Well, maybe — at least you’ll be able to provide “limited legal advisory services”:
The government approved a new law on foreign legal consultation at a cabinet meeting, Tuesday, clearing the way for foreign law firms to provide limited legal advisory services, the Justice Ministry said. The legal market opening comes in line with a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States.
Under the revised law, foreign legal professions such as lawyers can perform consultative business here regarding laws governing their respective countries. But they will not be allowed to cooperate with Korean law firms or hire Korean lawyers.
It will be the first of the phased legislation of the Law on Foreign Legal Consultants, which Seoul concluded with the U.S. last year. The ministry will propose the bill to the National Assembly for legislation soon.
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Well, don’t hold a parade just yet. The bill still hasn’t passed the National Assembly, so it hasn’t actually been “approved”, despite the newspaper reportage. (The fact that the Ministry of Justice’s release of a draft bill is reported as a done deal does highlight the “rubber-stamp” nature of the Korean legislature, though.)
And even once it’s passed, the benefit is dependent on there being relevant enabling provisions in a free trade agreement or other treaty with the jurisdiction from which the foreign lawyer or law firm comes. If KORUS FTA dies, as I expect it will, no legal market opening for US lawyers.
I’ve written about this at Korea Law Blog a couple of times: Korean Legal Market Opening to Begin?; Wall Street Journal on Korea Legal Market Opening: “Free the Lawyers”; and yesterday, in response to this same report, Another Step Toward Legal Market Opening.
Today I’ve added another article, Paul Hastings on Korean Legal Market Opening, inspired by a Korea Herald article interviewing a global law firm’s managing partner concerning his designs on the Korean market.
I think foreign lawyers in Korea should be allowed to deal only with foreign English instructor related cases.
So, who wants to start a pool (if this law goes into effect) on how long it takes for a foreign legal consultant to get called out for faking his/her credentials?
It’s already happened — there have been a couple of cases of Korean-American flim-flam guys getting into larger Korean firms. Probably it’s not cool to mention the names of the lawyers or the firms, but when I was at a real small firm I was contacted by one of these guys. My first impression of him was that he was an insufferable twit and braggart, which is probably what made him attractive to the firm he fooled into giving him a job.
Arguing with a lawyer is like mud wrestling with a pig: after a while you realize that the pig actually enjoys it.
Why am I not surprised?
This is a joke. All it means is that any foreign firm foolish enough to want to pay rent in Korea and pay Korean taxes on their Korean source income can open an office here. The intelligent ones will simply continue providing their services from Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo and parachuting in from time to time as necessary.
I see a foreigner (from Kukmin University?) also got into the picture with his English sign. By the way, I like the his hat.
http://english.chosun.com/medi.....010_01.jpg
Post #5: Arguing with a lawyer is like mud wrestling with a pig: after a while you realize that the pig actually enjoys it.
Utterly priceless… thanks for my first smile of the day.
As an aside, I checked out Post #7’s link to see reason for sign but got distracted by another to his left which had the English words “law school” converted into hangeul. Can someone explain to me why Koreans continue to do this? It’s not as if the Korean language does not have the characters for “law school”. Furthermore, do they not understand that this practice undermines their ability to speak and understand English properly?