2015.06.17
We will now provide a partial report on the Keio University Law School information session held on Saturday, June 6, 2015.
[Information Session Overview]
Date and Time: Saturday, June 6, 2015, 10:00 to 11:30
Venue: Mita Campus, South School Building Hall
Osaka City Campus (simulcast)
[Information Session Agenda]
1. Introduction
2. Greeting from the Dean of the Law School
3. Curriculum Overview
4. About the 2016 Admissions System
5. Introduction of a Legal Practitioner... Ikuno Tanaka (Professor, Keio University Law School)
6. Introduction of Current Students
7. Q&A Session
Introduction of a Legal Practitioner...
Ikuno Tanaka
(Professor, Keio University Law School)
We are pleased to present an excerpt from the lecture given by Ms. Ikuno Tanaka, who is active as both a faculty member and a lawyer, at the Keio University Law School admissions information session held on Saturday, June 6, 2015. We hope this will be a helpful reference for everyone aspiring to a career in the legal profession.
Today, as a practitioner faculty member, I will talk about my current work, why I decided to become a lawyer, and the Mita Hoso-kai (Keio Legal Community). Please keep in mind that this is based on my personal experiences and thoughts, and I'm sure there are many aspects that differ from others' experiences.
I passed the bar examination in 1991, more than 20 years ago now. At that time, the apprenticeship at the Supreme Court's Legal Training and Research Institute was two years long. After that, I began my current work as a lawyer. Back then, the number of successful candidates was about 600, and there were no law schools, so the system itself was different from today. My own work is primarily in the field of so-called corporate law, focusing on international transaction agreements between various companies, disclosure of important information by companies, and M&A.
I first wanted to become a lawyer when I was in the upper grades of elementary school. I don't remember the detailed reasons, but at the time, I didn't know about things like corporate law; I simply wanted to become a lawyer to help my friends. However, even before that, from my early elementary school years, I also had a dream of becoming a scientist and solving environmental problems. I held onto these two childhood dreams of becoming a lawyer and a scientist until my third year of high school when I had to choose my university path, and I agonized over the choice between the Faculty of Science and Technology and the Faculty of Law until the very end. I ultimately chose the Faculty of Law, but if law schools had existed back then, I think I would have gone to the Faculty of Science and Technology for my undergraduate degree. I might have continued in a science field to become a researcher, or I might have still wanted to become a lawyer and gone to law school. Among lawyers, there are people who studied in science-related faculties at university or who worked as civil servants or certified public accountants before becoming lawyers. I think having skills that can differentiate you from other lawyers is a good thing for a lawyer. There are all kinds of clients who want to achieve all kinds of things, so I believe there is a need for lawyers with various interests and backgrounds to meet their needs. Some of you may have worked or studied in fields other than law until now, but I think that can become a point of differentiation from others when you become a lawyer.
While diverse backgrounds and experiences are useful for differentiation after becoming a lawyer, a lawyer is a legal expert, and I believe a considerable amount of foundational study and subsequent continuous learning is necessary. I think this is the same as in other specialized fields; for example, doctors also need to continue studying.
I believe it is necessary to study intensively for several years to acquire the fundamental skills of a legal expert. Therefore, if you aim to become a legal expert, I think studying intensively for a certain period at a law school to acquire fundamental skills is a very good method of study. In my case, after becoming a practitioner, I had to study even more than when I was a student. Although it's studying to handle daily work, the necessity of it seems to increase concentration, and applying it to concrete factual situations makes it easier to understand. Also, even if I don't have a specific case in front of me, I need to constantly study and update my knowledge on legal reforms and precedents. Having chosen the profession of a lawyer, I believe it is necessary to continue studying legal reforms, case law, laws I don't yet know, and other things, and I intend to continue doing so until the day I retire from this job. Of course, there are various types of lawyers. Some are successful with skills that allow them to lead case negotiations and bring cases to a close, having younger people report on detailed legal reforms and the organization of facts. Such lawyers also have high fundamental legal abilities, so I think they must have studied quite intensively when they were young. Some of you may have already studied law, while others may be thinking of starting now. If you want to become a legal expert, I think placing yourself in an environment like a law school where you are forced to concentrate on your studies for a certain period to build a foundation as a legal professional is a good way to study.
