[Contribution] The closed legal market, now is the time to open it for the people’s right to know

The Korean legal market still operates centered on legal professionals, not customers. This is not a simple institutional problem, but the result of authoritarian thinking and structural closure underlying legal services in general. I believe that we must dismantle this old structure and create an open, consumer-centered legal market that realizes information equality.

Looking back through history, power has always been maintained by controlling information. In medieval Europe, the Bible was written only in Latin, and its contents were unknown to commoners. Information was power, and the clergy monopolized that power. In the 15th century, Gutenberg's spread of printing technology and translation of the Bible into native languages ​​were decisive moments that broke down that monopoly. The liberation of information meant a shift in power, which led to the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and even the spread of democracy.

The same goes for laws. The law is a tool to protect the rights of the people, but if interpretation and access are monopolized by a specific class, the law is reduced to a means of domination. The legal market, where access to information is blocked, is nothing more than a barrier to vested interests that reign over the rights of the people.

Today, one of the main channels through which citizens can access legal services is ‘advertisement.’ Advertising is not just a commercial activity. It is a space of constitutional rights that allows lawyers to freely express their expertise and services and helps the public compare and evaluate them and make rational choices. In other words, advertising is a democratic device that simultaneously realizes lawyers' freedom of expression and the public's right to know.

The lawyer market of the past was never an open market. Advertising was taboo, and hiring a lawyer depended on informal routes such as referrals from transfer officers, brokers, or acquaintances. Consumers had to choose a lawyer based only on limited channels and reputation, without receiving sufficient information. The resulting excessive costs and information gap were passed on to the people, and legal services became distant from the people.

Things must change now. Citizens have the right to choose a lawyer. And as a service provider, lawyers must be guaranteed the opportunity to freely publicize the work capabilities and expertise they provide. In particular, small-scale and new lawyers who lack capital and recognition are in desperate need of advertising autonomy. For them, advertising is the only means to appeal to the market about their own strengths, regionalism, expertise, philosophy, and approach. If advertising is regulated, all expressions will be standardized. As a result, consumers lose real choice in choosing a lawyer that suits them, and lawyers are unable to communicate their differentiation to the market. Ultimately, this is disadvantageous to consumers and results in entrenching a non-competitive legal market structure.

To a certain extent, we can agree with the point that advertising should not be focused solely on capital. If a specific advertising structure determines exposure and acceptance opportunities depending on financial power, this may cause information bias. However, these concerns are problems that can be sufficiently improved through technical and policy adjustments to the ‘form and structure’ of advertising. That cannot be a justifiable reason to control advertising itself or suppress expression itself. The attitude of restricting advertising under the pretext of ‘protecting the public from information’ is in reality isolating the public from information. This is a dangerous idea that assumes that legal consumers are unable to make their own decisions and underestimates the public's ability to make decisions. Advertising regulations should always be minimal and start from the premise of freedom of expression and the right to know.

In this way, standards that threaten freedom of expression are still in effect in reality. Recently, Daeryun Law Firm, to which the author belongs, was notified of an application for disciplinary action from the Korean Bar Association due to a statement posted on the company's website. The part at issue was the following vision declaration.

“Daeryun Law Firm’s ultimate goal is to become the world’s best law firm.”

This sentence was merely a declaration that revealed the company's philosophy and goals. There was no intention to promote a specific service, nor was there any purpose to induce acceptance. Nevertheless, disciplinary proceedings were initiated simply because the word ‘best’ was used.

Is this really an advertisement? Is there any objective evidence that consumers are directly and specifically influenced by this sentence to the point of contacting a law firm? If even sentences expressing the company's vision and direction are subject to censorship, lawyers can no longer speak freely. This is not a regulation of advertising, but a control of expression itself. This in turn promoted information asymmetry and created a distorted market in which lawyers were selected based on personal connections, causing repeated opaque transactions such as brokerage. This is the harm caused by a structure that seeks to maintain control.

The means to fundamentally change this structure is the liberalization of advertising. Through advertising, lawyers can transparently convey their philosophy and expertise, and the public can compare and choose for themselves. This is the healthiest and most legal way to replace courtesy treatment and brokerage, and is the key to protecting consumers and improving transparency in the legal market.

Information should not be hidden, but revealed, compared, and evaluated. Through advertising, lawyers can make their presence known to the public, and the public can independently choose the legal service that suits them. This is the democratization of information and the core of consumer rights.

Now is the time to open up the closed legal market. There are ways to correct the capital bias structure while guaranteeing freedom of expression, freedom of information, and the right to know. We need coordination for freedom, not regulation for regulation's sake. That is true openness and the starting point of a legal market where democracy operates.

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[Contribution] Now is the time to open the closed legal market for the people's right to know (link)