While major foreign law firms often have wide networks of offices that span the globe, those firms are allowed only one office in Japan because of a law that they say has blocked them from expanding in the world's third-largest economy.
Moves to change the law, which limits foreign legal firms' operations, have gotten under way with last month's submission of a government-sponsored reform bill. But some major firms say the revisions won't do enough to make it easier for them to change their status.
Baker & McKenzie has 69 offices in 42 countries, including the United States and China. The firm even has two offices in Vietnam — Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City — but just one office in Japan, in Tokyo.