The Japan Federation of Bar Associations (Nichibenren) has made an emergency proposal to slow down the government's plan to increase the number of successful applicants in the annual national bar exam to 3,000 by around 2010. Nichibenren said that since the current system of nurturing legal professionals is still in an evolving stage, attention should be paid to maintaining the quality of people who enter legal profession.
In August 2000 a government panel decided to increase the number of successful bar exam applicants from an annual 1,000 to 3,000 and increase by 2.5 times the number of legal professionals, to 50,000 in about 10 years. In 2004, 74 graduate-level law schools newly opened. The number of successful bar exam applicants topped 1,500 in 2006 and 2,000 in 2007.
Nichibenren pointed out that some law schools are giving graduate diplomas to unqualified students, that the law school curriculum is not well coordinated with legal training of successful bar exam applicants at an institution of the Supreme Court, and that new lawyers face difficulty in getting employment at law firms and thus have fewer chances to receive on-the-job training. It also said the fee for initiating civil lawsuits is too high and that government ministries and agencies and business enterprises are not well prepared to employ lawyers.