The annual national bar exam was once reputed to be Japan's most difficult examination. Virtually anybody could take the exam, but only about 3 percent of the applicants passed it. Some hapless applicants spent many years preparing for it, riveted to the text of a compendium of laws that became their dearest companion. It was practically rote learning.
Only those who endured this hardship and passed the exam had the privilege of going on to the Supreme Court's Legal Training and Research Institute, which would train them to be lawyers, prosecutors or judges. The disadvantage of this system was the small number of successful applicants, some of whom tended to demonstrate a narrow vision of human beings and society.
In 1999, the government set up the Justice System Reform Council to explore ways of producing an adequate number of legal professionals with a broader vision and distinct abilities that would meet the diversified legal needs of a rapidly changing Japanese society. In 2001, the council proposed creating new postgraduate law schools and institutionalizing a new state bar exam to be taken by the schools' graduates.