Now that the concept of law school as distinct from college of law will be implemented from March 2009, there will be huge changes in selecting legal professionals in Korea. Under the existing system, anyone who completed 35 credits of law courses is eligible to apply for the state-run bar examination. Newly minted lawyers are mostly college graduates who majored in law at the undergraduate level. However, with the introduction of law schools, only those who graduate from law school at the graduate level will be eligible to sit the reformed bar examination. As a result, the educational background of lawyers will become more diversified; a variety of undergraduate majors will become lawyers. Although there is still an argument over the number of lawyers produced every year, it is expected to increase compared to the current 1,000.

The news also means another future career opportunity for many non-law majors; there are many students who consider matriculating at law schools after their graduation. "I just have a vague plan of entering law school because I want to work as an international lawyer in the future. But as details concerning the actual implementation of law schools and how much the tuition fee will be have not yet been decided, I think I have to wait and see," said Sohn Ki Seok ('06, Chinese Language and Literature).

However, many law majors are now confused over how to do to achieve their goal. They are contemplating whether they should prepare for the current bar examination or for law school, but most choose the former one as there are still some time before the big transformation begins. "My priority is passing the existing bar exam next year, and I think most students in their junior year think the same as me. I believe law school is not a very pertinent issue for me right now," said Pyun Ji Hee ('05, Law). However, some students who have entered a college of law this year or who have not completed their military service are puzzled about which course they should choose.

Regarding the establishment and operation of law schools, the Ministry of Education announced the enforcement ordinance plan last August. The new plan sets a limit on the number of incoming students per university at 150 and also requires universities to have a faculty-student ratio of 1:12. Also, it states that every law school will be evaluated every five years and should submit a self-evaluation to the Ministry every two years. However, other details, such as how many law schools will be founded, how judges and public prosecutors will be designated, and how law schools will admit students, are still not fixed.

KU and its students are in no position to be 100% on board with the changes about to occur in Korea's law school system. There are many reasons for this.

First, the study of law as an academic field will be jeopardized by the changing system. After colleges of law are transformed into law schools, professors are certain that courses will pursuit only practical issues without treating law as an academic field. This is problematic since lawyers may lack a comprehensive theoretical framework of law and legal studies will be reduced to a superficial academic veneer.

Second, there is nothing finalized about the law school plan. All of the professors in KU’s College of Law have cancelled their summer plans and have spent every second of their time making this law school happen. However, they are still in the process of defining the first steps. The curriculum is another matter that they have to overcome. They have to cram in a curriculum that takes four years into a three year program. This is extremely hard because, for instance, it takes about three semesters alone to teach the Korean constitutional law.

Third, the freshmen of the 2008 who have finished their military service will graduate in the year 2013, which is when law schools will officially begin accepting students. It is plausible that students wanting to become law practitioners entering school starting from next year will no longer want to enter colleges of law.

There are also some doubts whether this new system will be carried out successfully in Korea. To start, implementation of law schools will be followed by a sudden raise in tuition fees. Tuition expenses will become even more burdensome since would-be lawyers will now have to study for a total of seven years, four years as an undergraduate and three years at law school, instead of the current four years at the undergraduate level. To alleviate this problem, universities are planning to offer scholarships for 20-30% of all students.

However, another problem is that only economically wealthy countries can support a law school system. The main reason is the proportion of students and faculty that the government has set for schools planning to create law schools. The government has set the ratio of 1 professor to 12 students. This is an even smaller ratio than that of American law schools. Thus, to run a school based on this small number of students and this number of professors, tuition fees will with no doubt skyrocket.

Actually, only the U.S, Japan and Korea employ the law school system. Whereas Japan has the same judicial system as ours, the American judicial system is different. Korea has codified statues while American law is based on case law and legal precedent. This is a huge difference that will alter the curriculum in Korean law schools. Therefore, it is important for Korea to learn from the example and mistakes of Japan. In fact, there are already discussions about how law schools in Japan are a failure.

Above all, Professor Yi Zoon Il of KU’s College of Law said, "My point is that we need to Koreanize the concept and make it our own. We won't get anywhere if we simply copy word by word the system in the U.S." Professor Yi continued, “KU and other schools in Korea getting ready to build law schools need to bend things the Korean way."

