사법비리와 영국의 ‘법조 옴부즈만’ 제도

UK's Legal Ombudsman system and its Implications in South Korea

This paper reviews and analyses the UK's complaining service system of Lawyers' Associations (esp. Barrister's Council) and the governmental Legal Ombudsman's Office as a possible and desirable alternative to support the numerous victims by unregulated judicial powers in South Korea. Japan has already attempted to reform her system since 2001. Recently Korean government have restarted to reform the judiciary system. Nonetheless one of its most important tasks is almost intact and unnoticed, and it is the problem of the lawyers' corruption and wrong practices. In order to lessen the great distrust from the public and private sectorc against the existing judiciaries and lawyers' wrongdoings, the justice system should be reformed in the direction of 'justice of the people, by the people, and for the people.' One of UK system's advantages is their independence from lawyers or their interest groups themselves in that the majority of each lawyer associations' disciplinary tribunal's members are the laymen who do not have the lawyer certification and that the Legal Ombudsman and every staffs of her Office too do not have it. However most of UK's client of this service system confuse it with the direct legal service which in fact are not legal aid but simple complaining procedure. This article's conclusion is that South Korean lawyers' representative association really lacks the complaining system itself, let alone the legal ombudsman of UK's at government level, and that it is possible and desirable to adopt UK's legal complaining system and legal ombudsman into Korea with its own style.