To collect money from the other party, the attorney will generally handle these cases in the following way.
1. Review the evidences and see if the client should move forward.
We may ask for a consultation meeting to discuss with you about the case.(consultation fee is 10,000 yen)
2. Send a demand letter (content certified mail) to the other party in Japan.
The attorney fee (initial fee) for this is 55,000 yen. (Additional fee may be charged, if the case requires additional working time compared to usual cases.)
3. If the other party doesn’t cooperate, then the attorney will file a lawsuit.
The attorney fee for negotiating and filing a lawsuit (step 3) is generally calculated from the amount to claim (hourly charge is also available for some cases). However, the legal fee will be usually more than 660,000 yen. If the other party’s location is distant from our office, it may cost additional fees for travel etc.
4. If the other party doesn’t pay even after getting the court’s order, the attorney will proceed to the court enforcement procedure (See this page)
It may also cost more than 220,000 yen plus tax for starting the above written step 4.
We also receive success fee according to the actual amount collected from the other party. The amount (percentage) of the success fee will be explained in the quotation. Generally, if the case is below 3,000,000 yen, the rate of the success fee is 17.6%.
In Japan, generally you cannot make the other party to pay these legal expenses, and we request our clients to pay the initial fees in advance.
Additionally, even if you file a lawsuit and get the court’s order for payment, it does NOT directly mean you can actually collect the money. If the other party has no asset, it is not possible to collect anything from them. Therefore, usually, if the amount of damage is below certain amount, it may not be cost effective to file a lawsuit for collecting money.
However, we have experienced many issues solved by sending a demand letter from the attorney. Therefore, it is recommended to send a demand letter (the above written step 1 and step 2). You can then consider about how to proceed, depending on the other party’s response.
To avoid future troubles, it is strongly recommended to trade with trustworthy companies when you start the international trading. Also, make sure to get a copy of the official company registration of the other party before starting the trades (we can obtain a copy for you if you request). This is because in some cases (which are absolutely a fraud), we cannot even locate the address of the other party.
Many fraudulent companies put nonexistent addresses on their websites. For example, they may list a 3rd Street address when only a 2nd Street address exists. Simply looking up the address can help prevent some of these problems.