From Professionalism to Consumerism

As we saw in Introduction and Chap. 1 , when the number of bar examination passers began to exceed 2000 per annum in 2007, lawyers began to voice their opposition to the policy of increasing the population of lawyers. In 2008, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA) proposed to slow down the implementation of the population policy. In 2012, the JFBA issued proposals to reduce the number of bar examination passers to 1500 and to consider a further reduction, investigating the maturity of the new training system and the real demand for lawyers. The increase in the number of lawyers admitted to practice raised concerns about maintaining “the quality of legal professionals”, increasing incompetent lawyers due to the lack of on-the-job training, and decreasing the number of people who aspired to be legal professionals. The proposal cited 6 local bar associations and regional federations demanding the reduction of the number of bar exam passers to 1500 and 10 local bar associations demanding the reduction to 1000 (JFBA 2012).