Thank you for your interest in Temple University's law school's spring semester study abroad program at the Temple University, Japan Campus in Tokyo. If you have any additional questions, please visit the Law Program's website and feel free to contact us. Many of your questions can also be answered in the 2012 Japan Pre-departure Manual. 

Message from the Director

W e l c o m e !

The Temple University Beasley School of Law, and especially the staff and I in our Tokyo Law Program, welcomes your interest in the semester-abroad law program we conduct each spring in Japan.  Our program offers the only ABA-accredited, semester-abroad law program in Asia.

After the tragic events of March 11, 2011, Japan committed itself to rebuilding and revitalizing the stricken areas and to securing the safety of other regions.  We invite you to join us in this time of renewal.  Study for an entire spring semester as a J.D. student or for an entire year as a Transnational LL.M. student. You will reap the rewards associated with studying abroad--even if you are not familiar with Japan or cannot speak Japanese.

Our classes, a mixture of international, comparative, and basic bar courses, are taught in English.  Our teachers include both full-time professors and international practitioners instructing in their areas of expertise. In classes such as International Contract Drafting and East-West Negotiation, you will work on problems based on real-world, transnational situations with classmates who are legal practitioners trained in very different legal systems, and who hail from very different social, cultural and linguistic backgrounds.  Studying with us will expose you to the civil law system upon which the legal framework of Japan and so many other countries around the globe is based. This knowledge will deepen and broaden your legal education. It will also better prepare you to be a lawyer in a time when transactions and disputes increasingly cross national borders and can involve multiple jurisdictions. 

While in Tokyo, you can join a professional network in vibrant international legal, business, and academic communities, or seek internships at major corporations, international and Japanese law firms, and public interest organizations. In today's legal environment, such opportunities are invaluable.  They may help distinguish you!

Coming to Japan will also enrich you in so many other ways. Tokyo offers innumerable attractions, cultural treasures, music to suit every taste, a global cuisine, a phantasmagoria of street fashion and style. During your spring break, you can travel around Japan’s beautiful islands or across Asia.  Ultimately, living in Japan's very different culture will likely teach you most about yourself: your adaptability, your tolerance for difference and change, your ability to interact and communicate with people from different cultures. You will consider career paths that might never have occurred to you, life-styles that might have seemed alien, places to live that you had never registered.

So I urge you to come to Tokyo either as a J.D. student or as a candidate for our LL.M. degree in Transnational Law. If you need more information or have questions about our Law Program, please feel free to contact me at mccarthy@temple.edu

Yours sincerely,

Finbarr McCarthy, J.D., Ph.D. Director