The reform of the Law Schools in Japan/Korea and the relation to the Western Model

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Hi all! This is Hiro.

Thank you for yesterday’s amazing discussion about Law School reforms!!

Below is my presentation slide. The key points are;

Korea: strong quantity control by government, but delay abolishing traditional bar exam for three times, also corruption

Japan: loosened quantity control, preliminary exam as a shortcut, mismatch between demand and supply

Both: Inconsistent policy

 

Please share any comment or further insight about law school reforms in these two or any other countries. Thank you!

 

HE presentation (Japan&Korea Law School)-1hoquei

2 thoughts on “The reform of the Law Schools in Japan/Korea and the relation to the Western Model”

  1. Hi! Thanks for the presentation. Singapore’s system is different in that to take the Singapore bar exam, you need to have a LLB/JD and these degrees can only come from certain universities (https://www.mlaw.gov.sg/content/minlaw/en/practising-as-a-lawyer/approved-universities.html). There was quite a bit of controversy in 2015 when the Ministry of Law decided to remove some foreign universities from the approved list, including the University of Manchester which used to take in about 30 Singaporean undergraduate law students in the past. Interestingly, international higher education rankings were used to decide which foreign universities should be kept on the list (http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=2015022712383695), which highlights once again, the salience and impacts of such rankings. It also demonstrated how a university’s drive to internationalize its student population is also affected by the domestic policies in other countries. In our globalized world then, nation-states still continue to play an important role. Another point I felt was raised by the issue of local/foreign degree was also the issue of how, or whether governments should, balance between those with degrees from local universities and those from foreign universities, especially when it comes to professionals such as law and medicine where local university places in these courses may be limited. Given that only the upper-middle/upper classes are likely to be able to access foreign education, are issues of social equity raised? Given that reading and practicing law is something that many youths aspire to, it would definitely be interesting to learn about about law school reforms in other countries!

    • Thanks Alicia!
      I was kind of surprised by the fact that Singapore’s bar exam requires LLB/JD. Before this reform in Japan traditional bar exam even didn’t require graduation from high school. (I know one of my friend passed traditional bar exam when he was 11th grade, which is quite rare given the competitiveness of this exam)
      Also one of my referenced in ppt illustrates the social context of Japan’s law school reform (below). According to this, there are a lot of jobs requiring legal knowledge but don’t necessarily require passing bar exam (being a lawyer). This is partly because there are many student who graduated from faculty of law but did not take bar exam and enter private sectors or government (just like me).
      Is the situation similar in Singapore? If you know, I’ll really appreciate sharing it!!

      Riles, A., & Uchida, T. (2009). Reforming knowledge? A socio-legal critique of the legal education reforms in Japan.

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