The Bar Association to Rank Law Schools Starting This Year... Establishment of Special Evaluation Committee

Lee Chan-hee, who was elected as the 50th President of the Korean Bar Association, is being interviewed on the 25th at Sungin Law Firm in Seocho-gu, Seoul. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyung-min] The Korean Bar Association (President Lee Chan-hee) will evaluate and rank law schools starting this year.

On the 22nd, the Bar Association announced, "With the abolition of the judicial examination, law schools are the sole institutions for training legal professionals. To ensure their successful establishment, we will set up a Special Committee for Law School Evaluation this year to conduct evaluations of law schools."

They added, "Although the law school system was introduced with the aim of producing legal professionals with expertise in various fields, there is still ongoing debate about whether this goal is being achieved. It is necessary to examine from multiple perspectives whether students are properly educated and evaluated from admission through education and the subsequent bar examination," explaining the background of this initiative.

The Bar Association analyzed, "Since the introduction of law schools, there have been continuous controversies regarding ambiguous admission criteria, unfair admission processes, reliability of education, excessive costs, pass rates, and the number of successful candidates."

Until now, the Bar Association has operated a Law School Evaluation Committee, but it has been criticized for its ineffective composition and for only conducting evaluations every five years to determine suitability, which lacked practical impact.

Accordingly, the newly established Special Committee for Law School Evaluation will include members from various sectors both inside and outside law schools to conduct the evaluations.

The evaluations will be conducted annually based on various criteria, and the 25 evaluated law schools will be quantified and their rankings publicly disclosed.

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