Beommusa lawyers are legal experts who provides legal services required by the people at their sides. Among all works,
beommusa lawyers play their roles of experts who protect the property rights of the people.
Beommusa lawyers usually perform a lot of work on registration, but there are many other works that they deal with.
There are various fields of registration, but registration is largely divided into real estate registration and corporate registration.
Among the real estate registration, registration due to sales or gift of real estate, inheritance, and establishment and cancellation of right to collateral securities.
Sales, gift, and inheritance are widely known concepts, whereas establishment of right to collateral securities are performed when taking a loan from financial institutions such as banks by setting real estates such as houses as the collateral security, and cancellation of the right to collateral securities will be registered when the loan repayment is completed.
Corporate registration includes corporate establishment registration done when a for-profit corporation is established, registration for changes made to board members when changes are made to the board (directors, auditors), capitalization registration to increase capital, capital reduction registration to reduce capital, and dissolution and liquidation registration to liquidate the company.
Of course, there are also registrations done on establishment and changes to non-profit corporations.
Apart from registration, beommusa lawyers receive deposits. There are various deposits available, deposit for reimbursement made when creditor refuses to receive reimbursement from debtor even when the debtor is willing to reimburse, or when the debtor does not know the address of the counterparty is most frequently delegated.
When a deposit is made, the creditor is deemed to have made reimbursement even if the counterparty does not pick up the deposit from the depository, therefore the creditor will be free from liabilities and interest will no longer be accrued.
One of the important works that beommusa lawyers attend to is application for personal rehabilitation, bankruptcy, and immunity. Rehabilitation refers to a system where a debtor with heavy debt can clear his/her liabilities if he/she repays about 30%-50% of the debt over a number of times, while bankruptcy and immunity application refers to systems where a person who is incapable of paying even a part of the debt over a number of times repays the liability with his/her current properties (there are cases where he/she has very little properties or even has only debts) and writes off the remaining debt.
In addition, when a real estate owned by a debtor who fails to repay the debts falls into a court auction procedure, beommusa lawyers acts as a proxy for the person who wishes to acquire such real estate through court auction to make acquisition application (purchase application). This is called ‘proxy for real estate biddings (purchases)’.
The registration, deposit, rehabilitation, bankruptcy, immunity application, and proxy for real estate are the works that can be done by beommusa lawyer as a proxy for clients.
Acting as a proxy refers to the role that a beommusa lawyer plays as a proxy of application for the person, just as an attorney-at-law (or a barrister) plays the role of an attorney; a beommusa lawyer will express the will on behalf of the person under the name of the proxy, and not the name of the person, on the document within the scope delegated by the person. (The will can only be manifested under the name of the person on documents if a proxy is not hired)
Other than the registration works above, beommusa lawyers deal a numerous number of matters related to lawsuits in daily lives.
Most of the matters are related to civil suits. Beommusa lawyers prepare petitions to file suits, replies to petitions that are prepared by the other party, and the preparatory documents for pleadings.
Of course, beommusa lawyers not only prepare documents, but also submit them to courts or receive documents that the other party had submitted, and basically provide consultations related to legal disputes, including lawsuits.
Beommusa processes complaints related to criminal cases and other various affairs, but the scope of works performed are relatively less compared to civil suits.
One of the main tasks dealt by beommusa lawyers is compulsory execution on the properties of the other party (auction of real estates, seizure of bonds, auction of tangible estates, enforcement of vacation and transfer of real estates) which is executed when the other party fails to fulfill their liabilities even after the closure of civil suits. Applications for provisional attachment and injunction to prevent debtors from disposing their properties before the lawsuit are also frequently rendered by beommusa lawyers.
Various applications for changes to family relations register (previously known as ‘family register’), including application for approval of renaming and change of date of birth, are also major tasks performed by beommusa lawyer.
Application for the appointment of adult guardians, which has been mentioned frequently in the media recently, is one of the tasks performed by the beommusa lawyers.
Application for the appointment of adult guardians refers to the application filed to court for appointment of a person (guardian) who can assist and supplement those lacking in mental capacity and facing difficulties in making legal decisions alone (usually applications are made to appoint family members as guardians). Beommusa lawyers file application for the appointment of guardians, but sometimes they are appointed as adult guardians by the court and act as guardians.
Many people are curious what the differences in works done by attorneys-at-law (or barristers) and beommusa lawyers are.
Formally, the tasks which beommusa lawyers can handle is limited to tasks defined in the beommusa lawyers Act (registration, deposit, proxy of auction bidding, proxy of application for rehabilitation and bankruptcy, preparation and proxy of submission of documents submitted to courts and public prosecutor’s office). On the other hand, attorneys-at-law may perform all tasks related to legal affairs.
