Diversification of judicial scriveners' practice and where shall it go: The fluctuating boundaries of law-related occupations in Japan

In Japan, besides attorney (bengoshi), there are several law-related occupations, including judicial scrivener (shihôshoshi) who in tradition mainly represent clients in various registration formalities, such as real estate registration. Recent years have seen diversification of the judicial scriveners’ scope of practice.  Subject to certification requirement, they can represent clients in summary court civil lawsuits.  This paper first discusses the historical development of judicial scrivener’s practice and its recent diversification as aforesaid.  This is followed by an analysis of the current situation on the basis of relevant data and results of questionnaire surveys in the North-Tohoku region (a relatively remote area) and Saitama (a prefecture adjacent to Tokyo).  The survey results indicate that some judicial scriveners handle the kind of legal works in which attorneys are not interested.  These works are non-lucrative.  However, despite handling legal work, these judicial scriveners do not see themselves as legal experts (hôritsuka).  The analysis in this paper will throw light on our evaluation of the state of legal service in Japan nowadays.  While judicial scriveners have been called as “hôritsuka in embryo”, this paper however argues that the concept of “hôritsuka (legal experts)” as well as the legal service in Japan in fact may still be in an embryonic stage.