As a feature of Keio Law School, I would like to introduce the Mita Hoso-kai (Keio Legal Community). Could you please open your pamphlets to pages 24 and 25? When you graduate from Keio University, you all become alumni, and at Keio, we call them Keio University alumni. All Keio University alumni belong to a Mita-kai of some kind. There are various types of Mita-kai; for regional Mita-kai, there are, for example, Mita-kai in Aomori, Hokkaido, and Sapporo, as well as overseas ones like the New York Mita-kai. Then there are the workplace Mita-kai within each company. For example, it's a group of Keio graduates within a single company like XX Life Insurance. Among these is the Mita Hoso-kai. If you enter Keio Law School, pass the bar examination, and become a judge, prosecutor, or lawyer, you automatically become a member of the Mita Hoso-kai. As written in the pamphlet, the connections are very deep, and members help each other in various ways, such as by referring work to one another.
Furthermore, the Mita Hoso-kai has provided full backup for this law school since its establishment. Many of the practitioner faculty are from the Mita Hoso-kai, and young instructors help out with educational support seminars and the like almost on a volunteer basis. There is a Keio tradition where seniors teach their juniors, and those juniors, in turn, guide their own juniors when they are in the same position. When I talk to graduates from other schools, I am often told that the vertical connections among Keio graduates, not just in the legal world, are unique to Keio and not found at other schools. Also, regarding practitioner faculty, in Keio's case, many were in charge of seminar courses at the Faculty of Law long before the current law school system was established. After the law school was launched, those who were in charge of those seminar courses now teach subjects including required courses as full-time faculty and in other roles. Therefore, I think one of the features of Keio Law School is that many of its faculty have a certain amount of experience teaching students while working as legal practitioners.
Finally, I would like to talk a little about the concerns some of you may have about post-graduation employment and your future, especially after seeing reports related to the recent changes in the situation surrounding law schools, as you consider your life path.
Even if you become a company employee instead of aiming for a legal career, I don't think your life is guaranteed to be stable. I was a student over 20 years ago, and companies that were doing well at that time are not necessarily still doing well today. Even if you become a company employee, you may need to change jobs midway through your career, and in that case, you will have to find a new job based on your experience and the skills you have acquired at that company. Lawyers are self-employed, so some have a lot of work, and some do not. Clients can choose their lawyers, so if you do a good job, you will get the next job, but if not, you won't. What kind of work you get is all up to you, which is tough, but I think that kind of work suits some people. In-house lawyers are company employees, so they are not self-employed and do not have the difficulty of getting work from external clients, but there are other difficulties in working within a company, and it requires certain abilities. Whether you choose to work within an organization or be a self-employed lawyer, there are good things, bad things, fun things, and tough things, and you never know what difficulties lie ahead. You may or may not achieve what you set out to do as you choose your own path according to your desires, abilities, and circumstances. Within various constraints and conditions, it is ultimately each and every one of you who can decide the path you will take.
I very much look forward to all of you studying at Keio Law School and joining the Mita Hoso-kai in the future. That concludes my presentation.
Introduction of Current Students
From the Keio University Law School admissions information session held on Saturday, June 6, 2015, we present the voices of current students at our law school (hereafter, Keio Law School) who are aspiring to a career in the legal profession. We hope this will be a helpful reference for those considering Keio Law School.
A : Male, third-year student in the 3-year program for non-law graduates.
B : Female, second-year student in the 2-year program for law graduates.
C : Male, third-year student in the 3-year program for non-law graduates.
Q1: Among the many law schools, what was the deciding factor for choosing Keio Law School? When did you start thinking about and preparing for the law school entrance exams?
