Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > FY2003 White Paper on Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology >Part1 Reference Higher Education Reform Q&A? Question7-2

The total entrance quota for the 68 graduate law schools to be established in FY2004 is 5,590 (as of January 2004).

At the same time, the number of people in the legal profession was also considered by the Justice System Reform Council, which was established in the Cabinet. Taking the Council's written opinion into consideration, the Program for Promoting Justice System Reform (Cabinet decision of 19 March 2002) has the goal of about 3,000 annual successful applicants to the national bar examination around 2010, while looking at the situation of the development of the new legal professional cultivation system, including graduate law schools.

Concerning the establishment of graduate law schools, however, it is necessary to keep in mind that graduate law schools meeting the standard will be approved, and their framework recognizes a wide range of participation. In addition, there is fluidity in the number of students completing courses at graduate law schools because of the need for considerable effort to complete a course at a graduate law school and the fact that many aspects will be affected by future conditions, such as how the number of graduate law schools will change. There are also fluctuating elements regarding the number of successful national bar examination applicants since watching the situation of the development of the new legal professional cultivation system, including graduate law schools, is a precondition. Therefore, it is impossible to state categorically how many graduate law school graduates will become legal professionals.

In any event, we can expect the development of enhanced education for the cultivation of legal professionals to be carried out at each graduate law school.