A Japanese company can keep a lawyer under a komon keiyaku, a retainer contract for ongoing consultation, instead of hiring one for each case.
In a survey published by the Ministry of Justice, 45.1 percent of small and medium-sized companies that had used a lawyer had such a retainer. Among startups that had used a lawyer, the share was 78.2 percent. A lawyer interviewed for the survey said that many retainers at his office ran at 50,000 yen a month, and some at 500,000 yen.