He had been admitted to the bar in Japan in 1988 and was admitted in New York in 1995.
From 1996 he was associated with the Great Wall Foreign Economic Law Office in Beijing. In 2004 he began teaching at Keio Law School in Tokyo as a lecturer, and from 2007 to 2013 he served as a professor there. Keio University, founded by Fukuzawa Yukichi in 1858, is one of Japan's oldest private universities.
His Tokyo practice was with Nishimura & Partners. The firm originated with Nishimura Law Office, established in Tokyo in 1966 by Toshiro Nishimura, and merged with Tokiwa Sogo Law Offices in 2004. In 2007 it combined with the international division of Asahi Law Offices to form Nishimura & Asahi. The firm's general and international practice covers corporate, commercial transaction, securities, banking, tax, antitrust, intellectual property, real estate, and litigation matters.
Maeda's professional profile lists practice areas in banking and finance, regulatory compliance, structured finance and securitization, and fintech, with a focus on cross-border financial transactions involving China. In 2014 he became chief representative of the Shanghai Representative Office of Nishimura & Asahi, and his firm profile continues to list him in that role.
