Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Legal Education Digest

Gladding, R --- "A Revolution in Japanese Legal Education" [2004] LegEdDig 57; (2004) 13(2) Legal Education Digest 13

A Revolution in Japanese Legal Education

R Gladding

[2004] LegEdDig 57; (2004) 13(2) Legal Education Digest 13

31 Brief 3, April 2004, pp 5–8

Two features which have distinguished the Japanese system of legal education are the very small number of lawyers qualifying each year, and the fairly minor role played by universities in legal training. By western standards, Japan has very few lawyers. In a country with a population of 126 million, there are only around 20,000 lawyers in private practice. That is one lawyer for every 6,300 people.

The low number of lawyers in Japan is the direct result of a long-held Japanese government policy to limit the number of new lawyers entering practice each year. This has been achieved through a strict quota system. Under the current system, all judges, prosecutors and private lawyers in Japan have to undergo two years of training at the national Institute for Legal Training and Advanced Studies.

The quota is currently 1,200. However, for much of the post-1945 period, it was set at 500. With tens of thousands of people sitting the bar exam each year, this has meant that, in recent times, only a minuscule 2–3 percent of candidates have passed, leaving the remaining 97–98 percent to choose between giving up on a career in the law or trying the exam again the following year.

A second distinguishing feature of Japanese legal education has been the relatively limited role played by universities in the training of lawyers. It is not that Japanese universities do not teach law. Students who hope to enter the legal profession have been free to choose whatever method or path of study they wish in order to prepare themselves for the bar exam. However, it appears that the most common route for aspiring lawyers has been to complete an undergraduate law degree and then to enroll in a special bar exam preparatory school. Some students might also have picked up a postgraduate law degree along the way, although this option has probably been more common for students hoping to enter academia or simply to improve their general employment prospects.

Reforms shortly to be introduced will, in one stroke, place universities at the heart of legal training and also increase quite dramatically the number of new lawyers entering practice. Approximately 70 new postgraduate law schools will open across the country. Experienced lawyers, prosecutors and judges will be brought into universities, on a significant scale for the first time, to teach the more practice-oriented courses.

For example, the law school at the author’s university will provide for three categories of applicant: graduates with undergraduate law degrees; graduates from non-law backgrounds; and citizen entrants. Students in the first category will have to complete two years of law school, whereas students in the second and third categories will have to complete three years. After completing law school, aspiring lawyers, prosecutors and judges will still have to complete 18 months of training at the Institute for Legal Training and Advanced Studies, and the national bar exam will still be the gateway to entrance to the Institute. The expectation is that the vast majority of students who enter law school will successfully complete their course.

Why, one might ask, do the Japanese want more lawyers? First of all, it is arguable that there has long been a shortage of lawyers in Japan, particularly outside the major cities. The challenge, then, is not only to increase the overall number of lawyers but also to encourage newly qualified lawyers to base their practices in regional and rural centres.

Secondly, it seems that recent changes in Japanese society have resulted in a degree of fragmentation and friction that have given rise to a need for more lawyers. A key feature of the Japanese model was that it was a system of capitalism largely without lawyers. Practising lawyers did not play a leading role in business and government the way they did in the Anglo-American world. Close relationships between businesses and between business and government, and an aversion to legalistic and adversarial approaches to problem solving, kept disputes, and therefore the need for lawyers, to a minimum. However, the recession of the 1990s and other societal changes brought pressures for reform. Deregulation, increasing competition, radical changes in business practices, and the gradual demise of the principle of life-time employment seem to have led to a degree of western-style individualism, which in turn has brought an increase in disputes, together with a more legalistic approach to the resolution of those disputes.

Universities have faced a number of challenges in developing and implementing the reform program. The first major task for each law school was to develop an entirely new curriculum, including practice-oriented courses unfamiliar to most academics. A second task for each law school was to recruit suitably qualified academic and professional teaching staff to deliver the new curriculum.

What then might be some of the broader consequences of these reforms? What can be argued with some confidence is that the new system will produce more able lawyers. Under the new system, lawyers will still have to be good examinees. However, with the requirement that they now complete two or three years of law school, where they will study law intensively under the guidance of both academics and practising lawyers using a variety of interactive and practice-oriented learning techniques, it is hoped that the Japanese lawyers of the future will possess a greater array of abilities, including better writing, drafting, speaking and interviewing skills, making them better all-round lawyers. It will also be interesting to see whether the reforms encourage more lawyers to form practice partnerships. Currently, the vast majority of Japanese lawyers are sole practitioners. Finally, one might speculate as to how an increase in the number of lawyers might affect attitudes to law and legal forms of remedy generally.