Becoming a lawyer used to be the ultimate status symbol in Japan. Bar exams were extremely hard to pass, so hard that once they obtained the license, lawyers were pretty much guaranteed a successful life afterward.

Competition was almost zero, and there were just enough legal cases to earn a good living.

That changed in 2002, when the so-called judicial reform set in. Among a range of changes implemented by the government was the introduction of U.S.-style law schools, which aimed to increase the number of people passing the bar nearly threefold to 3,000 annually by 2010.