Weak job market leads students to law school test centers

K-campus

Published: 02 Jun. 2023, 10:03

Weak job market leads students to law school test centers

Test-takers check posters before entering the Legal Education Eligibility Test (LEET) test center in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on July 24. The number of applicants for the LEET reached a record high of 14,620 in 2022. [YONHAP]

Don't be surprised to see so many students carrying the same test prep book regardless of their majors when you visit Seoul National University (SNU).

The LEET, or the Legal Education Eligibility Test, required for law school admissions in Korea, has become a household name among Korean young adults who pursue a stable, prestigious and well-compensated career as a lawyer.

"I definitely feel like everyone prefers a career in a law school these days," Cho Chu-young, a senior at SNU majoring in Anthropology, said.

"All my close friends say they're taking the LEET or a 'tourism' LEET this year, and when I talk to friends I haven't talked to for a long time, they say they already took the LEET the previous year."

Taking a "tourism" LEET refers to taking the test "cold," where students take it for the first time without studying to predict the score they will supposedly get after preparing for it.

LEET, a standardized test run by the Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation, has three sections: reading comprehension, logical reasoning and wiring. The test is a critical factor in law school admissions.

SNU students even joke that the LEET is a graduation exam for the students.

The number of LEET takers reached a record high of 14,620 in 2022, breaking the previous year's 13,955. In 2009, the first year it was introduced, there were fewer than 10,000 test-takers.

People walk out of Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul after they finish LEET on July 24, 2022. The number of applicants for the LEET reached a record high of 14,620 in 2022. [NEWS1]

The spike comes as no surprise considering that the previous rote-based bar exam has now been completely scrapped, leaving the LEET as the sole option for prospective lawyers.

Under the previous system, anyone could sit for the bar exam. Those who passed then had to receive mandatory training at the government-run Judicial Research and Training Institute to become lawyers.

The bar exam still exists in Korea. However, now, prospective lawyers must sit the LEET, earn a Juris Doctor and then sit the bar exam.

The biggest reason behind the rising popularity of the legal profession is the state of widespread unemployment among young adults in Korea.

"It's because of societal instability," Yeo Seul-ki, a fourth-year SNU student studying Russian Language and Literature, said. "I think that students are more interested in the stability of the job rather than what the job entails."

"The popularity of law and medical schools is because of the licenses they give out," Yeo added.

The popularity of law schools has changed the atmosphere on campus.

More and more first-year students start university to maintain the highest possible GPA and participate in a wide range of extracurricular activities to lay the groundwork for a stellar statement of purpose.

A LEET taker walks into a high school building to take the exam in Gangnam District, southern Seoul, on July 24, 2022. [YONHAP]

For some people, getting any grade lower than an A+ is regarded as a failure now.

"I heard a bunch of students complain about the fact that they got an A and not an A+ in class last year," an SNU student said.

"They said they were planning to email the professor to ask him to mark their answers again. I was shocked to hear that. When I was a first-year, people didn't think getting an A was that bad."

Law associations on and off campus mostly consisted of third and fourth-year students. Now, first and second-year students are joining law-related extracurriculars to increase their chances of being admitted to law schools.

Experts say the instability of the employment market will deepen the phenomenon even further.

"Even in Samsung, employees are pressured to leave in less than 10 years," Lim Woon-taek, a sociology professor at Keimyung University, said. "Only 20 to 30 percent of employees can continue to work in conglomerates without being pressured to leave, which means almost 70 percent need to find a new job."

"But Korea's weak social structure has made re-employment extremely difficult," Lim added. "While public service jobs provide stability, low compensation and lack of incentives have made it unattractive for Korea's younger 'MZ' generation that prefers meritocracy."

The phenomenon is more vivid in most prestigious universities in Korea, what it calls the "SKY" universities, an acronym derived from the first letters of Korea's top three universities: SNU, Korea University and Yonsei University.

The popularity can also be gleaned from law school applicants and successful candidates. Of 10,294 that applied to law schools in 2022, 4,033 were from SKY universities. SKY students comprised almost 60 percent of law school first-years last year, according to data compiled by a civic group representing LEET takers.

"A lot of students think that they need to get a job that is as prestigious as the university they attend," an SNU student surnamed Cho said. "They feel as if their societal status will decrease if they get a job that isn't as prestigious. They think that getting a job that is below the standard of their university discredits all the hard work they put into going to a good university."

Lim says the current phenomenon would lead to an oversupply of law practitioners.

"There will be an oversupply in the field of law as consumers will decrease due to Korea's lowering birth rate," Lim said. "Therefore, competition will increase within the field of law to capture a limited number of consumers."

The competition has already gotten intense over the years. Around 28 percent of people who took LEET were admitted to law schools in 2016, but that fell to 22.4 percent in 2018 and to 17 percent in 2023.

Lim also predicts an increase in highly skilled foreigners in Korea.

"Corporates will need to use foreigners to make up for the gap created by Korean students' gravitation toward law school," Lim said, noting that many top executives at Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook are Indian nationals.

"Companies don't have nationalistic sentiments of utilizing only Korean nationals. What's important is filling the vacuum of skilled workers."

"The absence of a clear vision or direction of Korean society conveyed to Korea's young adults is the root cause behind the popularity of law schools," Lim added.

"In order to prevent distortion in the labor market, there need to be more active discussions on technological and industrial development and clear prospects for industrial transformation to offer suitable education to youths."

BY STUDENT REPORTER KIM CHE-YEON [kjd.kcampus@joongang.co.kr]