The government approved a bill Tuesday to amend the attorney law, enabling lawyers to establish law firms.

Under the current system, all lawyers work independently in law offices -- which are not companies as such but groupings of independent lawyers operating together in a building for the sake of convenience.

Effective April 1, 2002, the revised law will enable lawyers to set up law firms by registering them in the domain of their head offices, and to employ other lawyers as staff members.

This would thus enable lawyers to deal with emerging technical and complicated legal cases as an organization.

The move comes in accordance with the government's ongoing deregulation program and at the request of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations.

The federation's member lawyers are faced with mounting difficulties in dealing on an individual basis with an increasing number of lawsuits and emerging technical and large-scale legal cases in areas such as the economy.

Through this amendment, lawyers are expected to enrich legal services, provide more people with access to legal services and expedite legal proceedings through collaboration within firms.

Under the revised law, firms would also be able to set up branch offices nationwide so they can serve remote areas which have few lawyers.

Having the security of positions at law firms, staff lawyers would feel greater freedom to take temporary posts in court, government offices and law schools.

Mirroring individual lawyers under the current system, firms operating under the revised law would also be under the supervision of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations as well as the local bar associations to which these companies belong.

Lawyer reprimands

The number of cases involving lawyers being punished or reprimanded totaled 44 in 2000, falling from a high of 52 in the preceding year, according to the Japan Federation of Bar Associations.

Lawyers involved in eight of the 44 cases were stripped of their credentials, the federation said in a report issued Monday.

Local bar associations decided last year to dismiss one lawyer, order seven to leave the associations, suspend 16 from duty for up to two years and reprimand 20, the report says. Those who were dismissed or ordered to leave associations lost their credentials. The number of cases in which clients demanded that their lawyers be punished totaled 1,030 last year, topping 1,000 for the first time.

Three of the 44 cases were re-examined and resulted in punishment by the federation, even though the local bar associations decided not to impose penalties, the report says.

The figures indicate the ethical challenge facing legal circles prior to the Judicial Reform Council's effort to push for an increase in the number of judges, prosecutors and lawyers.

According to the report, the lawyer who was dismissed belonged to the Sapporo Bar Association in Hokkaido. He was disqualified after failing to return about 12 million yen to a client in a case of property inheritance. The Tokyo No. 2 bar association expelled a lawyer for failing to address more than 100 debt writeoff cases, even though he had agreed to pursue them.

Lawyers were also suspended because they failed to attend oral proceedings in civil suits or for neglecting to take appropriate legal steps that resulted in depriving a client of the right to claim compensation for damage.

The number of such cases stayed at around 20 until 1994, but the figure hit 39 in 1995 due to a rise in the number of lawyers and the effects of the collapse of the bubble economy and the resulting recession.