법학전문대학원에서의 법조윤리 교육방법

‘Professional Responsibility’ as used in Korea was not the rule to be applied in actual life, but it was just considered as moral ornament. Legal education in Korea has been subject to the judicial exam, focusing on legal knowledge only and overlooking ethical aspect for the lawyers, which distorted the goal of legal education. In addition, whenever irrational events take place attributable to the privileges of his or her former post, personal connection, sense of privilege, the need for education of the professional responsibility was discussed with no effort to resolve the fundamental problems, which was insufficient for the education or system of professional responsibility to settle down. Professional Responsibility was adopted as one of the required courses in the law school to be opened in March, 2009, and also adopted as one of the required courses for bar exam. As the result, it is expected that education of professional responsibility be conducive to sense of ethics for the lawyers. In addition, it is also expected that professional responsibility can provide high quality legal service by preventing irrational behavior of the legal profession and by producing clean legal climate. Professors to teach the course of professional responsibility in the law school are in difficult situation because they received no formal education for professional responsibility and they have no minimum materials for the course, which is attributable to the low concern for it and to the distorted legal education focused on the bar exam. However, it is not considered too difficult to settle down the course for professional responsibility in the law school within not too long period if the law schools can develop the common textbook for the course and utilize materials and system of the law schools of United States and Japan based on the education for it offered in Seoul National University and in the Judicial Research and Training Institute.