"Personally, I'd Accept It and Leave the Place" — What I Was Told at a Legal Consultation

日本語版: 「私なら潔く先方の企業の指示に従って宿を出ていきますかね」

In June 2026, over a consumer dispute involving a minpaku (short-term rental), I applied for a legal consultation at a large law firm in Tokyo. The consultation ended after a single session and the firm declined to take the case. About three months later I filed a disciplinary complaint against this lawyer with the bar association to which he belongs. The matter is currently under examination.

What follows is a record of what happened at that consultation. The lawyer's name and the name of the firm are withheld, given that the matter is under examination.

The dispute itself was this: my Airbnb account was deleted while I was staying at a property, and I ended up paying the host twice. The course of it, and how it ended, is written up separately. This account deals only with what happened where I went for help.

The application

On 9 June I applied through the firm's consultation form. In the application I set out, specifically, the outline of the case, the dates, the amounts, the names and locations of the other parties, the steps I had already taken, the outcome I hoped for, and the fact that evidence had been preserved. I stated expressly that I wished for "advice from a lawyer strong in consumer matters and cross-border commercial disputes."

The consultation on 16 June

When the consultation began, the lawyer had not read what I had submitted through the form a week earlier. I had to explain the case again from the beginning, and most of the consultation time was spent on that.

I had brought the documents at the heart of the dispute: Airbnb's "full refund" notice, the replies refusing the refund, and the exchanges with the host. The correspondence with Airbnb is in English. The lawyer could not read these English documents and was therefore unable to examine their contents. I had stated in my application that the other party was a foreign business.

I explained that the host had already received ¥177,510 through Airbnb while also receiving ¥256,802 directly from me — that is, receiving payment twice for the same stay. The lawyer did not suggest that there was anything particularly problematic in this. There was no mention of unjust enrichment, nor of the fact that the host had asked for payment outside the platform. There was no explanation of options such as a contents-certified letter or a small-claims action.

The lawyer's remarks were, throughout, made from the position of the businesses. He was also slow to grasp the situation, and partway through I began to sense a kind of contradiction in his reasoning. As a result I looked him in the eye and said, with a straight face, "That's an interesting opinion."

Then came the following exchange.

When I said, "I am in such an unreasonable situation," the lawyer tilted his head and said:

"Well, unreasonable, I'm not sure…"

When I asked, "If you were in my position and your stay were cancelled unilaterally by the other side while you were staying there, what would you do?" he answered:

"Personally, I'd accept it and leave the place as the company instructed."

I had come as a consumer who had been harmed, and it felt as though I were being told that the person harmed should comply in silence.

The lawyer declined the case, saying: "I see no prospect of winning this litigation, so I cannot take it on." There was no advice as to what other options existed apart from litigation, or what I might do myself.

I asked him to refer me to another firm that could handle the case, and to put his view that day in writing. Both requests were refused as "not possible."

At the end of the consultation I said, "I don't understand what I came here for today." The lawyer then said, "In that case I won't charge you today's consultation fee." Had I not said what I did, the fee of ¥10,000 would, as I understand it, have been collected as planned.

The complaint to the firm

The next day, 17 June, I filed a complaint through the firm's complaints form. The head of the office replied the same day, stating that he had "confirmed the facts" but not what that confirmation had found, and giving no individual answer to my requests. When I asked again for specific answers, a lawyer overseeing several offices replied on 22 June: "With regard to your requests, we are unable to accede to any of them."

What happened afterwards

Without a lawyer's help, I continued to negotiate with Airbnb and the host myself. In the end, the ¥214,002 I had paid to Airbnb was refunded in full, in two payments on 29 and 30 June. A layperson in law recovered it by negotiation alone.

Over this period my insomnia worsened. For nearly three weeks after returning to Japan there were days when I slept only about an hour, and in late June, about ten days after the consultation, afraid that I would collapse, I called an ambulance and was taken to hospital.

The disciplinary complaint

On 17 September 2026 I sent a written disciplinary complaint by registered mail to the bar association to which this lawyer belongs. The matter is currently under examination.

What hurt me most was that, in a place where I had gone to ask a professional for help, my case was not read, my documents were not read, no legal examination was carried out, and I was told to "accept it and leave." Afterwards, I — a layperson in law — recovered the full amount by negotiation alone. I cannot believe that the judgment "there is no prospect of winning" was reached after examining the case.

I have asked for an investigation so that others who come to a legal consultation in the same cornered state are not met with the same response.

If a decision is issued on the disciplinary complaint, I will add it to this account.

About one sentence

"Personally, I'd accept it and leave the place as the company instructed."

It was not the first time I had heard that sentence. My homeroom teacher in middle school said, "There's also a problem on the side of the one being bullied." The police officer and the lawyer I consulted during the COVID years said, "The fault lies with the one who was slandered." A man who survived bullying and became a company president said, of an acquaintance who died from it, "The one who died was at fault."

If the person harmed backs down, the problem disappears. No one holds the person who said it responsible. I have set the same structure down across twenty-five years here.