Graduate School of LawWaseda University

About the Waseda LL.M.

Message from the Dean

OSAKI, Yasuhiro

Graduate School of Law at Waseda University is a higher education institution aiming to train researchers and highly skilled professionals. Our teaching faculty is comprised of some of the most accomplished academics and educators in Japan, and the classes they conduct have a diverse student composition with a small-group instruction. At the same time, these faculty members serve as student advisors to provide careful, personalized advice to help each student produce their thesis based on individual’s topics of interest and specialization.

In terms of researcher training, the Graduate School of Law offers a five-year (in principle) course of study (conducted in Japanese) comprised of a two-year master’s degree program and three-year doctoral degree program in three specialization tracks: Civil Law, Public Law, and Fundamental Legal Studies. The coursework system that we provide integrates the two-year master’s program and three-year doctoral program into a single five-year Unified MD System which you can achieve a doctoral degree. The majority of students pursuing the doctoral program have successfully obtained posts as a faculty member of various universities inside and outside Japan. Their presence at the academic society is very strong due to the fact that the majority of the researchers there are the alumni of the Graduate School of Law. We also have Waseda Law School, separate to the Graduate School of Law, for those students who wish to become legal professionals, and ever since the Law School system was started, the number of applicants who wish to become a researcher decreased. Cultivating legal scholars has become an urgent issue for Japan these days, and demand for aspiring legal scholars is not only strong in the academic field, but also strong in the professional world as well.

The sort of sophisticated reasoning which law-related research develops is tremendously useful outside of academia in the professional world. As the population continues to fall and society becomes increasingly IT-driven, we can expect a greater level of academic achievement in society for generalists will decrease, while the demand for specialists who add value through graduate school research will increase. In fact, a large number of outstanding master’s program graduates of the Graduate School of Law are acting as an important role in government, financial circles, international organizations, and elsewhere in present days.

We are also committed to recurrent education aimed for those who have already started their career in the society. To meet the needs or those people who want to further refine their expertise, we also offer a master’s program of five established areas of research: Environmental Problems and Law/Disputes of Intellectual Property and Law/Taxation Disputes and Law/Social Security, Law of Social Welfare and Conservatorship and Administration/Practice and Law of International Maritime Problems.

Also, in the year 2018, we have launched a new course in the form of LL.M. program (one-year master’s program), consists of two courses; LL.M. in Intellectual Property Law (Japanese program) and LL.M. in Asian Economic Integration and Law (English program). The LL.M. in Intellectual Property Law course provides a systematic and focused examination of both the theory and practice of law as it relates to intellectual property. Among the students enrolled in this course are government officials, corporate professionals and practicing attorneys. On the other hand, the LL.M. in Asian Economic Integration and Law course offers a systematic and focused examination towards various problems in terms of economic, environmental, labor, maritime and other perspectives which the Asian region is facing these days. We invite large number of international students from all over the world alongside with Japanese students, and all classes in this course are conducted in English in order to facilitate the cultivation of current and future highly skilled professionals working in international organizations, multinational corporations, government offices and other institutions in Japan and overseas.

To everyone who wishes to become researchers, as well as those who seek to add value to society as a highly skilled professional, we invite you to come and knock the door of the Graduate School of Law, Waseda University.

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