Intense Competition for Lawyers Seeking Employment at KFTC
by Brendon Carr
Since I know at least one of the lawyers who’ve applied for these posts, this report in the Korea Times seems relevant. Korean-licensed lawyers are taking greater interest in working for the Korea Fair Trade Commission, which has for some time been recruiting small numbers of attorneys to join its staff:
As many as 109 lawyers have applied for five posts at the Fair Trade Commission, a government regulator on fair trade of businesses, making the competition ratio 22:1, the commission said [February 9].
A commission official said that the ratio has been revealed after compiling applications for the posts of Grade 5 of public servants which were accepted from Jan. 15-22.
He said that successful applicants will be selected via tougher interviews.
A total of 40 lawyers applied for two posts offered by the commission one year earlier and 30 lawyers for four posts last autumn, he said.
A considerable number of applicants are reported to be trainees who have passed state bar examination and they are [thought to be interested in experiencing] fair trade affairs at the commission in preparation for the possible growth of lawsuits involving fair trade.
Recently, large law firms are recruiting specialists in fair trade affairs, while forming special teams to prepare for an ever-growing lawsuits involving fair trade.
“As the fair trade sector is increasingly made known important in the bar community, there are a growing number of aspirants hoping to learn related affairs,” an FTC official said.
The KFTC has for a very long time employed Korean graduates of foreign legal studies, most of whom had not yet passed an American state bar examination (hey, it’s hard to pass a professional examination in a second language!), as “legal consultants”, as well as legally-trained graduates of law faculties at Korea’s more prestigious universities. But this trend of bringing attorneys onto the staff, at least some of whom may have had actual experience working for commercial clients in private practice (if not in industry), presages a deeper and more commercially-savvy professionalism at the increasingly-powerful agency.
The positions being recruited are for “Grade 5” civil servants, which at the working level of a Korean government agency are fairly senior and powerful positions. Unless I’m mistaken, the equivalent corporate rank could be something like a “kwa-jang”—a team leader. We are given to understand from scuttlebutt (and the newspaper article seconds this opinion) that the vast majority of the applicants are brand-new Judicial Research and Training Institute graduates who may not yet have secured jobs, and are thus throwing resumes at anything which looks like an employment opportunity. Lawyers coming from one of Seoul’s commercial law firms with three or four years’ experience, who may also speak English, should have a decided advantage.
Imagine a world where some of the persecutors prosecutors, or judges, of Lone Star had had actual experience working on M&A deals.
UPDATE 2/11—Our friend the corporate lawyer who applied to KFTC was rejected. The stated reason was a suspicion (correct, as it turns out) that the lawyer coming from a firm probably wouldn’t stay at KFTC forever—that he or she would eventually go back to the original or some other law firm and make a living with the knowledge and contacts from KFTC. So much for a deeper professionalism: What’s wrong with that kind of objective? Isn’t KFTC’s interest also served by its alumni being placed where they can counsel companies how to remain compliant with competition law?
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