The (Un)Intended Consequences of South Korean Legal Education Reform

Abstract When identifying a legal solution to a problem, lawmakers will often draw from preexisting solutions from outside sources. Also referred to as ‘legal transplants,’ this was the approach taken by South Korean legislators when they sought to reform and modernize the nation’s legal education system. Named the Beophak jeonmun daehakwon seolchi unyeoung-e gwanhan beopruyl (referred to here as the “Korean Law School Act” or KLSA), this law marked the beginning of a three-year, full-time, graduate-level, professional law degree program in South Korea, modeled after the United States’ Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree program. Much of the existing literature evaluates the reform against its most visible ambitions: reducing legal education’s dependence on examinations, diversifying the legal profession, and making the curriculum more practice-oriented. On those terms, the record is mixed. However, legal transplant theory requires a more nuanced view. The KLSA successfully transplanted the organizational form of the American-style law school, but that form was reworked by Korean patterns of state oversight, exam-based status competition, and educational hierarchy. In this sense, the reform did not simply attempt to reproduce the U.S. model; rather, it produced a distinctly Korean version of it. The unintended consequences of the KLSA therefore illuminate not only the limits of legal transplant, but also the durability of local norms that structure legal education and the legal profession.