Curriculum

The curriculum for the Major in Legal Practice is designed to provide students with the legal knowledge necessary to pass the bar examination, while also cultivating the flexible analytical skills to apply that knowledge to advanced fields.

To pass the bar examination and acquire the foundational knowledge that will support their future careers as legal professionals, Keio University Law School places the utmost importance on its required courses, which are designed to cultivate a fundamental understanding of the law. While practical knowledge, skills, and advanced expertise are also essential qualities for future legal professionals, they only become truly fruitful when built upon a solid foundation. In other words, a true specialist must first be an excellent generalist. The required courses, composed of "Fundamental Legal Subjects" and "Foundational Subjects for Legal Practice," are designed to cultivate these qualities of a generalist.

The Fundamental Legal Subjects are designed to cultivate the essential legal knowledge considered crucial for the bar examination and for a career as a legal professional. It is extremely important to gain an accurate knowledge and understanding of these subjects. Therefore, at Keio University Law School, we have established a comprehensive support system to answer student questions regarding the Fundamental Legal Subjects. This system is designed to ensure that each student can clarify their doubts and build a solid foundational knowledge. Furthermore, by setting strict promotion requirements, we aim to cultivate an advanced legal literacy that far exceeds the level required merely to pass the bar examination.

In the Fundamental Legal Subjects, classes are conducted after close consultation among the instructing faculty to ensure a balanced cultivation of the theoretical thinking and practical sensibilities required of legal professionals. While the faculty in charge of each subject enthusiastically develop their own teaching materials, many courses also feature original materials created through extensive discussions with experts and practitioners from other fields. The teaching materials at Keio University Law School are designed not only to build an advanced literacy in the required subjects that form the cornerstone of a generalist but are also strongly oriented toward future development in other fields and practical subjects.

In addition to the required courses that provide a thorough grounding in fundamental legal knowledge, another attractive feature of the Keio University Law School curriculum is its diverse range of elective courses, which offer both broad scope and specialized depth. Through these electives, the legal reasoning skills honed in the "Fundamental Legal Subjects" and "Foundational Subjects for Legal Practice" are elevated to an applied level. At their core are the Workshop Programs, offered as "Advanced and Cross-Disciplinary Subjects," which enable students to acquire practical skills in various fields, including corporate law, financial law, international legal affairs, and intellectual property law. Furthermore, the "Foundational and Interdisciplinary Subjects" taken alongside these courses help cultivate not only legal knowledge but also the deep insight into people and society that is indispensable for a legal professional.

The first-year curriculum of the Standard Program, designed for students without a prior background in law, provides intensive foundational education in the Fundamental Legal Subjects. Students are divided into classes of approximately 40. While the format is primarily lecture-based, interactive methods are used to train legal reasoning skills as an active and creative ability.

In the second year of the Standard Program, students deepen their foundational academic knowledge and hone their applied legal reasoning skills through Fundamental Legal Subjects centered on "Comprehensive" subjects. The "Comprehensive" subjects are conducted in a seminar format, with classes divided into groups of approximately 40 students. Students also begin taking the Foundational Subjects for Legal Practice, which serve as an introduction to practical legal education. Furthermore, through a wide and rich variety of elective courses, including the Workshop Programs, students cultivate the academic knowledge required of a legal professional with international, interdisciplinary, and cutting-edge perspectives. The elective courses feature smaller class sizes and more intensive instruction than the required courses.

In the third year of the Standard Program, as the culmination of their law school education, students take "Comprehensive" subjects that integrate the legal fields of public law, civil law, and criminal law. Through repeated cycles of analysis and synthesis, they cultivate their academic knowledge and legal reasoning skills in each of these legal fields. In the Foundational Subjects for Legal Practice, students engage in practical exercises (including moot court) that follow the flow of litigation proceedings. This allows them to experientially learn the roles played by legal professionals in various positions and to acquire the foundational skills of a practitioner. Furthermore, by continuing to take a wide and rich variety of elective courses as they did in their second year, students further refine their individual specializations.