Following on from my previous report on Mr Akira Kawamura’s talk in Sydney about the significant transformations impacting on the legal profession in Japan, East Asia and world-wide, let us briefly consider also some inter-related changes to legal education in our region. ANJeL Judges-in-Residence Program Convenor Stacey Steele is co-editing, with Kathryn Taylor, “Legal Education in East Asia: Globalisation, Change and Contexts” (forthcoming in December from Routledge: ISBN 978-0-415-49433-5) to commemorate the late Professor Mal Smith, who did so much for ANJeL, Australia-Japan relations, and legal education particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. ANJeL Co-director Kent Anderson and Competitions Program Convenor Trevor Ryan have contributed a very useful chapter on “Gatekeepers: A Comparative Critique of Admission to the Legal Profession and Japan’s New Law Schools”, which they and Stacey have kindly shared with me in manuscript form.
Hopefully without stealing too much of their thunder, I would like to extend it to locate especially Australian legal education. Below are my opening remarks for a co-authored National Report on Topic I.D “The Role of Practice in Legal Education” for the 18th International Congress of Comparative Law, held four-yearly in different venues – this time from 25 July 2010 in Washington DC. Through the Sydney Centre for International Law, Professor Cheryl Saunders, Justice James Douglas and I have arranged for many other National Reporters on diverse topics selected for the Congress. We can also expect there many National Reports from Japan, although it remains to be seen whether anyone has volunteered one for the same Legal Education topic. There remains considerable uncertainty about Japan’s new postgraduate “Law School” programs and their relationship to the National Legal Examination system, as I explained in a paper first presented a conference organised by Stacey in Melbourne where the “gatekeeper” framework was first unveiled.
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