By Lee Hyo-sik
A group of lawyers have joined forces with judicial trainees to put greater pressure on the government to retract its controversial plan of recruiting elite law school graduates as prosecutors next year.
About 20 lawyers in their 20s and 30s, who are members of the Seoul Bar Association organized a protest rally in front of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office in southern Seoul Monday. They called on the Ministry of Justice to withdraw its disputed plan to interview top-class law school students who will graduate early next year as candidates for prosecutors.
In a joint statement signed by 575 lawyers practicing in Seoul they said, “It is unfair to judicial trainees who must undergo a series of tests if law school graduates are hired as prosecutors without a test.
If prosecutors are selected by recommendations from law school deans, the objectivity and fairness cannot be guaranteed as it is under the current bar examination system.”
The lawyers also insisted that law school graduates will not be able to properly perform as prosecutors because they do not study certain sections of criminal law.
“We lawyers have no business interests in the government plan to employ law school students as prosecutors. But we have decided to stage the protest to voice our concerns that the measure may act as a stumbling block in Korea’s efforts to create a fair society,” said lawyer Na Seung-cheul who led the Monday protest.
Na said young lawyers will urge the Korean Bar Association to take a stance against the recruitment of law school students as prosecutors. “We also plan to visit the Ministry of Justice to convey our concerns over its ill-advised scheme.”
Until the ministry accepts their demand, the lawyers plan to hold a rally on Monday and Friday every week in front of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office.
The lawyers’ collective move came after nearly 500 bar exam graduates boycotted an admission ceremony at the state-run Judicial Research Training Institute last Wednesday in protest of the government plan to select prosecutors from among elite law school graduates.
In February, the Justice Ministry announced plans to recruit senior students at law schools as prosecutors before their graduation from next year. The ministry will interview dean-recommended senior students from the 25 schools across the country and then recruit “talented” candidates as prosecutors in advance.
Law school students immediately welcomed the move, saying it will bring much-needed reform to the prosecution.
Facing a strong backlash from judicial trainees and lawyers, Justice Minister Lee Kwi-nam said Monday that the ministry will select on-the-job trainees, not prosecutors, among law school graduates recommended by law school deans. “The trainees will not automatically be appointed as prosecutors. A task force made up of officials from the Justice Ministry, the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office and the Legal Research & Training Institute has been working on the matter since December last year,” Lee said.
Under the current judicial laws, after passing the national bar examination, some 1,000 prospective judges, prosecutors and lawyers undergo training for two years at the Judicial Research and Training Institute run by the Supreme Court. Some outstanding trainees are selected to become judges or prosecutors, and the others practice law.
In 2007, the government passed a law to create U.S.-style three-year law schools. The old system of selecting law professionals by examination is scheduled to be phased out.