Discover what you are best suited for by analyzing things
from various different angles.
What do you want to learn?
That’s a question for the legal professional!
Just what is a legal professional? Sometimes the term attorney refers only to a judge, a lawyer or a public prosecutor. But, in fact, all three (generally called members of the Bar) are specialists who work in an extremely restricted area, which is law. The arena in which all three perform is the court, and frankly speaking, and without worrying about being misunderstood, what the profession entails is an extremely specialized and complicated form of social conflict. They are denizens of the world, who in criminal trials administer justice to social deviants, punishing them as criminals whose actions can no longer be overlooked by society; or in civil trials they are lawyers who wage a war of words with each other over a dispute that cannot be settled by the concerned parties, with the judge, who is an agent of the state, keeping score, and the side who loses the trial forced by the power of the state to abide by the judge’s decision if he or she does not do as ordered. One might compare their job to that of a surgeon who specializes in cancer, calmly wielding his scalpel even while covered with blood.
In our society, law is not only a function performed in the court. The technique which is law serves as the foundation of our society in all aspects of our society. For instance, all government affairs, including ensuring the safety of the food that we eat, the proper disposal of garbage generated from people’s homes and places of business, and such social security systems as health insurance, are based on law. In addition to attending to social issues as required by his or her job, an administrative official (civil servant) must also be a legal professional who is well versed in basic legal concepts, operational technology, and methods of legislation.
One of the places where legal professionals are required is in the area of corporate activity. A look at actual cases recognized as social problems and which endanger the very survival of corporations, including legal disputes over bank mergers which are covered by television and newspapers, civil action between corporations and their employees over copyright issues, top management of famous corporations resigning over illegal account closing procedures or report disclosures, and the disposal of group companies, should provide an understanding of the importance of law in the corporate arena. With principles advocated to demonstrate a wider role of legal corporate activities, including corporate governance based on law, and legal compliance by corporations, the domain of corporate law is in fact expanding. Knowledge of the law as it relates to corporate activities has become an indispensable qualification, not only for specialists engaged in corporate law at legal departments in corporations, but also for future employees of regular corporations as well as people who intend to start their own business. A person who obtains these qualifications is a legal professional.
Government and corporate activities are not the only areas in which law is required. The average person who works for a salary, who uses that salary to buy the food and clothing needed for everyday life, who rents a place a live, and who goes to the doctor when sick, is also heavily dependant on legal contracts in his or her everyday life. It is important for such people to know the techniques for protecting their own advantage and the advantage of the people around them, and how to deal with the myriad troubles that occur in everyday life, including, for instance, if an employer does not pay your salary, if you are injured on the job, if a personal computer that you have purchased is defective and does not work properly, if the landlord of an apartment you have been renting charges an exorbitant cleaning fee when you move, or if you have not received the proper healthcare due to a physician’s error. Or there could be trouble that has nothing to do with a contract, and that occurs through no fault of your own, including injury as a result of an accident, the construction of a high-rise condominium being planned near your house which might well adversely affect your living environment by blocking the sunlight on your home, or large quantities of garbage being left in a nearby vacant lot. At any rate, trouble in our society presents legal problems. And so, when trouble occurs, it is necessary to clearly understand who has what rights, and who has what obligations – and based on these conditions to negotiate with the other party. (Of course, in actual negotiations, it is important to have negotiation skills based on human psychology – and talks will fall apart if either of the parties blindly claims to have this or that right, or that the other side is responsible for this or that.) People who are able to find a solution to problems, based on a firm understanding of the legal mechanisms that are the foundation of society and through self-examination, are legal professionals. And society needs such people.
A true legal professional is a person who, through extensive knowledge of the law and by putting that knowledge to good use, regardless of his or her profession or position, is capable of fulfilling his or her social obligations.
Skills Required of a Legal Professional
What skills are required of legal professionals discussed above? Like the rules governing morals, customs and religion, laws are rules of society. And it is the most important distinction of the state to use its authority to enforce those rules. For example, if a person commits a crime (under criminal law) – murder, for instance – he or she is indicted by a public prosecutor, who is an agent of the state, and if found guilty in a criminal trial, is punished accordingly (by execution or imprisonment). Or if there is a dispute between private individuals, the matter is settled according to a decision handed down by a court of law based on civil law and/or other civil code. If either of the parties does not abide by the court’s decision, the court bailiff, who is an agent of the state, assists in the enforcement of the decision, through proceedings for enforcing civil affairs. And since these rules are ultimately backed by force, law is “technique” and “power.”
