Introducing ICT into Japanese Legal Education: The Postgraduate Law School Movement and Covid-19 as Cornerstones

Abstract

This report explains the evolution of online legal education in Japan, particularly in its universities. Three phases can be discerned: before and after the introduction from 2004 of a new postgraduate Law School system to improve and expand core legal professionals, as part of a wider justice system reform program, and a more dramatic expansion prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020. The Law School reforms had trickled down somewhat to undergraduate legal education, building on and linking to wider nationwide and university-sector initiatives in Information and Communications Technology. This fortunately positioned Japanese legal education quite well for pandemic-related challenges, although the transitions have not been easy.

Keywords: Legal education, comparative law, Asian law, Japanese law, information technology

JEL Classification: K1, I1