Law schools announce enrollment list for inaugural year

SEOUL, Dec. 5 (Yonhap) -- South Korean law schools set to open next year
announced the names of students accepted for admission on Friday, with over 60
percent coming from non-law backgrounds, the education ministry said.

South Korea will introduce a post-graduate, U.S.-style three-year law school
system in March, phasing out the decades-old state bar exam as it seeks to
increase the number of lawyers with more varied backgrounds.
A total of 25 universities given accreditation by the government to operate law
schools released lists of the first 2,000 students to be accepted. Selections
were based on students' state-administered Legal Education Eligibility Test
results, foreign language skills, volunteer activities and grades from their
undergraduate years, the ministry said in a statement.
According to data collected by the ministry from 14 of the schools, prospective
students with non-law undergraduate degrees accounted for 66 percent, higher than
the one-third minimum level set by the government to recruit students with
specialties outside the legal field.
The students will have to pass a certification exam upon graduation to enter the
profession. The government has set a five-year time limit for graduates to pass
the exam so as to curb a yearly backlog of repeat test takers, a serious problem
in Japan and other countries with similar systems.
The law school system has emerged as a new gateway into Korea's elite society as
its barrier to acceptance is much lower than the previous bar exam system.
The highly competitive bar exam is set to be phased out by 2016.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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