Washington Lawyer - November/December 2019 - 5

YOUR VOICE

Washington Lawyer welcomes your letters. Submissions
should be directed to Washington Lawyer, District of
Columbia Bar, 901 4th Street NW, Washington, DC 20001.
Submissions are also accepted by email at editorial@
dcbar.org. Letters may be edited for clarity and space.

INSIGHT INTO LAWYER
POPULATION IN JAPAN
I enjoyed the article "Diverse Paths to Becoming
a Lawyer" (September 2019), but the section on
Japan repeats a supposition that is convenient
but likely untrue. To wit, "Japan has surprisingly
few lawyers . . . because Japanese people traditionally rarely file lawsuits to settle disputes."
The fact is the government sets the number of
new lawyers who will be admitted to practice
each year, and it keeps that number low for a
variety of reasons, not the least of which is the
lack of appetite for competition among existing
lawyers.

Some scholars have argued that the chicken
and the egg are reversed: The reason Japanese
file surprisingly few lawsuits may well be the
lack of lawyers. In any case, lawyers have much
to offer to clients other than going to court.
Unfortunately, most ordinary people have little
opportunity to find out.
Dan Rosen
Tokyo, Japan

READERS SOUND OFF ON SURVEY
MORE STORIES BEYOND THE LAW
First, Washington Lawyer is a great professional
magazine. But as with all similar publications,
readership is waning. There are many factors,
but lawyers are not immune to our society's
growing entertainment addiction. Feature
articles on law practice routines may be important and informative, but often fail to hold the
audience's attention. Entertainment, entertainment, entertainment.
There could be magazine sections on private
practice, federal government, D.C. government,
nonprofit work, ethics, etc., but feature articles
focusing on the rest of humanity are best.
Lawyers are parents, senior caregivers, investors,
charity managers, boat captains, mountain
climbers, doctors, CPAs, politicians, scientists,
CIA operatives, migrants, teachers, victims of
crime, etc. If it happens to people, it happens
to lawyers. Let's hear about them. Couple these
stories with a marketing plan that reaches out
beyond the Bar, and you will succeed in
growing your readership.
Judge H. Alexander Manuel
Washington, D.C.

FIX THE FONT

MAKE MAG ACCESSIBLE
TO THE BLIND
Another thought I had on improving the
publication is increasing accessibility by blind
lawyers like myself. Have you considered submitting the issues to NFBNewsline produced
by the National Federation of the Blind? It is
a nonprofit advocacy group comprised of the
blind community and is based next door in
Baltimore. The Newsline service is a telephonebased and smartphone-based news and
content delivery service designed exclusively
for the blind community, and you must have
a disability impacting reading to access the
service.
J. Tyler Kirk
Jacksonville, Florida

Great magazine. However, either my old eyes
are getting dim or your font is getting smaller
and smaller. Since my eye doctor says my vision
has not changed for the past five years, it must
be your font. Can you increase your font sizes by
50 percent or more?
Harvey S. Jacobs
Rockville, Maryland
Please do something about the typeface! The
thin non-serif type is really hard for older eyes
to see, even those with reading glasses and
good light.
Lenore C. Garon
Falls Church, Virginia

Washington Lawyer will continue to make updates to its pages, including revisiting its
font guidelines, to better improve Bar members' reading experience. - The Editors

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019

WASHINGTON LAWYER

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Washington Lawyer - November/December 2019

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