Starting in July 2012, as part of an effort to overhaul its immigration system, Japan will abolish the Alien Registration Act. In its place, the amended Immigration Act will manage the corresponding issues and information of the Alien Registration System for foreigners working in Japan. Though the new law has been passed by the Diet and is scheduled for immediate implementation to be administered by the Ministry of Justice, many applications of its details remain undetermined.

However, there are clear innovations in Japan’s new work-visa system. For example, a new “Residence Card,” which displays fewer details than the current alien registration card, but requires exhibiting details like the name and address of one’s employer, will be introduced.

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At the Japan 2010 ALB Law Awards, held at the Tokyo Ritz Carlton, Mori Hamada & Matsumoto was named “Japanese Deal Firm of the Year” and “Japanese Dealmaker of the Year” in front of a sellout crowd of over 200 of Japan’s most prominent in-house counsel, investment bankers and business leaders. Their stellar deal work was evidenced by their participation in many of the “Deals of the Year,” including the top deal, “Mitsubishi UFJ Global Offering.”

Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu was also a top prizewinner, present in nearly all of the winning deals. Anderson Mori & Tomotsune and
 Tsuyoshi Nagahama were awarded the “Lifetime Achievement” award. Morgan Stanley won three awards in the “In-House Categories.”

The nominees for the sixth annual ALB Japan Awards 2010 have been announced, and the winners will be announced at the black-tie gala event at the Ritz Carlton, Toyko on May 28th in front of a sellout crowd of over 200 of Japan’s most prominent in-house counsel, investment bankers and business leaders. The Awards consistently draw the top firms from across Japan and are considered by most to be the biggest event on Tokyo’s legal calendar. Awards are given in 24 categories, which are presented to firms, companies and individuals in the past year, which provides a platform for recognizing the best firms and legal work Japan has to offer.

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The Japanese Ministry of Justice has announced that it will ease restrictions on foreign law firms operating in the country by allowing them to establish corporate bodies and open multiple offices in the country. These proposed amendments will probably be submitted to the Diet in the fourth quarter of this year and come into effect in January 2012.

This move is believed to be in response to the number of foreign law firms who are rumored to be looking at places like Osaka as a possible location for a second office. Cities like Osaka which is home to quite a few major Japanese companies like Panasonic, Nippon Life Insurance, Sharp and Itochi and cities like Chiba home to AEON are not fully serviced by US and UK law firms. According to Mark Weeks, Managing Partner of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in Tokyo, “there are a lot of manufacturing clients in that [Western] region and it would therefore be an obvious place for foreign firms to consider opening a second office, if and when the market opens up”. For most US and UK law firms any decision to open another office in Japan, or elsewhere in Asia, is usually driven by client needs and, as Weeks admits, the decision to open an office and/or expand depends on the talent that a firm is able to bring in to service existing clients or an opportunistic hire from.

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Blake Dawson, who became the first Australian firm in Japan when it officially opened its doors in April, may be paving the way for other Australian firms to do the same. After announcing its intentions late last year, the firm coordinated with the Japanese Ministry of Justice to obtain regulatory approvals and secured its license to operate as a foreign firm advising on Australian law.

“It was a fairly lengthy process in confirming that our office would satisfy all the legal requirements of the ministry,” said resident partner Natsuko Ogawa. “It was probably made more difficult in that the Australian system has not had to come into their scrutiny in the past. That in some ways may benefit other firms following in our footsteps if they choose to, but it’s hard to say.

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The Japanese government wants to increase the number of lawyers in the country by making sure a higher number pass the bar. This could mean more competition for U.S. lawyers who plan to move to Japan to practice. But it could also mean a change in the way all lawyers are viewed in a country known for its social restraint and aversion to the revealing of personal issues that is required in seeking legal help.

The government’s goal is to increase the number of attorneys to 50,000 by 2018 – roughly double the amount practicing now. The initiative is part of a broader reform effort targeted at the judiciary. The Justice System Reform Council  issued an opinion paper calling for fundamental reforms in 2001, including extending the rule of law to all facets of society and reorienting Japan’s legal system away from prior regulation and toward providing relief when and if wrongs are actually committed. Increasing the number of judges, as well as the number of lawyers, is part of this reform effort.

