Legal Education Reform in Korea - Towards a More Diverse Profession? -

In March 2009, 25 new law schools modeled upon the American law school system opened their doors to 2000 students nationwide in Korea. With the hope of injecting more diversity, specialization, and globalization into the legal profession and improve access to quality legal services for the public, the new reforms have mandated law schools to seek a diverse student body. Prior to the introduction of the law school, anyone who passed the extremely difficult judicial exam could become a lawyer, judge, or prosecutor in Korea and realize the Korean Dream. However, the majority of those who passed the judicial exam were young men who had majored in law from one of the three top universities in Seoul. The reforms intended to chip away at that monopoly and usher in qualified people outside that demographic. Since the law schools were established, only law school graduates are eligible to sit for the bar exam, which has resulted in unsuccessful cases claiming a violation on occupation freedom brought before the Korean Constitutional Court. This article reviews and examines the legal education reforms and how it affected law school admissions, bar passage, and recruitment. Based on data respective to these areas, this article investigates how and to what extent the demographics have changed. This article concludes that while the reforms have succeeded in bringing more diversity to the legal profession in terms of gender, age, and work/study background, those same reforms have replicated patterns of elitism within the Korean legal profession.