By Park Si-soo
Kim Yung-sun was pretty sure in 2008 that her daily routine would be simpler than ever this time around — studying, eating and sleeping — in preparation for the bar exam.
But now, the student at Seoul National University’s law school spend more time surfing recruitment websites or reading non-legal books than studying law in a tiny cubicle at the school library.
“With nothing being certain, it’s natural to look for alternatives,” said Kim, which is an alias.
She stressed that her attention to the non-legal sector does not necessarily mean she is considering throwing away her studies, but added she would keep doing so “just in case.” She said she may not be the only one.
The law school where Kim is enrolled is the best by any indicators out of the 25 law schools in the country, meaning the school’s diploma will surely present the 26-year-old great advantages when it comes to working as a lawyer in the school background-conscious and cronyism-dominated legal services industry.
But a growing number of students at her school are poised to turn their sights to non-legal fields due to an “uncertain future,” observers said.
No objective statistics proving their allegations were available and no dropouts in recent months were reported. But many said it’s evident and the situation is getting worse in mediocre law schools, mostly in the non-Seoul area.
“I debated either transferring to another law school in Seoul or quitting school to get a job,” said a law school student in South Gyeongsang Province, about 350 kilometers southeast of Seoul.
Experts say with the graduation of the nation’s first 2,000 law school students just one and a half years away, the “uncertain future” is the major culprit behind the mushrooming gloom, dealing a blow to the fledging two-year-old U.S.-style law school system.
When 25 law schools with a three-year curriculum made their historic debut in 2008, the government and legislators promised to set concrete guidelines on how to test and discern qualified students to work as lawyers as early as possible to prevent any chaos.
One and a half years have passed since. But nothing has yet to be fixed but for one broad guideline: the difficulty of the first bar exam for law school students to be administered by 2012 at the latest will be set to call about 80 percent of the 2,000 test takers or, 1,600, “successful.”
Other details of the test, including the test administer, format and how to deal with successful candidates, remain vague.
The Korean Bar Association recently set a guideline that a two-year field training term is a prerequisite for successful test takers to be acknowledged as a lawyer, but fell short of concluding on how the training session will be organized, handled and monitored.
The Supreme Court plans to hire a handful of successful graduates as law clerks whose role is conducting research for judges, while the Ministry of Justice is considering recruiting some high scorers as trainee prosecutors.
The National Assembly is unlikely to settle this soon. “A special parliamentary committee is likely to be created next year to deal with the issues,” a ministry official said.
Noting that there is a rumor that major law firms have already signed an under-the-table contract with some distinguished students to employ them upon graduation, a student said, “It deepens my woes further.”
A judge-turned-lawyer suggested that all concerned parties feel guilty about dragging out the process, saying, “It puts hundreds of law enthusiasts through an unbearable ordeal.”