Luke Nottage

Background

About Luke Nottage

I hope to build up a bridge between the worlds of legal practice and legal academia in comparative and cross-border commercial and consumer law, particularly in relation to Japan & the wider Asia-Pacific region. I became particularly interested in Japan in the 1980s, during its boom days when studying economics and then law in New Zealand. I have become even more interested since the 1990s, despite or because of Japan's economic slowdown over that 'lost decade', because it has led to another wave of law reform in Japan. I tracked those developments first as a postgraduate student (LLM, then part of a doctorate at Kyoto University), working part-time with various law firms in Osaka over 1990-4. Then, over the mid-1990s in a boutique law firm in NZ specialising in Japan-related matters over the mid-1990s, advising many other law firms and our own clients, while a fractional Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington. Then, from back in Japan teaching at Kyushu University Law Faculty. And since 2001, based at Sydney University, but again involved in various consultancies for law firms and bodies like the OECD, the UNDP, European Commission, ASEAN and the Japanese Cabinet Office. I co-founded the Australian Network for Japanese Law (sydney.edu.au/law/anjel), now with over 500 lawyers, professors and other members spread roughly equally around Australasia, Japan and the rest of the world. I have also supervised PhD students in Korean law and published several books on ASEAN and Asian law. Specialties: Comparative and transnational commercial and consumer law, especially in relation to Asia, and including: contracts, product liability and safety regulation, international commercial and investment arbitration, corporate governance