Yonsei Lawschool

The JD Program offers over 160 courses that are categorized into six groups.

The Required Basic Courses are mandatory for first-year students. Students are required to take Constitutional Law I, Contracts, Torts, and Criminal Law I in the first semester of the first year. Constitutional Law II, Property, Criminal Law II, Civil Procedure 1, and Criminal Procedure are offered in the second semester of the first year. A total of 28 credit-hours are allocated to the Required Basic Courses.

The Required Professional Courses consist of Legal Research and Writing, Legal Ethics, Legal Documentation, Moot Court, and Practical Training. Legal Research and Writing is taught in the first semester of the first year. A total of 6 credit-hours are allotted to the Required Professional Courses.

Due to a student-faculty ratio of 1:8.6 (42 full-time faculty for 120 students in each year) students can enjoy concentrated and individualized attention. Such attentive education is particularly helpful to first-year students, who take the Required Basic Courses divided into three classes of 40 students each. Legal Research and Writing has 15 students in each of the six classes, where instructions and guidance are provided in a face-to-face setting.

In the second and third year, students have ample room for choice from among 147 elective courses. These are divided into Foundational Courses, Advanced Courses, and Applied Practical Courses.

A total of 46 elective Foundational Courses are available, consisting of 135 credit-hours altogether. These comprise extensions of Required Basic Courses and subjects that form the foundations of various fields of law, which are classified into eight Field Groups(Public Law, Criminal Justice, Civil Law and Procedure, Commercial Law, Social and Economic Law, Law, Medicine, Science and Technology, International and Comparative Law, Basic Legal Studies and Interdisciplinary Fields).

Yonsei Law School is particularly proud of its 89 Advanced Courses that account for 214 credit-hours in total. These courses are also divided into eight same Field Groups. The Advanced Courses are elaborately designed to maximize the students’ professional knowledge in specialized fields, their capacity in global legal studies and practice, and interdisciplinary understanding of law and society. Twenty-six percent of the courses are taught in foreign languages-one in Chinese, the rest in English.

The School offers 12 Applied Practical Courses that provide an integrated understanding of substantive and procedural law and of different areas of substantive law.

Each student is required to have completed a course work of 90 credit-hours or more in order to receive a J.D. degree. Thirty-four credits are to be obtained from the Required Basic Courses. Although students are free to choose elective courses, where the remaining credits have to be earned, they must obtain certain minimum required credits from each elective course group. A minimum of 18 credits from Foundational and Advanced Courses are required, which must include three from the International and Comparative Law Field Group and another three from among the Field Group composed of courses in jurisprudence, legal history, socio-legal studies, and interdisciplinary areas. Students should also earn a minimum of five credits from among the Applied Practical Courses.

The Required Professional Courses except Legal Research and Writing are to be taken during the second or third year. Among these is a Practical Training of 120 hours or more in a law office or any other organization with which Yonsei Law School has an agreement for training. YLS now has agreements with 61 organizations- law firms, government agencies, research institutes, companies, and NGOs.