Claiming ‘integration of legal profession and introduction of professional lawyer system’
“The law school vacancy supplement system should be abolished and transfer students should be allowed.”
Presenting measures to improve the judicial system, including the introduction of ACP, in time for the general election
[법률저널=안혜성 기자] Ahead of the 22nd general election, the Korean Bar Association presented a policy to improve the judicial system, including law schools and other legal training systems.
The Korean Bar Association (Chairman Kim Young-hoon) held a press conference for the National Policy Proposal Group on the 6th and announced ‘legislative proposals to establish the rule of law and promote the people’s basic rights.’ The Bar Association proposed detailed improvement plans under four broad frameworks: improving the judicial system to guarantee citizens’ basic rights, making the right to receive assistance from a lawyer a reality, reforming the legal personnel training system, and establishing a future-oriented legal system.
Regarding the reform of the legal manpower training system, the Bar Association expressed the opinion that the professional lawyer system should be introduced by integrating legal professions such as tax accountants, patent attorneys, and certified labor attorneys into lawyers and diversifying law school courses.
The Korean Bar Association held a press conference for the National Policy Proposal Group on the 6th and announced ‘legislative proposals to establish the rule of law and promote the basic rights of the people.’
In the past, as lawyers were selected at a level that did not meet the needs of society, the legal profession was introduced as a supplement to ensure smooth progress of certain business procedures excluding litigation work. However, with the introduction of the law school system, a large number of lawyers with expertise in various fields are being produced. The argument is that integration is necessary.
If law schools diversify the curriculum in specialized fields such as patents, labor, taxation, and international affairs and integrate relevant legal positions into professional lawyers through specialized education for each field, lawyers can be used not only in litigation but also in various fields of society, realizing the purpose of introducing law schools. and being able to provide high-quality legal services to the people.
In response to this, in a situation where most of the incoming students are non-law majors and the entrance exam does not verify legal knowledge at all, it is questionable whether education in a specialized field is realistically possible within the three-year law school education period and whether expertise can be verified through the current bar exam, with approximately 1,700 students annually. Questions were raised as to whether the current number of people who have passed the bar exam can cover the existing demand for positions adjacent to the legal profession.
In response to this question, Association President Kim Young-hoon said, “It is not possible to cover all specialized fields during the three-year law school curriculum. “I am currently entering law school after majoring in various faculties, and by doing a specialized field and learning general law, I can specialize so that I can become a lawyer and excel in the specialized field.” “The main point is to provide a system,” he answered.
Regarding issues related to demand, he said, “The reason there is a mismatch between supply and demand in the legal profession is because we cannot properly calculate how much demand is and how much supply is. We are currently hiring around 1,700 lawyers, but we have about 1,200. “I am looking at it as if a law school will be introduced and the number of people will be increased based on the assumption that about 500 students will go to other fields or advance overseas, but I cannot digest that part,” he said.
Chairman Kim said, “There is a part of it because it comes out in duplicate with the direct translation of the legal profession. In the past, if you had a lawyer’s license and registered, you could do all kinds of jobs related to the legal profession, but now they keep preventing that from happening. They also say they would like to participate in the litigation field since direct legal services are not provided as a package, but it is difficult for lawyers now as they have no litigation background, so we cannot provide that to them. “Including those areas, there are areas where there are an excess of lawyers,” he explained.
He continued, “If integration is properly accomplished and law schools also take the process to acquire professional lawyer qualifications, supply and demand may be adjusted to a level where the number decreases compared to the current number of adjacent occupations integrated and slightly increases compared to the number produced only by lawyers.” He pointed out, “In this regard, an investigation into the exact supply and demand must be conducted in the future.”
Regarding the plan to abolish the law school vacancy supplement system and allow transfer students, it is said that the system, which was temporarily introduced to ease the financial burden on law schools, continues to be extended, preventing educational development through competition among law schools and hindering the increase in the bar exam passing rate through a natural decrease in law school graduates. This is the position of the Bar Association.
Chairman Kim said, “The problem with vacancies is that we need to focus on teaching students well and making law schools more specialized, but law schools cannot specialize and develop in a complacent environment where they just skip out this time and accept more next time.” “I’m making a suggestion from the perspective of whether it can be done,” he explained.
He said, “Just as American lawyers are said to be international lawyers and can do anything, Korean lawyers should be trained as international lawyers and professional lawyers at law schools. Considering not only the integration of law schools with adjacent fields, but also specialized research for overseas expansion is necessary.” “So we are talking about diversifying law school courses,” he added.
It was also mentioned that the transfer system is more advantageous to students than the vacancy supplement system. Chairman Kim questioned, saying, “Most of the vacancies are people who take a leave of absence from school to prepare for exams and drop out in order to move to schools that are more employable and helpful to their careers. What a waste this is.”
As a policy to reform the legal manpower training system, the Korean Bar Association proposed a plan to integrate legal professions such as tax accountants, patent attorneys, and certified labor attorneys into lawyers and introduce a professional lawyer system through diversification of law school courses.
He said, “If you were initially dissatisfied with the school or the characteristics of this school did not suit you well, you should be allowed to transfer. If you block transfers and then transfer, it will damage the pride of our law school. It is simply because of that that we are unreasonably giving students one year at a time. “The system that forces sacrifice is the vacancy supplementation system,” he said. “If abolishing the vacancy supplementation system and implementing the transfer system causes a significant financial blow to law schools, that should be resolved by preparing support measures for various efforts by the Ministry of Education.” He said.
In addition to measures to improve the legal training system, the introduction of attorney-client privilege (ACP), the introduction of evidence discovery procedures (American Dioscovery system), the establishment of public platform support and private platform discipline systems, the establishment of lawyer-centered legal AI, Policies such as exemption from value-added tax on attorneys’ fees, re-support of government subsidies for training for those who passed the bar exam, mandatory IPO legal due diligence, institutionalization of ESG in line with global standards, and expansion of the punitive damages system and class action system were proposed.
In the case of ACP, the purpose is to substantially guarantee the right to receive assistance from a lawyer by establishing grounds for refusing search and seizure by investigative agencies regarding the contents of communications between lawyers and clients. This is a plan to resolve the issue and restore trust in the judiciary by strengthening the facts.
Platform-related policies establish a disciplinary system for the proper operation of private platforms such as Rotalk, and at the same time support ‘My Lawyer’, a public platform operated by the Korean Bar Association, to help the Korean judicial system advance into the world and to establish a fair legal market. It was proposed as a way to recover.
The establishment of legal AI is a proposal to prevent distortion of legal information through the creation of false information by generative AI, such as ‘false precedents’, which has become a recent issue, and the value-added tax exemption plan was presented as a policy to ease the burden on consumers.
The government subsidy support for training for those who passed the bar exam is intended to resolve the burden of practical training costs for new lawyers who are restricted from doing business for six months after passing the bar exam. This includes resuming government subsidy support for training at the Korean Bar Association, which was completely suspended from 2020. It contains.
Mandatory legal due diligence is a way to resolve risks when citizens subscribe to or invest in publicly offered stocks, and although institutionalizing ESG is a part of requiring corporate social responsibility regarding non-financial factors, the standards are set by the Korea Accounting Standards Board. The position is that the active participation of lawyers is necessary because it is judged that what is being made is unreasonable.
Policies are also in place to expand the punitive damages system and class action system to suppress illegal acts that cause collective damage, such as the ‘humidifier disinfectant incident’, and to protect the rights and interests of the public, including recovery of actual damage, by strengthening corporate social responsibility. It is included in this legislative proposal.
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2024-03-07 09:40:43
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