변호사 대량 배출 시대의 법학전문대학원 운영 개선

Korean legal market is changing rapidly. The total number of lawyers registered will exceed 20,000 this year. While it had taken 100 years to have 10,000 lawyers registered, it took only 8 years to have additional 10,000 lawyers registered. The introduction of American law school system in 2009 has considerably contributed to wide expansion of legal practitioners. Korea is no more a country lack of lawyers. Discontent at law school system is widely spreading. One serious problem is the public’s distrust in fairness of selecting students at law schools. There is no object selection criteria in the admission process. As positive correlation between LEET(legal education eligibility test) scores and law school grades is not found, Korean law schools tend to depend heavily on interview tests, which lead to the public’s belief that law schools select students not on the basis of applicants’ merit, but by nepotism. The predictive validity of LEET should be strengthened to dissolve the distrust. More serious problem is that Korean law schools have failed to cultivated justice minded lawyers. According to a comprehensive survey on the Korean legal profession which was conducted in 2014 by SNU law school, lawyers graduated from law schools got lower marks than lawyers graduated from the Judicial Research and Training Institute in every category of character evaluation. Furthermore, law school lawyers spent less hours on pro bono works than JRTI lawyers. These results came from the fact that law schools have not provided students with enough public service opportunities and ethical judgement cases. To make clinic classes as required courses for graduation is one way to solve the problem. Clinical legal education is widely known as highly effective way for students to learn both legal and ethical issues on the case. In the process of providing solutions to real clients, students will share values of social justice naturally.