Research Report
Studies on Legal Foundations & Policy II- Improving the Legal System to Support Foundational Legal Studies and Education -
Ⅰ. Background and Purpose of Research
▶ Crisis in Legal Education
○ Legal education is currently facing a serious crisis. This can be approached from two major aspects.
- First, legal education conducted in law schools is deviating from its original goals and heading towards failure. The reason for this can be cited as the deepening dependence of legal education on the bar exam.
- Second, undergraduate legal education is also facing a crisis as the link between undergraduate legal education and the training of lawyers is weakening. Colleges of law and law departments are disappearing or being absorbed and integrated.
○ This research focuses on the crisis of legal education conducted at law schools. This is because legal education at law schools is directly related to the training of lawyers.
▶ Crisis of Law
○ The crisis of legal education not only leads to the crisis of the legal training system, but ultimately results in the crisis of law as an independent discipline.
○ The decline of law as an academic discipline is not simply a problem of law alone. If law declines, the rule of law may also not function properly.
▶ Need for research on measures to improve the legal system for normalizing legal education
○ Considering this situation, normalizing legal education, especially legal education conducted at law schools, is very important and urgent.
○ The task of normalizing legal education is difficult to implement autonomously within law schools. As legal education at law schools becomes subordinate to the bar exam, the capacity for autonomous improvement of legal education disappears.
○ Therefore, in order to normalize legal education, it is necessary to seek external improvement measures. The most appropriate measure for this is to consider measures to improve the laws that regulate legal education.
○ Against this backdrop, it is necessary to study how to improve the laws necessary to normalize legal education.
▶ Study on the improvement of the legal education system
○ This research aims to study the improvement of the legal education system.
○ This research diagnoses the current status of legal education, identifies its problems, and then presents a general plan for improving the legal education system to solve its problems.
Ⅱ. Contents
▶ Background of the introduction of law schools and the significance of basic law research
○ Examine the background of the introduction of law schools
○ Analyze the target of basic law research
▶ Understand the current status and problems of legal education
○ Examine what problems there are in current legal education and what causes them. This study focuses on legal education in law schools.
▶ Proposal of improvement measures for legal education
○ This research examines what measures should be sought to solve and improve the problems of legal education. This is specified as follows.
○ Curriculum improvement measures
- The causes of problems in legal education can be found primarily in the curriculum of law schools. The biggest problem can be found in the dependency of the curriculum on the bar exam. Therefore, the primary improvement measure is how to weaken this dependency.
○ Improvement plan for admission system
- Examine how to improve the current admission system for law schools in order to ensure mutual growth between law school law education and undergraduate law education.
○ Improvement plan for law school governance
- Examine how to improve the accreditation governance and evaluation governance among law school governance.
▶ Improvement plan for laws related to law education
○ Based on these discussions, examine how to revise Korean Law School Law Act and its enforcement ordinance.
Ⅲ. Expected Effects
▶ Utilization in the revision of the law on legal education
○ The results of the research can be directly utilized in the revision of the law on legal education.
▶ Contributing to the normalization of legal education
○ The improvement measures suggested in this research can be utilized in the normalization of legal education.
▶ Contributing to the normalization of legal studies
○ This research contributes to the normalization of legal studies, which is currently facing a crisis, as an original discipline.