In this blog post, we will look at how the non-disclosure of the results of the Korean bar exam affects fair competition in the legal profession and the validity of the system.
It has been 15 years since the law school was introduced. This year, the 14th class of graduates entered the legal market. However, as the results and ranking of the bar exam are not disclosed, it continues to be difficult for graduates preparing for employment to objectively assess their competitiveness. The current law, which in principle does not disclose the results of the bar exam, is considered to further strengthen the opacity of the job market for law school students. Therefore, in this article, I would like to criticize the current system of non-disclosure of bar exam results and discuss why this is an unreasonable policy.
In 2009, Article 18 of the Bar Examination Act, which was enacted with the launch of the law school, required the bar exam to inform the examinee of his or her score upon request. However, just two years later, in 2011, the Bar Examination Act was amended to not disclose the test results to anyone other than the examinees who failed. In other words, the law regarding the disclosure of test scores was changed in the opposite direction before the first bar exam was even taken. There are several superficial reasons for keeping bar exam scores private. First, there is a concern that if scores are disclosed, law school education could be transformed into test-oriented education, similar to the judicial exam, with successful candidates being ranked in order of their performance. Secondly, it is difficult to achieve the purpose of law schools, which were introduced to produce talented individuals with expertise and competitiveness in various fields through specialized education by school. There is also a concern that the disclosure of grades will lead to the ranking of universities and excessive competition among them. In the future, we will refute these arguments and explain the rationale for the disclosure of grades.
First of all, in the absence of objective indicators to measure the abilities of lawyers, the fact that the results of the bar exam are not disclosed means that unfair factors such as academic background, family background, and connections are playing an important role in the appointment of judges and prosecutors and the hiring of large law firms. In fact, there have been stories of students who were set to be hired by the top-tier large law firms in Korea, which were mentioned in the introduction as examples, having failed the bar exam and being in a state of despair, not only this year but every year. As mentioned at the beginning, in the bar exam, where more than 60% of the total number of examinees pass, a student who has failed the exam is pre-hired by a law firm that does not employ even a few dozen people at law schools across the country. This is a sufficient example to raise doubts that law firms are considering not only ability but also background when hiring talent. In other words, it is time to discuss whether the bar exam, which is used to determine whether a person is qualified to become a lawyer, has any correlation with the academic background, grades, and other factors that law firms currently consider when hiring. In addition, statistics on the results of the Ministry of Justice’s appointment of graduates of the first class of law schools in 2013 as prosecutors show that the so-called SKY universities accounted for 85.7%, which is higher than the proportion of prosecutors from the bar exam (64%) who were appointed in 2010-2012. This shows that the hierarchy of academic background has become even more severe. It was also found that 81% of lawyers from the top six law firms, including Kim & Chang, Bae, Kim & Lee, and Kwan, are graduates of SKY law schools.
It is clear that the fact that grades are kept private is not preventing the ranking of universities, but rather is acting as a factor that is further solidifying the academic-based cartel. Considering that under the bar exam system, the bar exam score and the score from the training institute were the most objective and effective criteria for appointment as a judge or prosecutor and for joining a large law firm, regardless of the undergraduate school, the current system is creating a situation that is inconsistent with the purpose of introducing law schools, where university name is more important than the bar exam.
Next, the reality is that there is a fixed hierarchy among law schools across the country. Students applying for law school also choose schools based on that hierarchy. Another problem that the non-disclosure of the bar exam results can cause comes from this part. The above situation is similar to that of high school graduates choosing a university through the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and the ranking of those universities being determined, but there is a difference from the days when the bar exam was taken. In the case of the bar exam, if you completed 60 credits in law subjects, you could take the exam with equal qualifications regardless of your school or faculty, and the results of the exam were also made public. It cannot be said that their background was not taken into account in subsequent hiring, but the results of the bar exam and the results of the judicial training institute could be used as an objective competitive indicator for those who were somewhat disadvantaged in their background. On the other hand, under the current system where the results of the bar exam are not disclosed, it is true that there are no other indicators to show the disadvantageous background of those who are not from elite schools. In other words, if the possibility of ranking changes through free competition among them is slim, it is difficult to expect progress within them. As a result, schools with high rankings are likely to settle for the status quo, while schools with low rankings are likely to give up. Under the current policy of keeping the bar exam results private, it is difficult for students from relatively low-ranked law schools to make a breakthrough when they enter the legal market after graduation, and the above situation is repeated every year. In this situation, the disclosure of bar exam results will be a new stimulus for both schools and students and will have a positive effect on the entire legal profession.
If we think about whether there are any problems caused by the disclosure of the bar exam results, the first problem is the education in law schools. According to the position against the disclosure of the results, if the bar exam results, which are currently kept private, are disclosed, law school education and students’ studies will be focused entirely on the subjects of the bar exam. This is seen as a direction that is not in line with the purpose of law schools, which were introduced to produce talented individuals with expertise and competitiveness in various fields through specialized education by school. In other words, there is a concern that law schools may be transformed into cram schools for the bar exam. In particular, the majority of professors currently teaching at law schools oppose the disclosure of bar exam scores, arguing that under the current system, three years of law school credits have a significant impact on the job market, which increases the legitimacy of their argument that students are highly engaged in education at law schools and that professors’ authority is commensurate with that engagement.
However, under the current system, it is true that many law students take classes at law schools for the bar exam during their vacation or use online classes to study during the semester. In other words, if we consider the inefficient situation where school classes for credit management and studying for the bar exam are completely separated, their claim cannot be said to be necessarily correct. In addition, due to the nature of law courses, each professor has a different opinion on the majority and minority schools, making it very difficult for students to write answers that satisfy the professor’s tastes when it comes to grade management. In addition, due to the stubbornness of some professors, there are many cases in which students end up studying things that are far from the work they will be doing after graduation. Therefore, it can be concluded that this is not sufficient to serve as a basis for claiming the non-disclosure of the bar exam results.
Finally, I would like to discuss the concerns of some opponents about the ranking of universities and excessive competition between universities due to the disclosure of results. If the bar exam results are disclosed, it is natural that there will be differences between universities depending on the results. The logic is that this will create a hierarchy among law schools based on their published grades, and that this will lead to excessive competition to improve one’s ranking. In other words, when entering the job market after graduating from law school, there will be another influential indicator, which will greatly affect the status of each school, and there may be side effects.
However, it is an open secret that the hierarchy of each law school has been implicitly established regardless of whether the exam is open or not. The pass rate of the bar exam is disclosed in the media every year, but the pass rate by school does not make much sense for an exam that passes more than 60% of all examinees. Rather, the current situation in which students enter the job market with their ranking at the time of admission set in stone is more conducive to improving the competitiveness of each school than a situation in which the ranking can change depending on the performance on the bar exam. In other words, it is appropriate to view the reorganization of the ranking of each school and the intensification of competition due to the disclosure of bar exam results as having a positive effect in the long run.
This year marks the 15th anniversary of the introduction of law schools. As the controversy over the disclosure of lawyers’ grades continues, I would like to conclude this article by reiterating the idea that the disclosure of bar exam grades is not an option but a necessity in order to train more diverse lawyers in a wider range of fields and classes, and for law schools across the country to develop further rather than stagnate.
