Law School Blog
A full Weekend--Saturday in Korea
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Greetings from Seoul. It has been a very busy weekend. Saturday, Professors Taylor, Kang and I accompanied Washington State Senator Paul Shin to the Southern Korean City of Gwangju to visit with faculty at Chosun University's College of Law. More than three hours away from Seoul by bullet train, Gwangju is a city of more than one million people. Surrounded by some of Korea's rich farmland, Gwangju has been the site of some famous protests during the past. Chosun University has more than 25,000 students with approximately 1500 in the law school. Korean law schools, like those in Europe, begin in what we would call the freshman year of college. After four years, Korean law students sit for a nationally administered bar examination.
There are nearly 90 law schools in this country of almost 50 million that is the approximate geographic size of Indiana (the country is the third most densely populated nation in the world, after Bangladesh and Taiwan). Recently, the Korean Ministry of Justice has been exploring the idea of converting the current law school model to one similar to the United States, making law school a graduate program. The suggestion has been to have just 10 graduate law schools in the country. It goes without saying that every current law school is trying to position itself for selection as one of the ten graduate programs. Korean law schools are ranked based upon the selectivity in admissions and upon bar passage results. Recently, the government expanded the number of "bar passes" from 500 to 1000. As you can well imagine, there is great competition to become one among the 1000 who pass the bar examination each year.
Of course, one looming question exists: what is to become of the other 19,000 or so law graduates who do not pass? This large number must look to find other forms of employment. With a smaller number of graduate law schools, the numbers of persons sitting for the bar should drop but the percentages passing should increase. The pressures to succeed at both the individual and the school level are immense. Many law schools hope to improve their chances of making the Ministry's "cut" by partnering with U.S. law schools to learn more about our system of preoparing graduates for success in the profession.
Imagine if instead of 50 different bar examinations, the U.S. had a unitary system like that here in Korea? Do you think we would have the same number of people sitting for the exam? Would we have a similar number passing a unitary examination? We could also ask other questions about access, accountability. What would you propose to our Korean law school colleagues about curriculum? Should they focus on bar preparation quesions only (clearly not the U.S. model)? Should they lobby for more admissions to the bar? Are there other indicia of success that these schools should be measured by? What measures would you urge?
So much to think about.....more tomorrow!
Dean Knight