The Era of 40,000 Lawyers: Large Law Firms Scale Up While Public Sector Remains Vacant [How Law Schools Changed the Legal Market③·End]

Workload Increases in Public and Administrative Sectors,
But Hiring Lags Behind Large Law Firms
Compensation and Job Security Disparities Identified as Key Factors

Demand Expands in Fields Like AI, Data, and Labor,
Law School Curriculum Still Focused on Exam Preparation
"Legal Education Must Change First for Better Utilization of Talent"

Since the introduction of law schools, the number of lawyers in South Korea has increased from around 10,000 to nearly 40,000. The overall size of the legal market has expanded as well. As corporate legal needs have become more complex, large law firms have scaled up, and lawyers have quickly established themselves in newly emerging areas of the legal sector. However, the number of jobs in public, administrative, and audit fields has not increased at the same pace.

According to the Korean Bar Association as of September 23, 2026, there are 39,276 registered lawyers in South Korea. When the first cohort of law school students graduated in 2012, there were 14,534 lawyers; now, after fourteen years, the nation is on the verge of reaching the 40,000 mark. Following the first bar exam, which saw 1,451 successful candidates, approximately 1,500 to 1,700 new lawyers have entered the legal market each year. This shift results from the transition in the legal professional selection system, moving away from the national judicial exam to the law school model.

Large Law Firms Grow, Public Sector Recruitment Stagnates

The expanded flow of lawyers has gravitated toward large law firms. For example, the number of domestic lawyers at Bae, Kim & Lee LLC rose from 406 in 2016 to 643 in August this year, a 58% increase. Non-litigation staff also increased from 282 to 479, and the hiring of new lawyers more than doubled, from 19 to 42. Kim & Chang increased its domestic lawyer headcount from about 600 to 1,200, effectively doubling in size, and Shin & Kim scaled up from 370 to 630 lawyers.

Law firms have been able to increase staffing because their workload has grown accordingly. The area of corporate advisory services has expanded to include personal information and data, artificial intelligence (AI), platform regulation, economic security, and more. Corporate criminal and regulatory disputes have also become more specialized. A Shin & Kim representative stated, "Whereas ten years ago, clients would ask 'Is this possible?,' now they ask 'What must we do to make this possible?'," adding, "Legal services have evolved to focus on finding solutions throughout the business process."

The problem is that such job growth has not been evenly distributed throughout the legal sector. While the need for legal expertise has increased in public institutions and at administrative, audit, and investigative sites, the number of lawyer positions has not kept pace. Park Eunsun, a lawyer who previously worked in the Office of Audits at the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education, noted that there were only two lawyers, including herself, in the department at that time. Park recalled, "Given the volume of audit and investigative work, I assumed there would be plenty of jobs for lawyers, but the reality was different."

The slow pace of hiring in the public sector is attributed to disparities in compensation and job security. Entry-level salaries at major law firms have now reached the upper range of 100 million won. For instance, Law Firm YK offered a starting pre-tax annual salary of 170 million won for new hires this year. By contrast, many public-sector lawyers are hired on fixed-term contracts equivalent to Grade 5 or 6 civil service positions. According to this year's government salary table, the monthly salary for a Grade 5, step 1 civil servant is only 2,896,400 won and 2,389,500 won for Grade 6, step 1. The fact that the Ministry of Employment and Labor had to issue an additional recruitment notice after hiring 16 fixed-term Grade 6 lawyers, and that the Chungbuk Office of Education had to repost a position for a Grade 5 lawyer, illustrates this situation.

Utilization and Training of Lawyers Take Priority Over Numbers

In the field, there is growing consensus that it is necessary to broaden career pathways so that the increased pool of legal professionals can enter diverse sectors. This includes expanding opportunities in fields such as corporate legal affairs, compliance, and response to regulatory issues in emerging industries, in addition to public, administrative, and audit sectors. To do so, more positions should be created for lawyers to gain experience, while also enhancing compensation and job security. Park Eunsun stated, "Although there are many tasks that require lawyers, positions often fail to materialize," adding, "It is crucial to build a system that allows legal professionals to enter areas where there is actual demand."

Academics argue that expanding the career spectrum for lawyers must start with reforms in law school education. Despite the increasing need for expertise in fields such as AI, data, labor, and the environment, law school curricula remain heavily focused on bar exam preparation. As a result, students often prepare for specialized subjects like labor law or environmental law through short-term lectures right before the exam, rather than through regular coursework. This has led to a vicious cycle of declining enrollments in these courses and continued reductions in class offerings. To address this, some propose making the bar exam more like a qualification test and reinforcing specialized education and practical training in law schools.

However, if the selection function of the bar exam is diminished, the number of successful candidates may rise, leading to pushback from lawyer associations. The Korean Bar Association argues that the legal market is already facing an "oversupply" issue, and insists on reducing the number of bar exam passers to under 1,500 next year and eventually to fewer than 1,000 per year in the long term. In contrast, others maintain that the original intent of law schools—training legal professionals from a variety of backgrounds for diverse sectors—should not be lost. Choi Bong-kyung, president of the Korean Association of Law Professors, commented, "Arguing that a higher pass rate will lower the quality of lawyers is merely a logic for maintaining vested interests," adding, "We should not forget the purpose of introducing law schools by focusing only on reducing headcounts."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.