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Women in Japan’s legal industry have steadily made gains in recent years, and more are joining law firms than ever before. Lawyers in Japan talk about the progress so far and how technology can help keep talented women in the profession.

Are you married? Will you quit your job after getting married? Can you continue to work even after you get married? These are just some of the questions a young, female legal professional would be bombarded with when applying for a job at a major law firm in Japan, no matter how good her credentials and recommendations.

Typical comments during interviews include how "female lawyers are ‘inconvenient’ from a marketing viewpoint, as partners could not take female lawyers to client entertainment (‘settai’) at night or play golf with clients over the weekend," shares Setsuko Yufu, a senior partner at Atsumi & Sakai.

Yufu, however, contends that "this kind of talk is now all in the past."

It certainly is better today for women in Japan’s legal industry, and the stats speak for themselves. According to the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, female lawyers accounted for 18.3 percent of the country’s 37,600 lawyers last year – almost quadruple the rate 30 years ago. ALB even had a Woman Lawyer of the Year category for the first time at ALB Japan Law Awards 2017, which was awarded to Yufu.

Nishimura & Asahi’s global development director Timothy Jeffares and partner Asa Shinkawa have also noticed more women in law, including at large private corporations. They explain that the focus has shifted towards "retaining women in the workforce long enough so that opportunities to assume managerial positions become the norm."

They continue: "The single biggest challenge is still how to balance sustaining a career in an environment where long and irregular working hours are commonplace with fulfilling domestic responsibilities, particularly because the years when careers are traditionally forged often coincide with child-bearing years, as well with as living up to the roles expected of mothers in Japanese society."

TECHNOLOGY TO THE RESCUE

Changing such ingrained gender roles, particularly for mothers, will be a long and slow process. But in the meantime, technology could provide some solutions, as it has in the past.

Makiko Shimizu and Yasuko Yokosawa, partner and counsel at TMI Associates, respectively, believe that the rapid development of IT and communications technology has been a major factor behind the progress in the past 15 years. As they point out, "Our IT system is maintained and structured in a way which makes it possible for our lawyers to work away from the office using secure mobile phones and laptops provided by TMI Associates."

N&A’s Jeffares and Shinkawa agree. Apart from changes stemming from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s "womenomics" programme of promoting more women to leadership positions, they expect to see more "investment in modern technologies to allow efficient remote working as well as the continued evolution of flexible working arrangements being used to respond to the expectations of lawyers – both men and women – who increasingly share family responsibilities."

Additionally, one of the hottest trends in technology could help: artificial intelligence (AI). "I think that AI may be considered positively to free lawyers from labour-intensive work such as due diligence and document review," says Yufu. "The main work of a lawyer is not to earn time with such tasks, but to maintain the stable interpretation of the law with advanced expertise and foresight, to theorise with a bird’s-eye view of economic activities, and to fix matters legally in the economic society."

Concentrating on these important functions will free up all lawyers, regardless of sex, "from excessive time restrictions." As she concludes, "I think that this will reap strong work rewards for lawyers themselves and give them happiness in their work."

To contact the writer, please email john.kang@tr.com.