A study has found that a rapid increase in the number of lawyers in South Korea could intensify competition for clients, lowering the quality of legal services and weakening professional ethics.
The Korean Bar Association on Thursday released its analysis of how expanding the supply of lawyers affects service quality, based on a report it recently received from the Korean Society for Quality Management titled “A Korean Model for Legal Workforce Supply and Demand in the AI Era.”
The society said in the report that the quality of professional services depends on the absolute amount of time providers devote to a matter and on professional ethics, but that excessive competition damages both. It added that maintaining expertise and ethical standards requires a stable working environment.
The number of registered lawyers in South Korea surged to 38,235 this year from 14,534 in 2012. Over the same period, the number of first-trial cases filed fell about 30%, to 740,000 from 1.05 million. The lawyer-retention rate is about 20%, and the rate for privately retained counsel in criminal trials is about 30%, the report said.
With the median income at 30 million won under a situation in which lawyers handle an average of one case a month, the report said it is difficult to expect sustained improvements in service quality and predicted competition for clients will intensify. It said lawyers seeking to maintain income may cut the time spent on each case, leading to weaker legal services and a leveling down of courtroom advocacy.
The report also cited disciplinary data from the past five years, saying most cases involved violations of advertising rules (303), conduct unbecoming (192) and breaches of the duty of diligence (89). It described the figures as warning signs that market oversaturation is threatening the profession’s ability to police itself and that improving service quality is urgent.
In a comparison with major countries, the report said South Korea’s lawyer output was unusually high. From 2021 to 2024, Japan averaged 867 newly registered lawyers a year, while South Korea — with less than half Japan’s population — averaged 1,772, more than four times as many per capita, it said.
Korean Bar Association President Kim Jeong-uk said the findings align with what the association is seeing on the ground, including concerns about young lawyers’ livelihoods and weakening ethical awareness.
“When the number of lawyers goes beyond saturation, service quality levels down, and the costs of advertising competition are passed on to consumers,” Kim said. “In the end, it becomes a national loss as young lawyers whose minimum right to make a living is threatened are exposed to the temptation of illegal and unlawful conduct.”
Kim added that fewer job postings each year and a sharp rise in disciplinary cases are negative signals of oversupply. He said South Korea produces more than twice as many lawyers each year as Japan, which has 2.5 times South Korea’s population, making the per-capita output about five times higher. Considering related legal occupations as well, he said, South Korea is in an unusually saturated state for legal personnel.
The association said it will use the academic findings to press for a broad review of lawyer workforce policy, urging a shift away from simple supply expansion toward an approach based on empirical data.
* This article has been translated by AI.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.