Of course, a legal professional is required to accurately learn these techniques of power. For that purpose he or she must obtain knowledge of theoretically formulated underlying legal concepts, legal systems, and basic law. But that is not enough for a legal professional. Laws are rules of society, created for the purpose of solving individual social problems. And it would not be possible to find a means for solving these social problems without knowledge of the problems, as well as the individual circumstances and interests of the parties involved. If a person were to wield the technique which is law with a lack of understanding of social problems, that technique would be evil.
There are many different types of social problems. Each individual dispute has its own peculiarities. It is impossible for any one legal professional to have an accurate knowledge of all social problems. Each individual legal professional must therefore take a serious involvement in immediate social problems based on his or her own standpoint and personal conviction – and each one must also have an understanding of the overall picture of society, and have the ability to think about it flexibly. And it would be safe to say that the skills and capabilities required of a true legal professional are the accurate legal techniques discussed above and those capabilities which enable that person to understand society.
Nor would it be an exaggeration to say that the capabilities of legal professionals are not only those capabilities required to allow themselves to succeed, but also to provide the appropriate assistance to people in need, as well as to understand the social problems at hand. I also think that they have to do with the reason why a person who utilizes such capabilities needs those capabilities, and what that person’s purpose for living is. The merits and demerits of a technique ultimately depend on the character and degree of morality of the person utilizing that technique – and law is no exception.
The Aims of the Meiji Gakuin University, Department of Legal Studies
The aim of the Department of Legal Studies is to train true legal professionals. For this purpose, in addition to a program (introductory courses and mandatory courses with a small number of people per class) which enables students to obtain a thorough understanding of constitutional law, civil law and criminal law, which are the basic subjects of law, the curriculum at the Department of Legal Studies takes a step-by-step approach to learning – starting with basic law and progressing to more advanced subjects. Through this curriculum students obtain basic knowledge of the law, while learning about the social phenomena and context in which that legal knowledge need be applied.
The most distinctive trait of the Faculty of Law at our university is that students can study consumer law, environmental law, and corporate law, which are areas of modern law, systematically and through a step-by-step approach. The significance of studying these areas of law is not only in the fact that students are thereby able to obtain the knowledge and way of thinking in those areas of law required by society, but by knowing how the knowledge they have obtained in areas of basic law is applied to actual problems, and where its limits lie, students can deepen their understanding of the respective areas of basic law.
By providing students with an understanding in the areas of basic law, and the freedom to choose those subjects (for example, focusing on basic law, or placing priority in advanced courses in a specific area) which best suit their individual aspired professions and orientations, it is our hope to turn out legal professionals who will perform well in a wide variety of areas based on their respective responsibilities.
Advancement
With a new system for preparing for the Bar having been started in 2004, people who aspire to become judges, lawyers or public prosecutors in the future must finish law school, after which they must pass the Bar exam, and receive actual judicial training for one year. Law school is generally for three years (students who have graduated from the faculty of law occasionally complete it in two years). After taking numerous law courses and practical courses, they must prepare for the Bar exam. And so the only place to learn basic methods of thinking about law and social functions, and to master them as a legal professional, thoroughly developing one’s mental capacity, is the Faculty of Law. The curriculum in the Department of Legal Studies includes lectures and workshops to provide students who aspire to go on to law school with the means to obtain knowledge in basic law subjects and to improve their qualifications thereof. Based on our close relationship with the law school (study seminar to enter the legal profession) at Meiji Gakuin University, on personnel, research and educational levels, the Faculty of Law utilizes an integrated system for training people for the Bar. As part of that process, after completing their third year of study at the Faculty of Law, students who have obtained all of the units required for graduation, and who have achieved excellent grades above and beyond a certain standard are entitled to skip a grade and take the law school entrance exam in March by the same methods and standards as the other students taking the test. If a student passes this exam, he or she is eligible to graduate from the law school in his or her third year, if that student so requests. And there are students who were actually accepted at our law school this way by taking the exam in 2004. In addition to our law school, there have also been quite a number of students who have been accepted at other law schools as well.
For students who aspire to obtain credentials as a judicial scrivener or an administrative scrivener, and those who hope to become civil servants, our department provides instruction regarding what courses those students should take after selecting the proper curriculum. In addition, we also offer a national exam prep course on an extracurricular basis or as a means for providing students with information regarding their exam. Using instructors from Meiji Gakuin University and other universities, as well as businesspeople with extensive experience in helping students prepare for exams, we hold these low-cost courses in classrooms at our university according to the academic level and purpose of the students.
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