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A Study on the Opening of Korea's Legal Service Market through FTAs - Focusing on the comparison between Foreign Legal Consultant Act and the opening of legal service markets of neighbouring countries -

  • DONG-A LAW REVIEW
  • 2009, (45), pp.447-473
  • Publisher : The Institute for Legal Studies Dong-A University
  • Research Area : Social Science > Law

Sungwook Yoon 1

1동아대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

The opening of the legal service market has been discussed in the WTO/DDA negotiations as an important issue since 2000, but the negotiations in the WTO has stalled in recent years. Under the situation that FTA negotiations have multiplied in number and spanned the globe, this issue has been revived as one of key issues in FTA negotiations, particularly for the US and the EU. Korea agreed upon opening its legal service market to several FTA partners such as EFTA, ASEAN, India, the US and the EU. However, the extent of opening Korea's market varies according to the FTA partners. Moreover, ‘Foreign Legal Consultant(FLC) Act’ which regulates foreign lawyers and law firms operating in Korea took effect on September, 2009. However, the 3-step opening of Korea's legal service market agreed upon in the KORUS FTA is much beyond FLC Act which only spells out the level of the 1st step opening according to the KORUS FTA. This indicates that FLC Act can be applied to any country which concludes an FTA - at least before the WTO/DDA negotiations conclude - including the issue of legal service market, and the level of opening can vary by negotiating partners. Having analysed the level of opening the legal service markets of neighbouring countries such as Japan, China, Singapore and Hong Kong, this research finds that the level of their opening is also various according to their policy goals or domestic situations. This analysis also demonstrates that their policies focus upon the management and/or control of foreign lawyers and law firms for the protection of their domestic law firms which are obviously less competitive than Anglo-American law firms. The opening of Korea's legal service market will be accompanied by the improvement of competitiveness of domestic legal services as well as encroachment on domestic markets, to some extent. In this sense, appropriate policies for ‘survival’ of the domestic law firms are required.

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