THE AUTHOR
Dean Galaro
Boom and Bust: Japan and the United State’s Law School Admissions Problems
Japan’s regulations have gone too far in trying to expand their field of legal practitioners. The United States has become too lax. While taking a hard look at ourselves we can also take a good look at Japan and learn from the problems that come with a skewed focus. BY DEAN GALARO
Being a young lawyer is tough. I’m acutely aware of this problem
because I’m in the midst of my law school application process. As I
await word of admissions and scholarship decisions I can’t help but
fuss over legal job prospects three years from now.
Too many J.D.s are being dolled out and not enough jobs are waiting
for them. With the astronomical pricing of most law degree programs,
many graduates are forced to combat the legal market with the weight
of student debt on their shoulders (to not speak of undergraduate
debt as well). It is widely reported that American legal education
has a serious problem.
Japan has a serious problem with its market for lawyers as well. Per
capita, they are sixteen times the amount of lawyers in the United
States than in Japan. Why? The bar passage rate in the United States
in 2011 averaged 69% across all states, while only about 25% of
Japan’s law students passed their bar exam the same year. And this
has only been since 2004, when the education system was radically
changed to help allow more people to study law. Just as in American
law schools, Japanese law school enrollment has been steadily
declining for several years. Japan has too few lawyers and the
United States still has far too many.
Before 2004, Japanese legal education focused on preparation for the
remarkably difficult bar exam, rather than reasoning and research
skills. In order to expand the judiciary and allow for more lawyers,
a new law school system was modeled after the United States’. Now,
instead of studying law as an undergraduate major, Japanese students
from any educational background can study law at the graduate level
before passing an exam and becoming licensed to practice.
Japan needed more lawyers and, initially, they got more. But while
the changes to the educational system were radical, parts of the
reform were also very restrained. For fear of flooding the market,
the number of students who can pass the bar exam is capped. In 2010
only 2000 lawyers were allowed to pass the bar exam and practice
law. Those who do not make the cut can retry two more times within
the following five years. However, many law students will never pass
and never practice.
Part of the reason for this difference is that the practice of law
in Japan is very different from American law. There is a greater
diaspora of Japanese lawyers than American ones. For example, the
largest firms in Japan (coined the “Big Four”) have between three
and four hundred attorneys each. In comparison, the largest American
firms have almost four thousand attorneys. Roughly 60% of Japanese
lawyers are solo practitioners. There is much less ladder climbing
in Japanese legal practices, which can probably be attributed to a
culture that emphasizes order and group harmony over private
self-interest.
Becoming a judge, the highest honor in legal practice, is also very
different in Japan. Graduates of law school can apply to become
judges and may, if possessing high enough grades and the correct
personality traits, begin their legal career as a judge in their
late twenties. For a thoughtful detailing of this process, see
Professor Mark D. West’s book Lovesick Japan, specifically the first
chapter: “Judging.”
Korea has also entered the fray, passing legal education reforms
similar to Japan’s in 2009. The number of Korean law school and the
number of students are both limited. Even with expectations of high
bar passage rates, critics are quick to point out that Korea’s new
system has simply passed the pressure from bar passage to school
entrance. These reforms will not necessarily create better lawyers;
there will simply be more attorneys with better test scores.
Like the United States, Japan is trying to find balance between the
quality and quantity of lawyers. If it is too difficult to get into
law school, then there will be too few lawyers. On the other hand,
if the bottleneck is the bar exam then law schools will simply
become cram schools like they were in Japan. Law schools could
charge less, but the cost of keeping attorneys on staff as
professors when they could be making more money in government or
private practice is not easy.
Quotas and caps will not solve the problem. The law, like any other
occupation, follows the principles of supply and demand: balance
between the number of lawyers and the number of jobs will, exclusive
of outside influence, normalize overtime and find equilibrium. While
the government is coordinating Japan’s law schools, the United
States’ system is freer flowing. So then how did we get in this
mess?
Because markets do that from time to time. Neither the supply nor
the demand for lawyers will always be stable. Given enough time,
these two forces will stabilize. And given enough time after that,
they will destabilize once more and fall out of sync with each
other. We are in such a time right now. Demand for lawyers has not
been rising at the rate that the supply has. As law school
admissions numbers drop, the balance will, eventually, be found.
This will happen faster, however, if law schools can find ways to
innovate. If fewer graduates are being hired, one could read that as
the market warning law schools that their graduates are not prepared
to fill the roles that the market needs filled. American law schools
ride high on the hog of tradition, but this tradition may have
become too stifling.
Japan’s regulations have gone too far in trying to expand their
field of legal practitioners. The United States has become too lax.
While taking a hard look at ourselves we can also take a good look
at Japan and learn from the problems that come with a skewed focus.
I trust that legal education in the United States will sort itself
out. I do hope, however, that it sorts itself out before I graduate.
About the Author
Dean Galaro teaches high school math and history at a bilingual
school in Honduras.