A : There were two deciding factors for me in choosing Keio Law School. The first is that there are professors with outstanding achievements on the faculty. The second is the high pass rate for the bar exam. Specifically, I like Constitutional Law and Administrative Law, and I chose Keio because I wanted to learn Constitutional Law from Professor Komamura and Administrative Law from Professor Hashimoto. However, due to class assignments, I couldn't take lectures from both professors, but I was taught Constitutional Law by Professor Yamamoto and Administrative Law by the part-time instructor Professor Shimoi, and I am very satisfied. The high pass rate was a deciding factor because I entered Keio Law School after working, so I was 31 when I enrolled. At such an advanced age, failing even once would make the already tough job market even tougher, so I felt I had to choose a school with a high pass rate, and I chose Keio.
B : There were three points that were important to me. The first was the variety of elective courses. Perhaps because Keio has a large number of students, it is a law school that offers many elective courses. I had been studying private international law since my undergraduate years and wanted to continue that study. I also want to primarily handle general civil cases in the future, so I was looking for a school with a good selection of classes related to the Consumer Contract Act. Keio Law School had both, which I found very appealing. The second point is the bar examination pass rate. This has already been discussed, so I will skip it. The third point, which I've realized is very important after attending, is the commute time from my home. I live in the Yokohama area, so my commute here is about 30 minutes shorter than to other law schools. On days when I have a required class in the morning and an elective at night, I'm at school for almost the entire day. Considering this is a daily routine, I realized that commute time is very important.
C : The reasons I decided on this law school were that I was considering a law school in Tokyo, it has a high bar examination pass rate and a strong university brand, and I was accepted in the entrance exam. I had always been in the Kansai region, and I had heard from people in various professions that Tokyo is different in terms of the volume of work and the speed of information. So, I thought I would like to work in Tokyo in the future and considered law schools there. Among them, I applied to the University of Tokyo, Keio, and Waseda because of their high pass rates and brand recognition.
Q2: When did you start thinking about and preparing for the law school entrance exams?
A : I started studying in January of the year I took the exam. I wasn't very good at the aptitude test, so I mainly focused on studying for that. For the essay portion, I think you'll be fine if you look at past exams, as you can generally get a sense of the trends.
B : When I first chose to major in law, I vaguely thought about becoming a lawyer in the future. However, in my first year, I thought that as a university student, I had to have fun, so I had a part-time job and was in two clubs, and I didn't do any studying with exams in mind. In my second year, my peers were attending prep schools, so I went with the flow and started attending one myself. In my third year, the seminar I chose was very fulfilling academically, with regular debates, report assignments, and co-authoring papers. So, during busy periods with the seminar, I focused on those activities and studied at the prep school just enough not to fall behind in the lectures. I started studying exclusively for the law school entrance exams from the winter of my third year, forming an independent study group with two friends to work on practice problems and study.
C : I started thinking about applying to law school at the end of my third year, and I think I started studying at the end of my third year or in my fourth year. Since I was in the Faculty of Law, some of my friends around me had been studying for the bar exam since their first year, but I hadn't thought about it at all. When it was time for job hunting, I attended information sessions and other events, but nothing really clicked. As I thought about various options, I started considering a legal path and going to law school.
Q3: What are your impressions of the classes at Keio Law School?
A : In a word, they are high-quality. To give three specific examples of professors, first, Professor Nishi's Family Law is truly wonderful. I'm a fast talker myself, but the professor speaks quickly yet is easy to understand, and the content is very clear. It's often said that it's unthinkable to take the bar exam without taking Professor Nishi's Family Law class. Next is Professor Koike for Criminal Law. Before class, Professor Koike distributes case problems to the students, and the students solve them before attending. Then, the professor randomly calls on students one by one using the Socratic method to discuss the problems, after which he explains the lesson. His explanations are also very clear, and he is a very respectable and wonderful professor. Finally, there is Professor Miki for Civil Procedure Law. He is a truly brilliant person, so his lectures are logical and his explanations are clear. However, the class uses the Socratic method, and since I get nervous easily, I'd be fumbling and he'd say something like, "A is hyperventilating, so let's move on to D," and the class would proceed like that. After the class, you feel a pleasant sense of fatigue, and even though it's a class at the beginning of the week, it feels like the week is already over, which motivates you to work hard again.
