법률분야 전문자격사제도의 개선방안 (How to Reform License System in Legal Services)

서지정보

· 발행기관 : 한국법경제학회
· 수록지 정보 : 법경제학연구 / 7권 / 2호 / 183 ~ 222페이지
· 저자명 : 김두얼, 이시욱

초록

정부는 건국 이래로 변호사, 법무사, 변리사 등과 같은 전문자격사제도를 운영함으로써 전문자격사 서비스의 질을 향상시키고자 노력해 왔다. 하지만 우리나라는 다른 선진국가들에 비해 자격사제도를 몇 가지 측면에서 상이한 방식으로 운영해 왔으며, 이러한 요인들은 국민들이 양질의 법률서비스를 다양한 영역에서 적정한 가격 수준에 향유하는 것을 저해하였고, 시장경제의 원활한 작동에도 많은 장애를 초래하였다. 따라서 법과 질서에 기반한 지속적 경제성장을 달성하기 위해서는 다음과 같은 개선이 필요하다. 첫째, 법률 직역들의 배타적 업무영역은 적정한 수준으로 재조정 혹은 축소될 필요가 있다. 둘째, 자격사시험은 채용시험이 아니기 때문에 사전에 선발인원을 정하고 그 숫자만큼만 뽑는 것은 타당하지 않다. 최소자격을 갖춘 이들 모두에게 자격을 부여하는 방식으로 시험제도 운영의 근본적 개선이 이루어져야 한다. 셋째, 자격사에 대한 징계가 적절하게 이루어질 필요가 있으며, 자격사별 징계 관련 정보는 소비자들이 손쉽게 확인할 수 있는 방식으로 공개되어야 한다. 마지막으로 자격사에 대한 정부의 직접 관리․감독을 전제로 자격사단체들을 임의단체화함으로써, 단체 간 경쟁을 통한 서비스의 향상을 도모하는 것이 필요하다.

영어초록

Legal specialists have performed a pivotal role in protecting the legal rights of the people and bringing social justice. Furthermore, the legal service industry has been used as an intermediate input within the value-chain, contributing to corporate innovation and private sector development. In this regard, establishing an institutional framework for effective delivery of high-quality legal service is a critical agenda for enhancing the growth potential of the Korean economy.
The Korean government has put in efforts to enhance the quality of legal professional services through the license systems, such as lawyer, judicial agent, and patent attorney.Commonly, many countries have operated license systems in the legal profession field. Korea, however, has operated these systems in a partly different way compared to other countries, which therefore caused adverse effects against the original purpose of these systems. First, the government has set overly broad exclusive rights for lawyers, judicial agents, and patent attorneys, which as a result caused mismatch between market demand and the actual scope of services provided in the market. Second, despite the relatively large scope of exclusive practice area, the number of legal professionals has been controlled to remain very low. Third, no allowance on the partnership between specialists and nonspecialists or the regulation on their operating type has acted to rule out in advance the opportunities to spread out to other various sectors. Fourth, the government has not come up with enough manpower and budget to conduct ex ante and monitoring and supervision. The government has failed to monitor the performance of legal specialists appropriately.
These factors have prevented the public from enjoying the quality legal services in various areas at a reasonable price and also brought many obstacles to the effective operation of the market economy. Therefore, to accomplish a law and order-based sustainable economic growth, the procedures should be made to reform the above problems of the legal specialist system. Concrete measures might include the following: First, the exclusive rights for the legal professions need to be adjusted or reduced to an appropriate level. Second, the current system of determining the number of new legal professionals prior to the examination should be discarded. In addition, it is appropriate to alleviate the government's strict regulations on the quota of law school students. Third, the supervision and control of legal profession should not be conducted through quota regulations or ownership structure control, but through monitoring the service itself directly. In this case, it is prerequisite that the government should secure enough manpower and budget. Fourth, appropriate disciplinary punishments need to be conducted on specialists, if necessary, and concerned information on those punishments should be open to the public in the manner that consumers are allowed to access easily. Lastly, on the premise that the government directly monitors specialists, it is necessary to transform groups of specialists into a voluntary organization so as to enhance the service quality through intra-organization competition.

참고자료

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