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Legal Reform, Law Firms, and Lawyer Stratification in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2014

Mayumi Nakamura
Mayumi Nakamura*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Sociology at the Department of Economics, University of Toyama, Toyama-shi, Japan
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Abstract

In many countries, the size of a law firm is closely related to the specializations and incomes of the lawyers it employs, and can be considered an index for disparities among lawyers. Gender and school prestige may affect the size of the first firm that lawyers join. Moreover, since the lawyer population has quadrupled over the last 20 years in Japan, mainly due to judicial reform, I hypothesize that this population increase has changed how gender and school prestige affect the size of the first firm law school graduates decide to join. To test this, I conducted a secondary statistical analysis on the effect of gender and school prestige on the size of the first firm that lawyers joined, using survey data collected by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations in 2010. Findings suggest that there were no significant differences in the size of women’s and men’s first employer, but that school prestige was significant. Moreover, the importance of school prestige has increased over the years.

Keywords

womangenderlawyerwork and life balancestratificationeducation
Type
Legal Profession and Social Change in East Asian Countries
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , May 2014 , pp. 99 - 123
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

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Footnotes

*

Mayumi Nakamura is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Department of Economics, University of Toyama, Toyama-shi, Japan. She has published articles on work and life balance and occupational attainment of professional men and women, determinants of decreasing birth rate and marriage rate, and gendered status attainment paths in Japan. She is currently editing a book on work and life balance and occupational attainments of Japanese lawyers. Direct correspondence to Mayumi Nakamura, Department of Economics, University of Toyama, 3190 Gofuku, Toyama-shi, Toyama-ken 930-8555, Japan. Email address: mnakamur@eco.u-toyama.ac.jp. I would like to thank Iwao Sato, the participants of Bengoshi Seido Kenkyukai, and anonymous referees and editors for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the Japan Federation of Bar Associations for kindly allowing us to analyze their Keizai Kiban Chosa data.

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