Three and a half years ago the new South Korean graduate law schools opened for business. These new schools dramatically changed how one became a lawyer in South Korea.

Before this new system, any individual could take the bar exam. Successful applicants were then trained in one institute, the Judicial Research and Training Center, for two years. This system created many problems, chief among them the strong connections between lawyers, judges and prosecutors that came from attending one institution. These strong connections, combined with a very low limit on the number of new lawyers, led to a good old boy network among the members of the legal profession that weakened the fabric of South Korean democracy.

In an attempt to address the problems existing under the old system, a new system with post-graduate law schools was introduced and the number of new lawyers was dramatically increased. The hope was that, as new lawyers would attend one of 25 different institutions, the links between the members of the legal profession would gradually fade and true competition would arise.

The new schools also admitted substantially more students with the hope that ever greater numbers of individuals would be admitted to the practice of law each year. This would address the issues of lawyer accessibility for the nonelite in South Korea. Thus, as more and more lawyers were put into the marketplace, they would be forced to lower their fees and search out new clientele, eventually giving the middle class access to the courts of South Korea.

Despite initial strong opposition from many of the existing members of the South Korean bar, the new law schools were approved and opened and have since successfully graduated two classes of lawyers. Thus the number of lawyers in South Korea is rapidly increasing, fees are being forced down and the links between lawyers are diminishing.

However, this new paradigm threatens the monopoly and established relationships that have allowed many members of the Korean Bar Association and the Seoul Bar Association to charge excessive fees to the detriment of their clients and the general public. Thus some of these members are once again attempting to restrict the impact of these new schools and to limit competition. One such attempt is a proposal by the Seoul Bar Association to limit practice in the Seoul area only to graduates of law schools located in Seoul. This measure is clearly against the concepts of democracy, equality and the free market and must be rejected as against the good of the public.

Another attempt to weaken the new law schools comes disguised in the language of fairness and equity. Park Young-sun, the head of the National Assembly’s Legislative and Judiciary Committee, has introduced the idea of a pre-bar for South Korea. Her concept envisions two paths to becoming a lawyer in South Korea. The current law school system would remain as the first path, but a second path would be through an exam that any individual regardless of background or education could take and, if successful, become a lawyer. What is unclear is exactly what training the successful pre-bar applicants would receive, but it has been intimated that extending the life of the Judicial Research and Training Center is envisioned.

This proposal is flawed for a number of reasons. First, the proposal is purportedly to allow the poorest members of South Korean society the means to avoid the costs of law school. However, this ignores the extensive fee waivers and grants given to law students unable to pay full tuition. This also ignores the ability of these selfsame students to obtain student loans and pay them back after graduation.

Further, it would be much simpler to merely allow an additional 500 students to enter the law schools under a fee waiver system.

Second, and more worrisome, this proposal would return South Korea to the days when lawyers relied more on their human network to decide cases than on the law. Having these 500 students attend one institution, the same institution attended by the current power brokers among the Korean Bar, would result in every top student attempting to pass the pre-bar in order to attend that institution and gain the connections such attendance would grant. Rather than extending fairness and equality, this system would result in greater inequalities among members of the bar and between clients able to or unable to afford to hire these lawyers.

Thus this new proposal for South Korea should be rejected. While South Korea needs to have more lawyers admitted each year, a pre-bar system is not the solution but would only add to the problems. If South Koreans truly want more individuals to become lawyers, especially those from the lower class, then a two-tier admission system which reserves a certain number of slots in the graduate law schools for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds is a better way. However, the simplest solution would be a 50 percent increase in the number of students admitted to law school with a concomitant guarantee from the government to pay the fees of the poorest 500 students.

By Daniel Fiedler

Daniel Fiedler has been a professor of law in South Korea since 2006 and a licensed attorney in California since 2000 and Arizona since 1998. ― Ed.