About Mas
Masaya Uchino (“Mas”) was born and raised in White Plains, New York. Both his parents are Japanese and were foreign entrepreneurs in the US - his dad owned a Japanese grocery store and his mom owned and operated two Kumon classrooms. He only spoke Japanese with his parents while growing up and developed a strong interest for Japanese culture, including its food, music, calligraphy, manga/anime, and various other subcultures.
After becoming a lawyer, Mas dedicated the majority of his career to assisting Japanese businesses and entrepreneurs. After living through the challenges of the language barrier and cultural differences that his parents faced as foreign entrepreneurs, Mas became passionate about being able to explain US legal issues to Japanese businesses and entrepreneurs in a simple yet comprehensive manner. Over the last 11 years, Mas has assisted dozens of Japanese businesses and entrepreneurs with cross-border M&A transactions as high as over a billion dollars, complex cross-border litigation that spanned many years, and a wide range of corporate and general business matters.
Mas has also been dealing with the challenges of cross-border estate planning issues with his parents. He decided that he would like to use what he has learned from his own experience to assist other Japanese families with the estate planning process in the US.
Mas also dedicates part of his practice to assisting social enterprise and nonprofits. Before and during law school, Mas dedicated a lot of his time to assisting international human rights profits such as Physicians for Human Rights, Stop Genocide Now, the Asian Law Caucus and the Hastings to Haiti Partnership. These experiences formed Mas' interest in the field of law. While the core of Mas' legal career pivoted toward assisting Japanese businesses, Mas continues to support and assist social enterprise and nonprofits at a discounted rate.
In his free time, Mas enjoys traveling, scuba diving and spending time with his family and friends. Throughout his life, Mas has lived in many areas of the world. In the US, he has lived in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, northern California (San Francisco), and southern California (Los Angeles). He has also lived in Argentina (1 year), the Netherlands (6 months), American Samoa (2 years), and Japan (5 years). He currently lives in Los Angeles but often visits Japan and Hawaii for business and to see family.
Bar Memberships
State Bar of California, Admitted December 2011
Hawaii State Bar Association, Admitted November 2015
Education
Keio University, LL.M. (2018)
University of California, Hastings College of the Law, J.D. (2011)
Brandeis University, B.A., Economics and Politics (Honors), B.A. (2006)
About Uchino Law 2.0
This is actually the second rendition of Uchino Law. Mas previously operated his own small law firm from 2014 – 2017 (formerly known as Uchino Law Offices, P.C.). During these initial years, Mas focused on assisting Japanese clients with cross-border litigation by serving as co-counsel to larger law firms and providing document review services and language support. He also assisted a range of startups and small businesses in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley with small-scale M&As, corporate restructuring, trademark prosecution and general business matters.
In these formative years, Mas was constantly aware that he needed to better understand Japanese corporate culture by going to live and work in Japan. As a result, Mas decided to go to Japan in 2017 and get an LL.M. at Keio University in Tokyo where he finetuned his knowledge of practicing law in a cross-border context and learned about Japanese law. He then worked at a number of companies in Japan as in-house counsel, including Johnson & Johnson, K.K., Pan Pacific International Holdings (the parent company of Don Quixote) and a number of startups in the entertainment industry, including one of the largest Vtuber companies in the world.
After 5 years in Japan, Mas felt that he had a much deeper understanding of Japanese corporate culture and decided he was ready to move back to the US to restart Uchino Law. In addition to taking on new clients, he also continues to serve as outside counsel to many of the companies he worked for in Japan.
When planning his return to the US, Mas began dealing with the challenges of cross-border estate planning issues with his parents. Recognizing that there were not many attorneys that are able to advise in this particular area, Mas formed a relationship with the Law Office of Margaret B. Sharp and began providing estate planning services for both Japanese citizens and US expats in Japan who have assets in California.