Trainee Lawyers Shamed
Four Disciplined for Document Fabrication, Illegal Teaching
By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter
Four trainee lawyers have been disciplined for manipulating test scores or illegally teaching students, triggering public skepticism over the ethics of budding lawyers.
One was caught fabricating test scores to get ahead of other rivals when applying for an in-house lawyer position, officials from the training institute said. The disciplinary committee suspended him for three months. Whether he will graduate from the training institute to get a license to practice law will be reviewed by the committee later.
Manipulating an official document is a grave crime enough to warrant imprisonment for up to 10 years.
The other three were suspended for one month each for teaching students preparing for the bar exam at private institutes. Among them is an unidentified 33-year-old trainee who is supposed to graduate summa cum laude from the institute. They are said to have received around 10 million won ($7,300) in exchange for teaching at the institutes.
Trainees say that teaching to earn pocket money has been a decade-long practice.
The four didn't attend their graduation ceremony, Tuesday, but instead appeared before a disciplinary committee the following day to be questioned over their wrongdoing.
Under related laws, trainees at the state-run Judicial Research and Training Institute (JRTI), which provides on-the-job training to those passing the bar exam, are classified as public servants so they are banned from engaging in the private sector for commercial purposes.
``The punishment seems appropriate,'' said Sean Hayes, a New York attorney working with the Seoul-based law firm LOGOS. ``The protection of the integrity of the judicial system must be first maintained by the system itself.'' Hayes said bar associations and related organizations need to take supervisory or other necessary steps to further solidify integrity of the overall judicial system.
The latest scandal at the institute involving would-be lawyers underlines the fact that even bar exam passers cannot avoid the brunt of the aggravating tight job market and deteriorating economy.
In the past, passing the bar exam here was a surefire ticket to land a decent job regardless of test results, and trainees could easily tap loans at banks.
But things have changed.
According to the training institute, about 300 out of some 975 graduates remain unemployed, and banks are more hesitant to extend loans to these once-VIP clients.
Also, a growing number of veteran lawyers are going insolvent, hit by fierce competition, slumping business and difficulty in securing loans.
With nearly 600 new faces entering the market each year, junior lawyers seek an opportunity to be employed at major law firms or big companies as in-house lawyers rather than becoming self-employed attorneys.
The score fabricator also doctored a document to get a job at a conglomerate. He submitted the fake scores to two conglomerates for job interviews.
A senior judge, who worked as a JRTI professor, said, ``Those ranked below 600th out of 1,000 competitors are rarely employed at big companies or popular law firms.''