This research has conducted 6 field surveys on civil litigation system from 2000 to 2013 to verify result of several reform on civil judicial system. Three of them are for litigants and other three of them are for ordinary citizen who has no experience of litigation. As all of them include same question on evaluation of several aspects of civil judicial system, the researcher can not only analyze the data from chronological perspective, also compare the result between litigants and ordinary citizen to find results of the reforms.The result of analysis show that the evaluation of the questions on “system is user-friendly” and “people are satisfied the system” are improved on one hand, on the other hand, “intention to use/reuse the system” and “intention to recommend other person to use the system” had decreased. In this research, the researcher will discuss the reason why such contradict results has appeared

We investigated people's money management and got 4,432 personal data. We can find the flow of money in the household economy. We'll analyze these data and would like to propose a new system to prevent multiple debts

Many law students keep their job preference they had dreamed of when they decided to come to law school throughout their law school term. While doing so, the two-thirds of those samples are predict their future job that is same as their dreamed job. The ratio of those who match their predicted job to their dreamed job are slightly higher as they stay in law schools longer. When our survey was conducted, no mass media paid attention to "new lawyers have hard time for finding their job, " we expect different responses if we do the same survey now a days. Indeed, we need to panel survey for a panel survey, that is, what kind of job they take after their completion of lawyers' trainee period.When we asked in our questionnaire some items for legal image, some abstract ones, it is not likely that those abstract legal image would not be changed in the short term. Indeed, the mean scores of most of the legal consciousness items did not change between the panel surveys conducted a year apart. However, the panel surveys conducted two years apart show more larger mean differences for some items. It suggests that three years intensive legal training at law schools will have some moderate influences on the general and abstract legal consciousness and legal attitudes.Japanese law schools accept many students from various universities. Also many prospective law students take the entrance examination for multiple law schools. In Japan, all applicants must take the LSAT type of test before applying law schools, and after graduation they must take the unified Bar Exam. When passed, they proceed to the trainee period for twelve months. Therefore it is very important to continue the research project for law students' life and consciousness, not for a separate school, but for all schools

In this research, empirical research on professional skills training has done not only by reading materials on legal counseling but also by using simulated client. A voluntary group, which name is CLESS helped this study and many role plays of legal counseling and mediation had conducted with help of simulated clients form CLESS.Finding coming from this study are followings.1. It is sometimes difficult for simulated clients to remember all things happen in their role play. To overcome such difficulty, showing clear teaching points to them helps them to make a good feedback.2. To make guideline which shows example of good feedback and example of expression for feedback is also help simulated clients to make a good feedback.3. To training simulated clients, it is necessary for us to make some kind organization to make continuing training.Based on these findings, a guideline for simulated clients is made showed in final report of this study. Also, many materials for role play were included in the final report

In Japan legal education at the university has not provided professional legal education. The majority of students of law pursued their career in business or public sector and those who practice law were in a minority. But Introduction of the Law School system radically changed the scene. The part of professional legal education became the responsibility of the law school and teachers of the law school do not always have experience of professional training of future lawyers.We have developed a new environment for professional legal education by utilizing computer networks and diverse computer tools. The environment consists of three main parts. The first is APRS (Anonymous Peer Review System), which enables students to assess anonymous reports of other students. The assessment is done anonymously via network. The second is DRS((Digital Recording Studio) and STICS (Stream Indexing and Commenting System which record and index students' performances. Comments from professionals and other students can be added to the video record so that students can receive feedbacks. The third is NLS (Nagoya Law School) syllabus system, by which students can view syllabuses via internet. And it accumulates the records of all courses, including handouts, and works as a platform of the other two parts.Our research and development are not limited to a development of pragmatic tools. Our system can be useful for the accumulation and analysis of educational data. It will form a basis of the future theory of professional legal education

