리걸클리닉 교육(Clinical Legal Education)의 의의, 현황 및 과제

Korea has adopted a law school system modeled on the American one and 25 universities simultaneously established law schools, phasing out undergraduate law courses, across the nation in 2009 for the first time in its history. Until now, the legal academia took on the cognitive components of legal education, such as legal information, legal analysis, legal doctrines,etc, primarily through lectures while the Judicial Research and Training Institute has provided practice-oriented training in lawyering skills and professional responsibilities. From now on, law schools should educate students in both legal theories and practice skills, assuming the role of the colleges and the Institute at the same time. This essay is aiming at introducing clinical legal education in order to promote Korea's legal education system, because clinical methodology in law teaching is not so familiar in the legal academia and profession, and legal clinics are on a fledgling stage, and different people have different definitions of it across the country. This essay starts with the birth of the modern law school, Dean Langdell's case-Socratic teaching method, dissatisfactions with the method,the beginning of clinical legal education movement, controversies over skills training in law schools and their reluctance to operate legal clinics in the first half of the 20th century. It goes on to describe the drastic expansion of clinical legal education, financial contributions of the Ford Foundation and the U.S. government, academic accomplishments of clinicians and its present situation in America and East Asian Countries, China and Japan. This essay elaborates on the goals of clinical legal education and how to implement clinical methodology, including selection of clinical programs,preparing students for fieldwork, supervision of students, supplementations of fieldwork, and ways to deal with academic interruptions. It concludes that clinical legal education is an unavoidable choice for Korea's law schools,the Attorney-at-Law Act should be revised so that clinical professors and law school students can practice law only for educational purposes, and that government financial support is urgently needed to develop clinical programs.