Chairman’s statement calling for an immediate reduction in the number of bar exam passers
On November 6, 2024, it was announced that the final number of successful candidates for this year’s bar exam was 1,592. This was a decrease of 189 people compared to the previous year (1781 people).
However, the passing ratio for this year was 2.37x, which continues to be extremely low, just like the year before last (2.20x) and last year (2.21x). Our association has continued to call for a reduction in the number of successful candidates for the bar examination, and maintaining the large increase in the number of successful candidates for this year’s bar examination following last year is not possible for the current state of lawyers. This is extremely regrettable, as it will further exacerbate the negative effects of oversupply and threaten to collapse the legal system itself.
In addition, the Association has raised concerns that the above-mentioned goal of producing around 1,500 people who pass the bar exam is being given too much consideration in the situation where the ratio is decreasing as the number of examinees decreases. Ta.
On June 30, 2015, the government’s Legal Training System Reform Promotion Council summarized the results of its study on the state of the legal population, stating, “In terms of the number of people who passed the bar exam… “Necessary efforts should be made to ensure that the quality of the legal profession that will be produced” is not achieved without taking into account the quality of legal professionals that will be produced.” Even in this light, the situation continues to be extremely problematic.
In the first place, in the current situation where the number of judges and prosecutors hired has been suppressed for many years, the majority of those who pass the bar exam will apply to be registered as lawyers. The population of lawyers was 22,021 as of March 31, 2006 (Heisei 18), 15 years ago, when the first law school graduate graduated, but as of October 1, 2024 (Reiwa 6), the number of lawyers was 22,021. As of now, the number of people is 45,684, and there is no change in the number of people continuing to increase.
On the other hand, the number of new civil cases received by courts has continued to decline since peaking in 2009, and there is currently little prospect that this will increase. Furthermore, Japan’s population is expected to decline even further in the future due to the declining birthrate and aging of the population. As a result, the total number of conflicts in Japan is expected to decrease over the medium to long term. Even if new legal demands could be stimulated in the future due to improvements in the judicial infrastructure, etc., there is an objective and clear way to determine that such increased legal demands will be sufficient to compensate for the decrease in legal demands due to population decline. I can’t see any basis for this. Under these circumstances, accelerating the pace of increase in the lawyer population will only lead to an oversupply of lawyers.
At the extraordinary general meeting held on November 29, 2011, the Association requested the government to gradually reduce the number of bar exam passers with a goal of approximately 1,000 people per year, while verifying the implementation status. , has adopted a resolution requesting further consideration of the appropriate number of successful applicants. In addition, more than 10 years have passed since the above resolution, and our association has re-examined it and published the “Recommendation for Verification of the Legal Professional Population” dated March 31, 2021. While Japan’s overall population decline and depopulation are accelerating, there is no real and concrete demand to maintain the current pace of increase in the number of lawyers, and even if the number of successful applicants is 1,000, the number of lawyers will continue to increase. Considering that the above resolution is expected to change, we do not believe that there is a need to change the above resolution at this time. Our association will continue to work on providing judicial services to depopulated areas and improving the judicial infrastructure.
Therefore, we continue to strongly urge the government to significantly reduce the number of bar exam passers.
November 7, 2024 (Reiwa 6th year)
Sapporo Bar Association
Chairman Ryu Matsuda