One of the major causes of difficulties in people's obtaining appropriate legal services when they need is the uneven distribution of legal service providers--lawyers, judicial scribners, courts, or various legal consultation services. It is known that legal service providers, especially lawyers, are concentrated in larger cities and the residents in smaller cities, towns or villages experience a massive difficulty to finding one in their geographically proxy areas. This raises the question: how are legal disputes are resolved in less metropolitan areas of Japan? Strangely, the discussions on eneven distribution of legal services among cities and towns have been almost exclusively focusing on the seer number of lawyers. To design a more effective delivery system, however, it is necessary to know what happens in the less metropolitan areas and how the situation is coped with by the residents necessary using the locally available measures. It is also important to know how the legal service providersas well as the residents perceive the needs of legal services. The present study seeks to gain a realistic picture of how the legal disputes are coped with in these areas by combining the methods of case study and opinioin survey.The research group conducted the case study research in such rural areas as Tango(Kyoto), Iwami (Shimane), Miyako (Okinawa) and Ishigaki (Okinawa) in 2003. Our researcher visited the area and conducted the interviews with local lawyers, city hall officials, judicial scribners, courts, police, consumer protection offices. Benefited by the small number of available legal remedies, the interviews and observations are conducted with large proportion of local alternatives to access the law. In 200.1., the research group conducted a cross-sectional opinion survey in 6 cities in less metroplitan areas--Goshogawara (Aomori), Nihohe (Iwate), Mineyama (Kyoto), Gojo (Nara), Iki (Nagasaki),Ishigaki(Okinawa). The questionaire asking opinions on law and related subjects were sent to 6,000 residents (1,000 for each city) and obtaind the answer from 1,783 residents from 6 cities( Response rate being 29,7%). A graduate student in the reserch group stayed for a while as a resident in Ishigaki and conducted an in-depth observation of local attitudes and behaviors.The group also held a series of meetings inviting lawyers and other service providers to discuss the local situations. A micro-analysis of communication of law in legal consultation was also conducted utilising the method of conversation alalysis.The case studies revealed that (1)the digree and direction of immersion of newly arrived lawyer in community life differ significantly in areas, one of the reason of local variety is (1a) importance of personal relationship in local life, (1b) different availability of legal service providers already existed in the area, among others. The study revealed also (2)the lawyers and judges are sensitive to local custums corresponding the law (firendship based financing, transaction of land etc) and sometimes complain that the local customs make the straightforward application of law difficult. Thus there are interesting cleverage between legal service providers and community, and city officials in legal consultation services being a broker of legal consciousnes between them. The opinion survey revealed the pattern of some correspondence with the case study results. (1)It is not apparent, at least with preliminary analysis of the resutls, that 6 cities differ each other in term of opinions toward the law and related subjects. (2)Contrary to the popularly accepted view of popular dislike to law in Japanese life, the law and legal service providers (especially lawyers) are regarded important, trustworthy and effective. (3)The local residents consult with lawyers more frequently than the reserach group expected, though it is not clear whethere they turn to local lawyers or lawyers outside town. The preliminary results are presented at a mini-symposium at 2006 Annual Meeting of Japan Sociology of Law Association and at many other academic meetings. The group is preparing for results to publishe in English in the near future

