Lack of crime and bankruptcies means lower income for Japanese lawyers
Crime is approaching a record low in Japan, the number of bankruptcies is also plunging and, in general, people in Japan are less litigious than in the U.S., preferring to resolve disputes outside the court system. The volume of civil cases has remained steady for a decade.
That is bad news for the country’s growing ranks of attorneys trained in U.S.-style law schools, who are experiencing a shortage of work, the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.) reports.
In 2014, private attorneys in the country were earning $80,000 on average—roughly half what the average was in 2006.
Meanwhile, the country now has about 37,000 lawyers, up from 17,000 in 2000. Although this leaves Japan with a lower number of attorneys, compared to overall population, than in the U.S. and major European countries, an anticipated upsurge in consumer and corporate matters expected to keep the Japanese lawyers busy hasn’t materialized.
U.S.-style three-year law schools were promoted by a government council after a stock-market and real-estate bubble burst in Japan in the early 1990s, but enrollment has fallen in recent years, the newspaper reports.
Worse, says a former Hiroshima High Court president, the best and the brightest are looking elsewhere for work.
“Fewer people, and especially fewer high-caliber people, are coming to the legal profession,” writes Kozo Fujita in a Japan Bar Association internal newsletter. “This is a very serious problem.”