Another concern people have about the law school system is based on the fact that there is a big gap between the English abilities of Americans and Koreans. The basis of building law schools in Korea is to produce law practitioners able to compete in a global society. However, critics point out that although English ability is not everything when it comes to competing in a global society, it is hard to win over a client when your English is not proficient as your competitor.

Fourth, KU professors have not come to a consensus over where to put the core emphasis of KU’s Law School. The idea of law schools in the US is that if a person is capable of paying the tuition fees, has the right grades and meets the administration criteria that a law school demands, they are free to enter the law school. After they pass the course of studies in the school they take the bar exam which most law school graduates pass, they become legal practitioners. US law schools do not have a limit on the number of students allowed to enter. In short, US law schools put the importance on the law school process.

However, Korea will face a dilemma if they do the same. It needs to decide if it wants to a) increase the number of law school graduates and make the bar exam easy, b) increase the number of law school graduates and make the bar exam difficult and c) decrease the number of law school graduates and make the bar exam easy. Right now, the bar exam only produces 1,000 legal practitioners annually and if the law school system produces more than this current number, legal practitioners will face stiffer competition.

Despite all these possible downsides, many legal scholars anticipate that the introduction of law school will bring about positive effects to Korean legal education and legal services. Prof. Kim Jewan of KU's College of Law remarked: "I strongly welcome adopting the concept of law school in Korea. I believe that the new system will contribute to Korean legal circles, solving corruption problems caused by the present system and realizing a true constitutionalism in the country."

For now, once law students pass the state-run bar examination, they have two years of training at the Judicial Research and Training Institute. Since all legal professionals experience the same education at the same place, fellowship and seniority built up at the Judicial Research and Training Institute have yielded considerable side effects in the legal community; for instance, there is a tradition that former judges and public prosecutors receive advantageous court judgments for the first case they take as an attorney after their retirement. Since the Judicial Research and Training Institute will be abolished from 2012, many problems it has caused in legal circles will be resolved as well.

It is common for most law students to leave the campus when they become a junior and move into districts such as Silim-dong, where a large number of bar examination institutes and student guesthouses are located. These students spend years in Sillim-dong cramming for the bar examination and it is not surprising to hear of someone passing the exam after ten years of studying or being in his or her forties still studying to become a lawyer. With a situation like this, many young human resources that can contribute to society are very often wasted in Sillim-dong.

In addition to this, some people have censured the current state-run bar examination for making students neglect their school studies to focus exclusively on the bar examination itself, since GPA scores are irrelevant to becoming a lawyer. Some even point out that it is not universities but bar exam institutes that foster legal professionals in the country. However, the adoption of the new system will be a chance to unify legal occupational training and education and, as a result, it will pave the way to normalize legal education.

When the law school system is inaugurated, an integrated bar, which is currently operated in the U.S. and the U. K., will be constituted in Korea as well. In that case, only those who have practiced as an attorney for at least five years are eligible to work in a public capacity. Now in Korea, very young people in their twenties or thirties and thus lack real-world experience are appointed as judges or public prosecutors as long as they receive a high score at the Judicial Research and Training Institute during their two years of training. There has been a constant discussion as to how to reform the system of selecting lawyers and nominating judges and public prosecutors into one similar to that of the U.S., but there has been no success as of yet. Along with the adoption of law school, positive changes are anticipated.

The Korean legal service market is now being forced to open its doors to the world as other markets have done. Korean lawyers will have to compete with attorneys who have graduated from foreign universities and, unfortunately, the situation will be more favorable for lawyers from abroad. Although lawyers who can mediate trading disputes are more in demand these days with the growing number of large scale international transactions, legal education at the Judicial Research and Training Institute is mainly focused on criminal investigation and trial cases, not commerce. Each law school will diversify and specialize its educational curriculum to cultivate the legal professionals today's society demands and endeavor to enable its graduates to have competence in the global realm.

As it has been already decided to implement a law school system in Korea, it is most important now to do it successfully. With thorough rumination and preparation, law schools will be able to be effectively established in Korea.