Problem in Bar Community

The problem can be about whether the nation accepts rule of law. A governmental committee submitted a mid-term proposal, which recommended the government to give up the goal of three thousand applicants to pass annual bar examination. The main reason was because the number of lawyers is too much. But, is it true? There are a number of opportunities in our society to require helping hands of law specialists. It is possible that the bar society in Japan is barring new lawyers.

The government introduced a new system of bar examination in 2006 aiming increasing the number of lawyers. In the system, all the applicants of the examination basically need to graduate law schools. Because lawyer is one of the occupations broadly respected and with high income, universities competitively established law school to recruit freshmen, mainly in terms of school management. With the help of new system, bar community expanded by 50% compared to the number in 2004.

The problem now is that even an applicant is successful in the exam, he is not guaranteed to have lawyer’s job. Before introducing new exam system, to register as a lawyer requires two-year training including internship in some law offices. The number of registered lawyers after the training has been decreasing because of shortage of jobs for lawyers. In other words, supplies are overtaking demands in lawyer market.

If supplies are too much, demands needs to be enhanced. Not only in court, lawyers may have jobs in many areas, such as corporation, local government, or anything else. Not only in big cities like Tokyo or Osaka, there are large demands in local cities.

On the other hand, there is an argument that too much lawyers cause deterioration of quality of the lawyers. There exists a gap between universities in the numbers of successful applicants in the exam. Education system for the policy has not been matured enough. It is one reason why three-thousand target has not been achieved.

Another problem is that bar communities can control how many lawyers would be produced every year. In short, the examiners are members of bar association. The more lawyers are produced, the less their income becomes. There is no evidence that old lawyers are reluctant to increase young lawyers. But, although the new system assumes more lawyers in Japanese society, it is said that the exam is still too hard to pass.

The new system is introduced to make Japanese society operate according to the principle of rule of law. The enforcement of law is highly dependent on police or prosecutors section. To let the society effective in world standard, it is important to have more skilled and dedicated lawyers in Japan.