Shortage of Lawyers?

There are much lower number of lawyers in the Japanese society, compared to Western countries, particularly the U.S.

The plan to increase the number of lawyers came up, as a part of the Japanese Legal System Reform, about a decade ago to better meet the Japanese society's requirements for accessability to legal system.  Many ideas in the plan came from the U.S., and law school system was started as a part of the plan, referring to the U.S. system.

The plan tried to educate legal candidates at law schools and to significantly improve a passing rate in the bar exam from the previous few percent to around 70 percent for law school grads.

With these new law school and bar exam systems the plan also expected to provide opportunities to people from various backgrounds to become lawyers, who would then work in the society as  legal professionals in various ways, rather than just working as lawyers at law firms.

In fact, I was also attracted by the plan and tried to become a lawyer.  In Japan, most of tax professionals are accountant (I am one of them), and there are just a very small number of tax lawyers.  I decided to become a tax lawyer to better protect my clients, i.e. taxpayers, from the tax authorities.

Unfortunately, however, the plan to increase the number of lawyers did not go well, mainly due to the existing lawyers who were very concerned to loose their jobs by such a significant increase in the number of lawyers.

The whole situation surrounding the Japanese legal infrastructure seems going back to the past, i.e. very low passing rate in the bar exam and lack of lawyers in the Japanese society.

I was accepted by a law school, however, decided not to go, taking into account the above disappointing situations among other reasons.

I now think, however, whether or not the Japanese society really needs that many of lawyers as the reform plan originally expected.

It is obvious that we have shortage of lawyers, and such a situation should be improved somehow.

However, as I mentioned earlier, what the reform plan aimed seems to be the U.S. model, which there are many lawyers, and people can easily access to any legal supports, and as a result, the number of law suits are significantly high.

The Japanese society is much different from the U.S. society.  We Japanese are basically mono-cultural and have been mutually trusting.  Even though some problems come out, people try to resolve those problems themselves in many cases by discussion but without involving lawyers.

Apparently, the Japanese society is changing to western style, however, our traditional model as discussed above is still working, and the current number of lawyers should become at sustainable level if being a bit improved.

I am looking at the plan's failure in a positive way that the failure stopped our society to go far away.
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