Thoughts on Corporate Law Courses Structuring and Teaching Methods (In Korean)

Abstract

During the 2010 academic year, I was fortunate enough to experience teaching corporate law and M&A courses to 2Ls. First of all, I did not buy the argument that as Korea is one of civil law jurisdictions, case method would not work in Korea. Such categorical rejection is not true to the reality and betrayal of policy goals for newly-chartered law schools. Socratic method focused on appellate court decisions in the United States can be modified to the peculiar situations in Korea. Appellate court decisions do not fit for class room discussions as they do not repeat the fact parts in most cases. Trial court decisions were collected. Court decisions are not comprehensive enough to cover all the major legal issues. Foreign court decisions were referenced. Statutes are in place. Judicial decisions are read together with statutory language. Administrative practices and new legislation are additional source for legal thoughts. For each class, one question with a set of facts was distributed for class room discussions based on judicial precedents and statutes, foreign and Korean. Writing projects were assigned to teams and individuals, which were reviewed and commented periodically. Video tapes were played from time to time. Guest lectures were arranged with I-banking firm, law firm and Financial Services Commission. Not everything was as planned. Most embarrassing phenomenon was no active class discussions. Thus, class room discussions should be more encouraged by all means. Writing projects should not be overloaded. Feedbacks should be immediate. Powerpoint slides should be activated. Judicial precedents should be more developed. Policy debates should be urged. As a big picture issue, corporate law courses can be diversified. One corporate law course for all type of students is fine while corporate governance, finance, M&A, and business association courses are to be designed for would-be core corporate lawyers.