법률가 직역확대에 따른 필요 법률가 수

Almost all practicing lawyers being engaged in litigation services, in-house counsellors such as government or corporate lawyers are only rarely found in Korean society, despite large amount of expected demand for non-litigation legal services. In this context of job distribution of legal professionals, I tried to estimate the number of lawyers currently demanded in Korea, especially focusing on the need for expanded range of lawyers' job. First, the number of lawyers needed for litigation services is estimated at more than 50,000. This number has been derived from comparison of the litigation volume in Korea with that of Japan, considering Japanese rate of lawyer representation. Lest lawyers' income drop too much, however, I have adjusted this number to 36,400 on the ground of the income level of Japanese lawyers. Secondly, the number of lawyers needed for non-litigation legal services has been estimated at 17,750 through the comparison of Korean statistic on employees in each industrial field with that of UnitedStates, considering the number of employed U.S. lawyers in each field as well. In the aggregate of estimations in both areas of legal services, I came to a conclusion that in Korean society at least 54,000 lawyers are needed at the time of this writing. This number certainly does not comprise the demand for judicial judges. Considering existing number of Korean practicing lawyers (over 8,000 in 2007), it would take more than fifteen years to reach the currently required level even if we produce more than 3,000 new-fledged lawyers each year.