B : I've only been enrolled for about two months, so I don't have enough information to compare various professors, but the biggest difference from my undergraduate days is that classes are not just about sitting in a large lecture hall and passively listening to the professor. Law school classes use the Socratic method, where you prepare by studying assigned questions beforehand, so the 90 minutes seem to fly by. At first, I wasn't used to the Socratic method, and there were a few very scary moments when I tried to predict when I would be called on and prepared accordingly, only to be called on for a part I hadn't prepared for. Fortunately, I'm much more used to it now and can generally prepare for everything. In April, I was just barely keeping up with classes and couldn't catch up on reviews, so I paid the price in the required midterm exams at the end of May. I'm going to learn from this and make sure to review properly for the finals. The classes themselves are all high-level. I studied in the Faculty of Law for four years, so I thought I had a decent understanding of the law, but there are many times when I'm asked about a basic topic in class, and I raise my hand thinking I can explain it, only to get stuck midway. It makes me realize I don't understand things as well as I thought. The level of the classes is high, but the content isn't difficult because it's full of new knowledge. Rather, it's a check to see if you truly understand the basics, so I expect it will help me build a solid foundation.
C : The classes are generally high-level, and I think the curriculum for the first year of the 3-year program is particularly tough for those who enter with no prior legal studies. In terms of content, I think it's so dense that if you could perfectly understand and absorb the first-year curriculum for non-law graduates, you could probably pass the bar exam. This isn't because Keio is particularly strict; the Japanese law school system itself is designed so that students in the 3-year program catch up in their first year on what Faculty of Law students study in three or four years, and then join the students from the 2-year program from the second year. So, I think other law schools are more or less the same. But there's no need to be pessimistic. For those who enter the 3-year program, it's probably best to study hard in the first year and then think of the next two years as a time to refine that knowledge. I think it's important to study as hard as you can, but it's also important not to become too obsessive and to continue studying consistently.
Q4: What is your typical daily schedule like? Please also tell us about your self-study time, such as for preparation and review.
A : I usually wake up around 5:30 or 6:00 AM. This year, I have three first-period classes, so I get to school by 9:00 AM. After class, I review the parts I didn't understand or felt my understanding was insufficient. After that, I spend at least three hours preparing for each subject. I don't really like studying in the study room, so I usually study at a cafe or somewhere similar until about 10:00 or 11:00 PM.
B : Required classes are often in the first or second period, and since I'm not a morning person, I usually sleep until the last minute and slide in about five minutes before class starts. On days when classes end in the morning, I spend the afternoon preparing a bit for the next day's classes until it's time for my part-time job. On days when I have classes all day, I basically spend my breaks reviewing for the next class or preparing for the following day. I spend most of my weekdays focusing on preparation. I set a limit for myself of two hours at most for preparation for each subject, so if I don't finish, I'll do it later if I have time, but if not, I'll do it on the weekend, including review after attending the class. For weekend review, since we deal with case problems in Civil Code and Code of Civil Procedure, I correct the answers to those problems with a friend. As for review time, besides writing answers for civil law subjects on weekends, I haven't been able to get to much else yet, so I'm thinking I need to work on other elective subjects as well.
C : As for my daily schedule, I really dislike the morning train rush, so I try to get to school around 7:30 AM to avoid it. I like to leave school by 5:00 or 6:00 PM, but sometimes I have late classes, and this semester I sometimes leave around 8:00 PM. While I'm at school, I attend classes, study in the study room, or study in an independent study group. Regarding preparation and review, my study pace is slow, and I'm embarrassed to say that I sometimes go into class without having finished my preparation, so please refer to what the other two have said, and I will skip this part.