The Japanese Justice System Reform Counsel had conducted an attitude survey on civil litigation system to parties of civil litigations. The results had published in 2002. This study has conducted an attitude survey on same topics to persons who had no experience of litigation. Questionnaire is almost same as the Council's survey and the place where survey had conducted is also same 20 cities as former Council's survey. 4000 anonymous questionnaires had distributed by mail and 1273 respondents answer the questionnaires. The response rate was 31%The results showed several important findings. People who had no experience of litigation had same expectation to litigations as people who experienced a litigation. Both of them expected to get fair resolution and clear decision on what is right or wrong. People who have no experience having legal problem feel difficulty to find their lawyer. 80% respondents who had no legal problem said they fill have difficulties to find their lawyer when they encounter a legal problem in the future. This result is much different from that of the Council's survey. Evaluation of litigation process is different between ex-litigants and other citizen. People who had no experience of litigations evaluate more negatively the process than ex-litigants. Lawyers are also evaluated more negatively by people who had no experience of litigation than ex-litigants. On the contrary, people who had no experience of litigations evaluate judges more positively than ex-litigants. They trust judges more than ex-litigants. Evaluations on the results of litigations are not so different between ex-litigants and people who had no experience of litigations. However, people who had no experience of litigations think more often than ex-litigants that the results of litigations are sometimes conflict with common sense. Evaluations on judicial system as a whole are not so different either between people who had no experience of litigations and ex-litigants. Both of them evaluate the function of judicial system very low and not satisfied very much. Only 20% of respondents satisfy even in case of non-litigation persons. When results of Council's survey were published, some practice lawyers pointed out that the negative evaluation of litigants on judicial system came from dissatisfaction or frustration of loser parties. However, based on present results of this survey, such reasoning is not correct, because even the persons who had no stakes with the results of the litigation evaluated negatively as same as ex-litigants. According to these results, we have to find another reason of people's low support for the judicial system

We found that Judicial Statistics played an important role in lawmaking and Judicial Reform. For instance, German civil procedure revision in 2001/2002, Civil Appeal revision particularly, was premised on Judicial Statistics of Civil appeals, namely, Filings and Dispositions of Civil Appeals, Processing Time, etc.On the other hand, we also found that International Comparison for Judicial Statistics was very difficult, because each Judicial Statistics of Civil Suit was the outcome of using their own separate methods, and we must compare Japanese judicial statistics with other country's statistics under various standards. We must be considered various factors too. For example, the Filing of a complex case may result in numerous court appearances and actions, while a simple case may be resolved in a single appearance of a few minutes. Yet both types of cases are counted as filings and appear equal statistically in terms of their impacts on the court. Under this premise, we tried to make a comparison between judicial statistics of Germany, France, and USA. England, Canada and Japan.Based on the analysis of a comparison between judicial statistics of Germany, France, USA, England, Canada and Japan, we found that the number of court filings in Japan was remarkably low. But we can not investigate into the cause of such a low number of court filings. That is our future challenge. In this context, it is necessary for International Comparison for Judicial Statistics to investigate into the difference not only between each Judicial Statistics, but also between each judicial systems, for example judge system, bar system, etc. And moreover it is necessary to investigate into the difference between each cultural climate, economy, politic etc..

This research tried to make clear changes of occupation preference, legal and norm consciousness of law school students during three years education. This research was conducted as a panel research at George Washington School of Law in Washington D.C.. The first survey was conducted in January 2003 by research center of George Washington D.C. after permission had been given by the administration of the university. 243 samples were collected among 600 students. The colleted samples were composed of men (51%) and women (49%) and first year students (31%), second year students (38%) and third year students (28%). The second survey was conducted around the end of October 2003 in order to examine the inference of summer job and internship. 178 samples were collected in the second survey. These samples were composed of men (55%) and women (46%) and first year students (35%), second year students (42%) and third year students (23%). Concerning to the occupation preference student answers were not changed dramatically. However, the answer pattern were little standardized after getting to know the reality of lawyer's job market. Legal and social norm of the students were not changed dramatically either. However, a little change were found in the fields of criminal penalty and human rights. We intend a make a comparison with the answer pattern of Japanese law school students after law school system is introduced in 2004