However, in practice, it is not exaggerating to say that attorneys-at-law specializes in affairs related to attorney, and a host of legal affairs that people come across in daily lives are practically done by beommusa lawyers.
In other words, apart from the cases where the person cannot appear in court and require attorney-at-law to appear and defend on his or her behalf (when the person has no time to appear in court or cannot defend himself/herself due to lack of legal knowledge on the case), beommusa lawyers prepare and submit lawsuit documents, including petitions, replies, and preparatory documents, in many lawsuit cases and the person appears in court on date for pleading.
This is because beommusa lawyers do not have authority of legal representation and only have rights for proxy of preparation and submission of lawsuit documents (beommusa lawyers may not appear in courts as attorneys).
In reality, in many lawsuit cases, persons proceed with lawsuits, assisted by beommusa lawyers and without appointing attorneys-at-law, if the persons are equipped with sufficient knowledge that enables them to appear in courts and plead, unless the cases are complex and difficult to understand.
In addition, most of attorney-at-law offices are located within the downtown area, but beommusa lawyer offices are located evenly across the country, enabling the people to conveniently receive legal help.
There are many ‘pro se litigants’ frequently mentioned in the media who proceed with lawsuits with assitance from beommusa lawyers.
There are not many ‘pro se litigants’ who proceed with lawsuit without assistance from attorneys-at-law or beommusa lawyers.
Licensed administrative agents provide services prescribed in Article 2 of the Licensed Administrative Agent Act which include preparation of documents to be submitted to an administrative agency, preparation documents regarding a right or obligation or attestation of facts, translation documents related to affairs of an administrative agency, submission of above documents on behalf of any third person, filing of applications, claims, reports, etc. with an administrative agency on behalf of any third person, to obtain authorization, permits, licenses, etc., and provision of counsel or advice on public administration-related Acts and subordinate statutes or public administration.
Broadly, beommusa lawyers mainly provide services related to documents to be submitted to judiciary agencies, such as courts or public prosecutor’s office, while the licensed administrative agents mainly provide services related to documents to be submitted to administrative agencies.
Similar to beommusa lawyers, licensed administrative agent qualification may also be given to those who served in administrative agencies for a certain period and those who passed licensed administrative agent examination.
Patent attorneys provide services prescribed in Article 2 of the Patent Attorney Act, which include proxy of matters to be submitted to the Korean Intellectual Property Office or courts concerning a patent, utility model, design, or trademark, appraisal of such matters, and performance of other works.
Korean-English dictionaries define ‘beommusa lawyer’ as ‘judicial scrivener’. This is a term which was used when ‘beommusa lawyer (법무사)’ was still known as ‘judicial scrivener (사법서사)’, as ‘judicial’ means ‘relating to the legal system’ and ‘scrivener’ refers to ‘someone whose job involves writing documents or dealing with written documents’.
Although what beommusa lawyers do did not change much from the days they were known as judicial scriveners, but Korea Association of Beommusa Lawyer officially declared the title as ‘beommusa lawyer’.
On the premise that beommusa lawyers are basically involved in legal affairs, their title would be lawyers, but pronunciation of Korean title was written in English to differentiate beommusa lawyers from attorneys-at-law or barristers.
Unlike Korea, Japan still uses the word judicial scrivener (司法書士) and Japan Federation of Shiho-Shoshi Lawyer’s Associations refers judicial scriveners as ‘shiho-shoshi lawyers’. ‘Shiho-shoshi’ is the pronunciation of Japanese term for ‘judicial scrivener’.
In the UK, lawyers are divided into two: barristers and solicitors. Fundamentally, barristers represent, advocate, and defend clients in court or at a tribunal, and solicitors refer to the qualified legal practitioners who are responsible for preparing legal documentation without advocating in court (it is said that the line between these two professions has become more blurred in recent times).
What beommusa lawyers do in Korea is similar with the works dome by solicitors in the UK.
In the US, persons who deal with affairs that are similar to beommusa lawyers in Korea are known as ‘paralegal assistants’, or ‘paralegals’ in short, but usually the term refers to the clerical staffs who assist lawyers.
The position and roles of paralegals in the US also differs in every state. In most of the states, paralegals may not work independently.
There are paralegals in the UK and Canada as well, but they play a more active role than the paralegals in the US.
Beommusa laywers provide professional legal services for legal demands needed in various parts of the society to let people lead stable legal lives.
Through these services, beommusa lawyers fulfill their social responsibilities, including creation of new legal culture, judicial democracy, and realization of justice and welfare society.
Beommusa lawyers participate in various pro bono activities in places nearest to the people all around the country.
Beommusa lawyers participates in various political, social and economic activities, including free legal counseling, civic group activities, mediation, and crime prvention activities.