Evaluating the effectiveness of the lawyer disciplinary system in Japan: a study on “repeaters”

ABSTRACT A lawyer regulatory system will usually include a mechanism to discipline lawyers who have committed misconduct. Such mechanism may have different objective(s) and function(s), which may vary from jurisdictions to jurisdictions. The Japanese system seemingly has, inter alia, deterrent and educational purposes: discouraging further misconduct and/or educating lawyers to reduce recurrence of similar misconduct. This paper focuses on the deterrent function on Japanese lawyers who have been disciplined. Through an empirical analysis of the cases of lawyers who have been disciplined more than once, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of the lawyer disciplinary system in Japan in discouraging the disciplined lawyers from committing misconduct again. It also hypothesises on some of the possible contributory factor(s) for the multiple violations.