영국 법학교육의 현실과그것이 한국 로스쿨 교육에 주는 함의

초록

It has been 8 years since law school system was established in Korea. Law school graduates has started working as lawyers from 2012 and its numbers have already grown to 8,000. It is clear that Korean legal society would be led by law school graduates in a short time. However, it is hard to say that law school has settled down as legal training system in Korea. Not only dissenters but also supporters for law school education are skeptical about current law school system unless it reforms its already-disclosed problems. This research aims to analyze legal education in UK, bearing in mind the current situation of Korean legal education. There are some studies done on the same subject, yet this study intends to follow up the latest situation in UK. Further, this study tries to show the difference between US and UK's legal education, since these two countries share similar legal system(e.g. common law system). Yet, the major goal of this research is to find out the details of legal education done in UK and its implications for Korean law schools. UK is one of the countries bearing most developed legal system and culture. It is not helpful to simply compare the legal education systems between UK and Korea and point out the flaws of Korean legal education. However, Korean legal education is in severe condition, even in this perspective. Three major problems are as follows; First, 3 years of legal education is inappropriate to prepare students for practice. Second, law school education cannot fulfill the total demand for legal education that our society needs. Third, producing lawyers outnumbering market demand would collapse the legal market. Then what can be done to solve these problems? Legal education for undergraduates can be one answer. This does not mean to go back to 2009 when law schools didn’t exist. Yet, we should maintain and develop law schools but also set up undergraduate degrees for some universities approved to establish a law school. If the undergraduate program is secured, students who graduated these programs would likely go on to law schools. This would provide in-depth education in legal theories, allowing the proper amount of education in legal practice. Besides, undergraduate programs would enable the legal market to meet the demands.

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