Back in the early 2000s, the government implemented reform of the nation's system for training legal professionals, launching law schools modeled after those in the United States for people aspiring to become judges, prosecutors and lawyers. Today, the government is exploring ways to revamp the system in the face of declining enrollment at the law schools — more than half of which have already been shut down — and disappointing bar exam performances by students who completed the two-year programs at such schools.
The changes under consideration would shorten the minimum period for students before they qualify for taking the bar exam. Concerns have been voiced by those involved in the education of legal professionals, however, that the proposed changes might undercut the very purpose of creating the law schools in the first place. Careful discussions involving experts in relevant fields will be needed in reviewing the law school system.
In 2001, the Judicial Reform Council called for the establishment of postgraduate law schools to beef up the education of legal professionals and maintain their quality as the government sought to increase the pool of legal professionals to respond to an anticipated rise in demand for legal services in this country. It set a target of boosting the annual number of people who successfully passed the bar exam from the roughly 1,000 at the time to 3,000 by around 2010.