In this year, at the final stage of the research project, remained issues on legal counseling through TV conference systems are addressed and total summary of the whole research project are made.Regarding on the issues of legal counseling, by the cooperation of the federation of Japanese bar association, interview has done at Okayama bar association and Aomori bar association. Through the interviews, we find that there are two different evaluations on legal counseling through TV conference system. Some lawyers said TV conference systems are not good tool to convey their own emotions, however, other lawyer said the same characteristic of TV conference systems are very convenient of them to hide their negative impression for their client. As a whole, the number of positive evaluations exceeded that of negative evaluation. Considering the save of the time and cost to go to the distant places through TV conference systems, opinion to support positive use of TV conference systems -for legal counseling are prevailing. However, some lawyer pointed out that when more than one client had come, or when clients brought many documents TV conference systems are not so useful tools to communicate. To overcome these kinds of inconvenience some kinds of additional tool, such as facsimile should be used.As the results of three years project, we find that TV conference systems can relieve the tension and fright in the process of preparations of the argument process and legal counseling. However, at the same time, it was found that TV conference systems make it difficult to understand client's personality and feelings. These specific characteristics of TV conference systems should keep in mind when we use them. For example, in cases that emotional contentiousness is severe TV conference systems should not be use in preparations of the argument process, on the hand, in cases that can resolve through formal simple procedure, to reduce the time and cost TV conference systems should be used

A Justice bond theory hypothesizes that those who perceive a group decision as fair increase their positive attitudes (e.g.,commitment) toward the group. By conducting the following studies, we attempted to examine this hypothesis by analyzing people's evaluation of fairness of and their attitudes toward social systems, social organizations, political institutions, and social policies of Japan: (a) in order to examine the effects of the evaluations of fairness on the attitudes toward the government and political systems, we conducted a survey research in which we sent a questionnaire to 9000 people and got responses from 2574 participants; (b) in the survey, we asked the same participants to responds to the questions to assess the evaluation of and satisfaction with civil trials, alternative systems for conflict resolution, and policies of public enterprise; (c) we conducted another mail research, in which we sent a questionnaire to 200 people who experienced civil trials, and we got the resronses from 99 participants and attempted to examine the relationships of the evaluation of fairness and the satisfaction with the trials and the trial system; (d) we simulated an ADR program on computer in laboratory setting and, using 120 students as participants, we attempted to examine the effects of perceived fairness regarding the ADR program on their acceptance of the decisions; and (e) asking 127 Japanese companies to give our questionnaire to their employees. we obtained 149 respondents who rated their organizational conflicts in terms of issues. fairness of and outcome of conflict resolution. Generally, the participants in our studies negatively evaluated the policies, and political and Judicial systems, and the government, but those who perceived them as fair had positive attitudes toward them. It was also found that the perception of informational fairness prompted the employees' constructive resolution in organizational conflicts. The results obtained by these survey and experimental studies suggested that the perceived procedural fairness affected people's attitudes toward the groups and organizations, consistent with the Justice bond theory

Our research intends to make clear the actual situation of consumer mediation to work out a plan of repayment. We investigated procedural documents of consumer mediations in Tokyo and Osaka Summary Courts. However, the methods of conserving the documents are so different in these two courts that our analysis focuses on the Osaka data and that Tokyo data are supplementarily used.Male debtors of this procedure are from thirty years old to fifty years, but the age of female debtors concentrates on twenty or thirty years. This data show the necessity of common application for married couples. When the mediation successes, the procedure ends by one or two days in court ; when the mediation ends by the decision of the court based on Art.17 of Civil Mediation Act, it needs three or more days. However, we expect that the debtor will prefer the civil rehabilitation procedure for the cases that are hard to negotiate after April 2001. The period from the first borrowing to the application for mediation is longer for independent tradesmen than for office workers ; this phenomenon results from the amount of borrowing and from the necessity for tradesmen not to damage their trust. We must consider some measures to make these tradesmen to apply civil rehabilitation at a more early stage. Concerning the ways of conclusion of procedure, we can recognize the difference by creditors. Banks or credit card corporations are inclined to accept the mediation, but consumer loan firms does not accept it, so the court is requested to make decisions of Art.17. Finally, by the plan of repayment, nearly 10,000 yen is paid a month for 300,000 or 400,000 yens of every creditor : the average period of mediation plan continues three or four years

