Sept. 21 is awaited with a mixture of anticipation and dread in campuses across Japan. It is the date on which results of the country's first new bar examination are announced. How well a school's students do on this test, which is projected to have a pass rate of about 40 percent, may have a serious impact on the success of institutions entirely new to Japan -- graduate professional law schools. Around the country 74 of these now exist (with over 5,000 students), compared to none three years ago.

Some background: As in many countries, law has traditionally been taught as an undergraduate discipline in Japan. Students got a bachelor's in law and then joined the workforce -- maybe in a legal field but just as likely not. Those entering legal academia went to the graduate school, did research and published, just like in any other discipline. Pretty much anyone could take the bar exam, but it had a pass rate of 3 percent, making it one of the world's most difficult standardized tests.

This success ratio was a function of the Japanese government's monopoly over the licensing of lawyers, judges and prosecutors. Bar passage merely qualified one to enter the Supreme Court of Japan's Legal Research and Training Institute, where completion of two years' training (more recently 18 months) was a required part of the licensing process. For decades, the Institute only had 500 openings per year, a number that has been gradually increased, but only by a few hundred. Thus, the low pass rate was a function of tens of thousands of people taking an exam to qualify for one of these few slots.