According to an article published last July in The New York Times, Japanese in rural areas suffer more from the lack of legal help. Half of the country’s lawyers work in Tokyo, leaving only one lawyer for every 30,000 Japanese outside the capital city. Many specialized workers who are not lawyers currently perform quasi-legal functions, lowering the perceived need in many cases for actual lawyers. Corporations also use in-house employees to perform law-related jobs.

Under Japan’s current system, which will be abolished in 2011, anyone can take the national bar exam. The exam is so difficult, however, that only 3 percent of applicants pass. The government hopes that a new bar exam will result in at least a 70 percent passage rate, which it estimates will create 3,000 new lawyers every year by 2010. In 2007, only 40 percent passed. Japan only instituted professional law schools within the last five years, and the numbers of successful applicants has risen each year.

But the Japan Federation of Bar Associations has challenged the government’s initiative, citing a concern with quality. The JFBA says it wants to be able to better screen applicants for the bar exam. While it agrees with the government that more lawyers are needed in the country, it wants to slow down the time frame the government has set. “In 2006, Japan had approximately 27,000 legal professionals, which is expected to almost double to 50,000 by 2018,” according to the JFBA. “If you compare this to the fact that in the past it has taken approximately 33 years for the number of legal professionals to double, this is an extremely rapid expansion.”

While the JFBA warns that too rapid an expansion will result in many newly registered lawyers being unable to find positions in law firms, others say such independence will be good for the reform effort. If the idea is to create a system that is less dependent on regulation and prior restraint, more independent-minded lawyers can’t hurt. And as more Japanese have better access to lawyers, attitudes about revealing difficult financial or social issues may change. Many lawyers in the United States certainly like to think of themselves as vanguards of change – and for them, practicing in Japan may look better and better.

Hyperlinks:
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/0/1/7/2/4/p17248_index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/world/asia/29japan.html
http://www.law.harvard.edu/news/bulletin/2006/summer/feature_4.php
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080719a6.html
http://www.nichibenren.or.jp/en/about/judicial_system.html

It was a very different feeling to tell someone that I was an attorney and, instead of hearing joke after joke, gain almost immediate respect from the individual.  I fondly recall sitting in a bar in the Golden Gai area of Shinjuku with some friends of mine visiting from the US, and, when talking to a local who asked what we did, saw my friends’ amazement when the individual bowed deeply to me (in Japan the deeper the bow, the greater the showing of respect) after learning I am an attorney.  The elder Japanese local stated that I was only the second attorney he had ever met.  My friends sat in amazement as they witnessed the man hang on my every word.  This was not a rare occurrence; in Japan there are very few attorneys, and law remains amongst the most respected careers.

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* Practicing in Japan will be our regular feature about… wait for it… practicing in japan.  It is written by Cypress Recruiting’s Bengoshi Recruitment Manager, Dan Demba, who recently returned from a year practicing in Tokyo and who, therefore, knows more about the topic than you do.   Unless you know more.  If so, drop us a line at tips-(at)-cypressrecruiting.com.  Let Dan know what you think.

The Arrival

Excited to begin my adventure in Japan, amazed at almost everything around me, jet lagged from the flight and most of all hungry, I walked off the plane at Narita and took my arranged ride to meet the managing partner at my office for dinner.  I loved Japanese food in the US so I could not wait to sample at the source.  Mr. Managing Partner had other ideas; we met, shook hands, and he promptly suggested that we go out for Italian.  I did my best to hide my surprise; sure, I would have many opportunities to taste the local fare, I just didn’t know how to feel about pasta carbonara on my first night in Japan.  It turned out, however, to be some of the best Italian I’ve ever had, and, as it turns out, the owner of the restaurant later ended up becoming a client.

I was fortunate to be able to follow one of my life long goals of living in Japan,

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