Japanese LSAT: Four Years Summary and Its Challenges.

Since 2003, a year before the new JD program started in Japan, Japanese LSAT has been administered. In this paper, I would like to show, based on our four year experiences and data, how the test is organized, how law schools utilize this test, and how much predictive validity the test has against students' law school performances. Along with these descriptions, I will try to locate the Japanese LSAT within the Japanese cultural and educational environments. The Japanese LSAT is different from US LSAT administered by LSAC in some points: Two testing bodies instead of one, only once a year administration and its score would be valid for only that year, test problems are published later. In addition, the ways each law school admits new students diverge from its corresponding body: Unreliable undergraduate GPA scores, school by school entrance examinations in addition to LSAT, and the presence of two year course students who had passed the entrance examination with law subjects. Japanese LSAT needs to be administered and improved within these environments. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]