earticle

영어

The South Korean government is opening up its legal service market pursuant to the Free Trade Agreement that has been worked out with the Government of the United States of America. Many Korean legal professionals fear that the incoming foreign law firms might take up their market share, citing the German precedent, where many of the local firms got merged by the incoming U.S. and U.K. law firms. This Article proposes that the situation the Korean legal professionals fear will not actually happen, if the U.S. law firms would abide by the rules of Business Administration in selling their product: legal service. Following the rules of Business Administration, they can actually harmoniously blend in the local legal market, complimenting the local legal professionals. To see how this can happen, this Article does an analysis of the effect of liberalization on the composition of the German bar. Then lessons to be learned for the U.S. firms will be derived from the analysis of the German market liberalization. Briefly summarized, the entering U.S. firms and the local firms have different expertise and strengths, and they also have different target customers. Therefore, they can compliment each other in fulfilling the needs of the market. This Article uses the methods commonly used in Business Administration to provide the U.S. law firms with some guidelines in successfully harmonizing with the local firms in the new legal market.