In this study, the function of the court persentation through the TV conference system, which is a new witness examination method introdued in the law of civil procedure in Japan, are analized. Three experiments are conducted in order to examin its effects on decision-making processes of observer, lawyer's way of witness examinations and witnesses's behaviors. In result, we find that observers can make decisions through the TV conference system almost same way as ordinay examination, if the quality of the image is kept fine. Evaluations of lawyers and witnesses on examination through the TV conference systems are also not so different from those of ordinary examination except emotional communication. Reviews on researches show many researches regarding the TV conference system are conducting in the fields of business, educations and medical care. Researches on the TV conference system are gradually increseing its number even in the legal area. It is hope to apply results in the other areas to the legal area.As a result, the witness examination through the TV conference system has no big evil effects and is as useful as ordinary witness examination at least to find the truth. If we use it in proper way, the witness examination through the TV conference system is sometimes more useful than ordinary witness examination device. To be found is in what conditions it will be use in the most effective way

From the following five groups of participants, we obtained responses to our questionnaire asking them to rate conflicts with their supervisors in work situations in terms of causes, strategies, concerns, outcomes, and influences over organizational attitudes. They were (1) 154 Japanese business persons working in Japan, (2) another group of Japanese business persons in Japan (N=187), (3) 114 Japanese persons working in American companies in the San Francisco area, (4) 105 western persons working in Japanese schools as English teachers (participants in the JET program), and (5) 74 multi-ethnic students, including Japanese, of graduate courses in the Fuqua Business School of Duke University, Durham, U.S.A.It was commonly found that both person-oriented concerns (personal achievement, identity, and power) and group-oriented concerns (relationship maintenance, group coherence, and group achievement) were activated in the process of conflict resolution and they determined participants' strategy choice, but achievement of group-oriented concerns contributed more to outcome satisfaction and organizational commitment. Japanese participants were particularly concerned with group-oriented goals and they rated conflicts as more fair when group-oriented concerns were satisfied, while western participants were comfortable when person-oriented concerns were satisfied, suggesting cultural differences in the meaning of justice. The finding that both Japanese and western participants chose more passive strategies in between-cultural conflicts than in within-cultural conflicts suggests that cross-cultural situations must be considered from a minority-majority perspective.

In three survey studies on roles of justice in Japanese's evaluations of social systems in political, legal, and industrial fields, we attempted to examine a justice-bond theory, which assumes that when people perceive social groups or organizations as fair, they trust, feel proud of, and identify with those. (1) By mailing a questionnaire to 3,000 randomly selected people over the age of 20, which asked their opinions of and attitudes toward social systems and recent political issues in Japan, we obtained 993 responses. (2) We asked 600 employees of Japanese business companies to rate their organizations in terms of fairness and its antecedents, and obtained 341 responses. (3) We asked lawyers in Yamagata and Sendai to give their clients our questionnaire requesting them to rate their experiences of court trials in terms of fairness. We obtained 94 responses. The results revealed that whey they evaluated political, legal, or business organizations and their personal experiences of the systems, people were concerned with fairness independently of personal benefits. Particularly, those who perceived the organizations as high in procedural fairness increased positive beliefs and attitudes toward the organizations, supporting the justice-bond theory. Some western researchers believed that Japanese do not care justice, but the present results indicate that they valued justice and the perception of fairness substantially influenced their social judgments and behavior.

The purposes of this research are to make suggestions for the interpretation of a new law of civil procedure as well as the practice under this new law. The results of a survey also show the objective data which represents the practice under the former raw of civil procedure, by surveying the litigation practice just before the new law was enacted.
Conducting such a survey, this research also provides a basic set of data which enables us to compare the practices before the reform with those after it to understand the implications of the reform. We believe that the results of our survey will prove useful for future Survey design.
Concretely speaking, three hundred fifty cases were sampled in Tokyo and Osaka district courts and two hundred cases were sampled in Sapporo, Sendai, Nagoya, Hiroshima, Takamatsu, and Fukuoka district courts. One hundred cases were also sampled in summary courts in the same areas of the district courts mentioned above. From court records, data on categories of parties and disputes, amounts, number and quality and quantity of documents and evidence submitted, disposition of the cases, details of the judgment and all other relevant factors were considered. These data were analyzed statistically to find the overall tendencies of court procedure and the local tendencies. if any, of each court. The topics addressed in this research also include : state of the service of the complaints and the defendants rejoinders, frequency of preparation procedures, mediations, change of judges and court clerks, states of pre-trial procedures which established main issue, states of the hybrid procedures of oral argument and settlement conference, state of settlement conferences themselves, and frequencies of writs of execution in each courts.

