法学教育に関する意見

いつも言っていることをメールで書く機会があったので転載：
I think the recent reform of the Japanese legal education was generally a success. I observe many new lawyers getting into our law firm have broader knowledge of law after studying at law school, compared with new lawyers who just focused on passing the bar exam under the previous system. Students, especially at top schools, are exploring wider fields of law while at law school, partly helped by an increasing number of practitioners who come to teach as visiting professors at law schools.
Still, because of relatively low passing rate (40-50%, which is low relative to US, of course much higher than the previous 2-3%) of the new bar exam, students and law schools, especially second tier and lower, are paying too much attention to passing bar exams. As in the US, because 2 or 3 year of study at law school require a large amount of investment (tuition, lost opportunity, living cost, etc.), students feel stressed about bar exams in a different way. (The stress under the old system was the total uncertainty of when you would pass the exam. The one under the new system is that you must pass the exam but you cannot be sure about it.)

What I don't like about the current system is the fact that the undergrad law departments survived the reform and most best students still go into law department (hogakubu) and take both LL.B. and J.D., which is non-sense. We should abandon LL.B. and channel potential JDs to study economics or other subjects before getting to law school.

The Japanese bar association and many lawyers generally oppose to the trajectory of increasing the number of lawyers. I oppose to such monopolistic view which is based on self-protective instinct of the elderly. The number of lawyers in Japan is still disproportionately small compared to other countries and need more supply of lawyers, which would increase the overall quality of legal service by way of competition.