Q5: Do you have any advice for prospective students applying to Keio Law School?
A : I'd like to talk about two phases: before the exam and after passing but before enrolling. Since I came from the 3-year program for non-law graduates, I'll be speaking mainly to those applying to that program. First, before the entrance exam, try solving a past aptitude test early on. If you score above average, you don't need to focus on it too much, but if you score below average or get a terrible score, I think it's better to solve problems diligently every day. In fact, among my classmates who entered the 2-year program for law graduates last year, there was someone who was very good at law but had a hard time with the aptitude test and had to take a year off before entering law school. The aptitude test really doesn't suit some people, so I think it's better to start preparing early. The essay portion is as I mentioned earlier. What you should do after passing and before enrolling is to study the Civil Code. There are two reasons for this. The first is that the subject with the biggest skill gap between students in the 3-year and 2-year programs is the Civil Code. This is not because the Keio professors' teaching is bad, but because of the nature of the subject, the amount of knowledge is inevitably vast, and it takes time to master. Students in the 2-year program have studied it in the Faculty of Law, so I think that's where the difference comes from. The second reason is that, as you can see on page 4 of the pamphlet, students in the 3-year program cover the entire Civil Code in the spring of their first year. That's a huge undertaking, and I think if you first encounter the Civil Code after enrolling, you'll be more than just flustered, so I highly recommend studying it before you enroll. If you have extra time, there's an article on study methods for law school in the April 2014 issue of *Hogaku Kyoshitsu*. A very talented student from my year who is also from the 3-year program, along with other students from Chuo Law School, provides information in a roundtable discussion on how they study, so if you're interested, please take a look.
B : I entered through the 2-year program for law graduates, so my advice is for those considering applying to that program. Starting this year, taking the Legal Studies Examination for Law Graduates has become mandatory at Keio. For this, I think it's a good idea to buy a problem book early and get used to the question format. If the format doesn't change this year, there are 20 true/false questions and, in the latter half, 4-5 multiple-choice questions with 5 options, similar to the preliminary bar examination. The first 20 true/false questions are worth 1 point each, while the latter questions are worth 4-5 points each. I've heard stories of people who got all the true/false questions right but somehow missed all the last four or five multiple-choice questions and didn't get a good score, so I recommend preparing early. The difficulty of the examination for law graduates is lower than the preliminary bar examination, so you don't need to worry at all if you couldn't do well on the short-answer section of the preliminary exam. I think it's good to mark the problems you get wrong in the problem book and go over them multiple times. Next, regarding Keio's unique essay-style exam, I think it's a good idea to look carefully at the statutory provisions, especially for the three minor laws. The reason is that you won't necessarily be given problems that involve major legal issues. For example, last year, a private law school had a one-line question. At that time, if you're trying to jump on a legal issue, you won't be able to write anything, so I think it's better to practice looking for the relevant statutory provisions and writing what you remember based on the wording. Also, Keio, especially among private universities, has a very strict time allocation; the time is short for the amount of questions. Therefore, if you don't practice timing yourself beforehand, you might end up with an incomplete answer, so please be careful and do your best to avoid that.
C : I think statutory provisions are important for all subjects. On a more general note, and this relates to what the professors said earlier, there's a lot of talk about how it's tough to enter the legal world now and that law school is hard. But personally, I think no matter what profession you choose or what kind of life you lead, it's equally tough in the sense that you don't know what the future holds. In that context, if you do choose to go to law school, I believe Keio, with its excellent professors, can be a strong option. I'm glad I came to Keio Law School because I was able to meet a mentor here. I know there are many things to decide and many things you have to do, which can be overwhelming, but in the end, I think what's important is what you want to do and why you are studying. So, please cherish that feeling and do your best.