The Judicial System Improvement Committee of the highest court held a meeting to discuss such measures to rationalize the judicial system, including legal fee compensation standards, sentencing guidelines and enforcement fines. (image: Supreme Court of Korea)
SEOUL, June 19 (Korea Bizwire) – The Supreme Court of Korea is devising a measure to redefine the amount of legal fees that winners of lawsuits can reclaim from losers.
The Judicial System Improvement Committee of the highest court held a meeting to discuss such measures to rationalize the judicial system, including legal fee compensation standards, sentencing guidelines and enforcement fines.
Up until now, the amount of legal fees to be covered by the loser of a lawsuit has been calculated by a set of guidelines. However, the actual legal fees can be different from the calculated fees, as the calculation is based on a certain percentage of the amount of the lawsuit.
For example, if someone is sued for 10 million won, she only can reclaim 800,000 won in legal fees as the guidelines limit legal fees to 8 percent of the lawsuit amount. So, if she spends more than 800,000 won to hire a lawyer to defend her against a frivolous lawsuit, she would have to pay the extra legal fees by herself out of pocket, even if she wins the lawsuit.
To realize the guidelines, the Supreme Court will set other objective standards to calculate legal fees including actual spending for lawyer appointment, the number of dates in court, the number of document submissions and others.
The committee will also raise the enforcement fine to realize injunctions and will include court investigators, lawyers and probation officers to make sentencing faithful.
Meanwhile, the committee recommended that the Supreme Court set up a special court to deal with disputes occurring in international transactions, security trades, and maritime affairs.
By John Choi (johnchoi@koreabizwire.com)
