Japanese Law Schools in Crisis: A Study on the Employability of Law School Graduates

Abstract

Fifteen years ago in Japan, the fact that the ratio of legal professionals to the population as a whole was the smallest among G7 countries (for instance, in 1997, the number of legal professionals per 100,000 people was about 345 in the US and 16 in Japan) became a subject of discussion. Moreover, the disproportional distribution of Japanese legal professionals into big cities was also a major challenge. As a policy to increase the number of legal professionals while maintaining their quality, a system of law schools was created in April 2004. However, a decade on, after the creation of this system, these schools are facing an unprecedented crisis, and their existence is extremely precarious. The main purpose of this article is to describe this crisis. The Japanese government has employed a policy to reduce both the number of law schools and the number of slots for enrolled students in the country because many law schools currently operating in Japan fail to attract students, and only 25 per cent of graduates pass the bar examination. As a counterargument against this government policy, this article proposes that Japanese law schools should strengthen their graduates’ employability by improving their career support systems, with a focus on producing and supporting law school graduates who can become not only legal but also non-legal professionals. As support for this position, this article quotes outcomes of previous studies and uses information from questionnaire surveys and field surveys conducted by the author and completed by deans at Japanese law schools.