Legal Reform, Law Firms, and Lawyer Stratification in Japan

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.