In past years, 25-year-old law school graduate Hiroyuki Ichikawa would have been facing an almost impossible task -- a bar exam with a 97 percent failure rate. Now, his chances are closer to 50-50. In the most sweeping reform of Japan's legal system since World War II, the doors are opening wide for a flood of new lawyers, prosecutors and judges to handle criminal and civil cases in an increasingly litigious society. Experts say the reforms are long overdue and underscore a big shift in social attitudes that is forcing Japan to change its longstanding policy of keeping the number of lawyers low and the public out of the courts. "People are beginning to take more and more of their troubles to court," said Hideaki Kubori, a corporate lawyer and a professor at Omiya Law School outside Tokyo.