This project aims at quantitative analysis of the effect of the amendment of civil procedure law of 1996, by analyzing data of case proceedings after the amendment and comparing it to those before the amendment. The investigators researched more than two thousand (2,000) civil cases which ended in the year of 2000 at 8 district courts (Chiho saibansho). As for the summary court cases, eight hundred (800) cases were investigated as well at 8 summary courts (Kan-i saibansho).The first analysis is to clarify the real situation of "new" practice after the amendment. It includes the frequency of "benron-junbi" conferences, "shuchu" (continued) testimony, and conference for issue clarification after the testimony ("hyoryu-gata shinri" [drifty proceedings] ).The second one is to analyze the effect of law amendment and difference between the practice before amendment. It is found that the effect of law amendment varies: the easier or simpler the case is, the stronger the effect of the amendment. Needless to say, it differs also among courts or even among presiding judges

1.犯罪事件に関する情報伝達がその原因に関する推論過程に与える影響を調べた実験的研究をもとに執筆した論文を学術誌に公刊した。2.応報的公正意識と行為者に関する道徳性情報が、犯罪に関する量刑判断、更生可能性、および原因帰属過程に及ぼす影響を調べるための実験的研究を行った。結果は、一般人(大学生)の刑事判断においても、応報的公正の構成要素である意図性、犯罪の違法性、結果の重大性などに影響を受けることを示した。さらに重要なことに、これらの要因の効果を上回って行為者の道徳性が量刑等に大きな影響を与えることを明らかにした。この結果は、厳罰化が進んでいると言われる現在の司法の状況、および世論の影響を考慮する際に重要な示唆を与えるものとなることが予想される。3.企業の違法行為に対する、意図性と責任の判断に関する実験的研究の結果をもとに執筆した論文を学術誌に公刊した。結果は、集団としてのまとまりが強く知覚される企業に対しては、擬人的な意図や動機といった心的状態が知覚され、しかもそれが責任判断へと至ることを示した。企業のガバナンスなどの問題についても多くの示唆を与えるものとなった。4.日本心理学会において、「責任概念を洗い直す」と題じたワークショップを開催した。消費者からの苦情に関する研究、金融商品の勧誘的取引における認知バイアスの可能性とそれに対する民法的解釈の問題、企業の社会的責任などに関する研究発表をもとに、心理学と法学の対話をさらに推進した。5.北海道大GCOE主催のシンポジムにおいて消費者の投資行動に影響を及ぼす認知バイアスの影響の可能性を法学的に議論し、心理学的アプローチの観点を法学の分野に提供することを試みた。6.帰結主義的道徳観に関する批判的検討を継続し、その成果を学術誌に公刊した

The purpose of this study is to make an attitude survey on Japanese civil litigation system in order to compare its result with results of former similar studies on Japanese civil litigation system in 2000, 2003 and 2006. By doing such comparison, this study will provide basic information for a future judicial reform. The survey has conducted in 20 cities, to 200 people in each city, totally 4000 people. The response rare was over 40% which is rather high rate as a mail survey. By comparing this data with the data of former surveys in 2000 and 2006, we find several interesting findings. For example, as for evaluation of ordinary citizen on a judge and procedure the number of radical evaluation both in negative and affirmative responses and their evaluations look become more sophisticate. Comparing with evaluation of people who had experience of litigation, evaluation on lawyers are lower than that of ordinary citizen. On th other hands, in case of judge and procedure, evaluation of ordinary citizen were averagely higher than that of persons who had an experience of litigation. These finding is consistent with the results of former studies

