Japan to allow students to take bar exam while in school

June 19, 2019

Tokyo--The Diet, Japan's parliament, enacted legislation on Wednesday to establish a scheme that will allow law students to complete their undergraduate studies in three years and take the bar exam while they are enrolled in law school.

The legal education reform is aimed at raising the number of prospective legal professionals by reducing the temporal and financial burden of studying law.

The legislation was passed in the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet, with a majority vote led by the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito. It cleared the House of Representatives, the lower chamber, in May.

The number of law school graduates passing the bar exam has been falling, as has the number of applicants to law schools.

Under the current system, students must spend four years on undergraduate studies and two to three years in law school to qualify for the bar exam, or otherwise take a preliminary exam to show that they have acquired the same level of knowledge taught in law school.

The new system allows university presidents to grant law school students the required qualifications to take the bar exam if students have acquired the appropriate credits and are expected to complete their studies within a year.

Students who pass the bar exam while still in school must graduate before they can become legal apprentices.

The three-year undergraduate course, called the "legal professionals course," will be adopted from the 2020 academic year, while qualifications to take the bar exam while in law school will be granted from 2023.

Universities that do not have postgraduate law schools will be able to adopt the legal professionals course by working with postgraduate programs of other universities.

The total number of law school entrants will be limited to around 2,300 students. Jiji Press