The Crisis and Future of Korean Legal Education: Compared with the American Legal Education System

Abstract

Korean legal education has been functioning differently from the American legal education system. Comparing it with the American legal education system, this article investigates the meanings of Korean legal education and its aspirational goals under Article 2 of the Law School Act, attempts to identify and analyze the current issues of Korean legal education, and makes recommendations to the Korean legal education reformers to help to create a successful legal education system.

Adopting the U.S. graduate law school system in 2007 before the 2008 economic crisis, Korean law schools failed to see the current changes in U.S. law schools and to adopt more practical pedagogy with specific learning outcomes. Additionally, law schools failed to cure contemporary problems and defects due to the absence of the collaborative efforts of the legal society consisting of governments, law schools, and Korean Bar Association to make a constant revamping to cure the structural, regulatory defects.

In this article, the author would like to answer to those questions and see:

(1) how Korean legal education has been functioning differently from the American legal education system;

(2) figure out the meanings of Korean legal education and its aspirational goals under Article 2 of the Law School Act;

(3) identify and analyze the current issues of Korean legal education; and

(4) finally make recommendations to the Korean legal education reformers to help them create a successful legal education system.

Keywords: Korea, Korean, Korean legal education, Korean Law, Law school act, National Bar Examination Act, ABA Standards, ABA Standards and Rules, Carnegie, McCrate, Japanese Bar, comparative law, law school

JEL Classification: K00