　民事訴訟法の研究者が中心となり、本研究分担者が代表を務める民事訴訟制度研究会は、2011年8月に民事訴訟利用者調査を実施し、その報告書（民事訴訟制度研究会編『2011年民事訴訟利用者調査』（商事法務　2012年））を2012年12月に発表した。この研究では、そのデータおよび2006年に行われた同様の調査の結果を用い、民事訴訟の利用しやすさについての促進要因に関する分析を行った。　その結果、民事訴訟の利用しやすさに深く関係すると思われる訴訟に要する費用と時間に関しては、2006年から2011年の間に改善が見られることが解った。たとえば、時間と費用の予測の点であるが、時間に関しては、2006年調査の場合，予想がついたものが40.0%で，「全く予想がつかなかった」ものが60.0%であった。今回の調査の方が約6ポイント予想のついた回答者の割合が増えている。また、費用に関しては、2006年調査の回答は，何らかの形で予想が成り立っていたものは51.6％で，全く予想がつかなかったものが48.4%であったのと比較すると，何らかの形で予想のつくものの割合が10ポイント近く増えている。このことが影響したと思われる事柄として、2006年調査と比較した場合，訴訟の原因の生じた時期からの期間は1.8年と2006年の2.4年からかなり短くなっている。　また、こういった変化の背後には、情報源としての弁護士の働きがあるように思われる。たとえば、訴訟前の当事者の行動に関し、弁護士への相談は，2006年調査ではその割合が57.4％であったものが、それに相当する値が、今回は60.2%と増加している。また、これらの予測の情報源に関して、2000年調査と比較した場合、費用では約10ポイント、時間で約50ポイントの上昇が見られる。　また、実際にかかった時間と費用に対する評価においても、時間に関しては、2006年調査と比較した場合，「どちらともいえない」の割合が下がり（2006年：23.8%），「長い」の割合がやや増えている（2006年：41.5%）が、この「長い」の内訳を見た場合，増えたのは「やや長い」（2006年：18.6%，2011年：22.8%）の方で，「長すぎる」の割合はむしろ減少している（2006年：22.9%，2011年：21.4%）。評価に好転傾向が見られるといってよかろう。また、費用においては、総額の評価に関しては，「高い」とするものの割合が43.1%で，2006年調査から5ポイント弱下がっているし（2006年：48.3%）、弁護士費用に関しては同割合が6ポイント下がっている（2006年：40.8%）。　しかし、こういった評価の改善にもかかわらず、制度評価に関しては、2006年調査と比較した場合，「紛争解決の役目」の否定回答の減少（4.5ポイント），「制度の利用しやすさ」の否定回答の減少（3.4ポイント）といった否定回答の減少といった変化は見られたものの、肯定回答の割合に好転が見られたわけではない。むしろ、「裁判制度の満足度」に関しては、肯定回答の減少（3.4ポイント）している。　以上の点からすれば、これまで重点的に改革が試みられてきた民事訴訟に要する時間と費用の点に関して、その改革の成果が確認できたといえよう。しかし、時間や費用の点が訴訟を躊躇させる大きな要因であり、それらに関する情報が提供され、時間と費用に関する評価それ自体が改善されつつあるにもかかわらず、制度に関しては、そういった改善の結果が未だ十分に反映されていないようにもみえる。こういった点の原因解明には、各項目の肯定否定評価の割合のみに拘泥することなく、その評価根拠や構造を推測してみることがより重要である。今後、そのような評価の構造分析を中心に2次分析を進める予定である。　また、こういった民事訴訟の利用者の評価の状況と、訴訟を利用していない一般市民の評価との関係を確認することも重要と思われる。この後者の点に関しては、幸い2013年度科学研究費補助金研究が採用されたので、新たに調査を行い、比較分析を行う予定である。