By Danielle M. Conway, AALS President
Dean and Donald J. Farage Professor of Law, Penn State Dickinson Law and School of International Affairs
Presentation at “The Future and Vision of Legal Education: A Perspective Based on Implementation of the Bar Exam System and the Experiences of Candidates Subject to Restrictions” organized by the Association of Korean Law Schools, The Yulchon Law Firm, and the Seoul National University Law School in Seoul, South Korea on June 9, 2026.
Good morning colleagues.
I am deeply honored to be invited to speak to such an august group of legal education stakeholders here in Seoul. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to our esteemed hosts—the Association of Korean Law Schools, The Yulchon Law Firm, and the Seoul National University Law School—for curating this timely and critical Conference, dedicated to “The Future and Vision of Legal Education: A Perspective Based on Implementation of the Bar Exam System and the Experiences of Candidates Subject to Restrictions.”
As this year’s president of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), representing 174 member and 20 fee-paid law schools, and as the Dean of Penn State Dickinson Law, I stand before you not to lecture on a perfected American system, but to engage in a shared, honest, and rigorous reflection.
The framing of today’s discussion heartens me. You have chosen to address significant, painful, and often invisible issues relating to access to justice, representation, and fairness. You are doing this by looking inward at the structure of the Republic of Korea’s bar examination system, and its profound impact on candidates who face critical restrictions. This kind of institutional introspection is rare, difficult, and absolutely essential for the survival and expansion of the rule of law.
In my research, writing, and structural implementation of legal education, I have thought deeply about what a “strong rule of law” actually means. Too often, we treat the rule of law as an abstract, untouchable concept—a mere slogan that “no one is above the law.” But abstract concepts have currency only when real-world institutions and real-world people can rely on them.
Normatively, the foundation for the rule of law should not shift and change to suit the whims of those in power, nor should it serve as an ideological shield for exclusionary institutional habits. A nation’s rule of law must be measured by how it treats human beings under its jurisdiction.
When we look at the rule of law through the lens of legal education, we must realize that our work is never finished. Within the legal profession, we constantly witness the tension between justice and injustice, fairness and unfairness, inclusion, and exclusion.
I argue today that a strong rule of law only has genuine meaning when those who are most vulnerable in society can see themselves within that rule of law. They must have access to justice, and they must be active participants in the exercise of governance. If our legal education systems and our licensing mechanisms do not reflect this ethos of inclusion, then we are not building a rule of law; we are simply managing a rigid “system of laws” that protects the status quo.
This brings us directly to the core dilemma of today’s symposium: the bar exam and the institutional restrictions imposed on its candidates.
Let me be perfectly clear and offer a cautionary perspective from the American context. Historically, legal education and the legal profession in the United States were intentionally exclusive and selective. This narrow, elitist lens was built by design. It embedded and institutionalized hierarchies based on race, class, gender, and socio-economic privilege. For generations, U.S. legal pedagogy, curriculum, and the bar examination functioned as aggressive tools of gatekeeping, ensuring that only those who could afford the high cost of entry could access the profession.
What happens when a society enforces professional competencies that are higher, more rigid, or more punitive than necessary for fundamental, high-quality legal work?
The result is immediate and damaging. This system creates a severe stratification of access to justice. It fosters elitism and classism. It drastically reduces diverse representation. And most tragically, it promotes extreme gatekeeping at the very beginning of a candidate’s journey in the legal profession. It completely fails to acknowledge that our profession is fundamentally one of lifelong learning by practice, not of rote memorization under artificial, high-stakes terror.
When candidates face systemic restrictions or absolute limits on their ability to prove their competency, we must look closely at the human cost—the “deferred lives” and the structural exclusion that result from a closed, punitive system.
How do we break away from this legacy of exclusion? In my work, I have found incredible power in engaging systems design and design thinking to ideate innovations in legal education.
For lawyers and legal educators, systems design is defined as a hands-on, user-focused way to relentlessly innovate, empathize, and humanize with others to solve complex problems. It is fundamentally user-centered, experimental, responsive, intentional, and tolerant of failure.
To apply design thinking to the bar exam crisis means we must first engage in empathy. We must learn about the audience for whom the system is meant: our law students and the candidates who are suffering under its current weight. We must define the challenge based on user needs, brainstorm creative solutions, and test prototypes of reform.
The question should never be whether we hold on to traditions just because they are traditions. Rather, the question must be: What does a commitment to a strong rule of law require us to do at each stage of a lawyer’s progression?
In the United States, this urgent realization has sparked a major transformation. Many U.S. law schools are moving away from the old, exclusionary pedagogy. We are developing live-client clinics, human-centered innovations, and responding to the constitutional promise of a truly inclusive, multicultural society. Most notably, most U.S. states and territories are currently transitioning to the NextGen Bar Exam. This comprehensive reform is designed to finally acknowledge and remediate historic inequities, focusing on balancing actual, practical competency with broad, inclusive representation.
Law makes distinctions all the time, and these distinctions are frequently drawn based upon power, wealth, and influence. It is the sacred duty of the rule of law to balance this influence and to protect the demos—the people—from institutional dominance. Because legal education is so intimately intertwined with sustaining a fair and functioning democracy, the roles played by our law schools, courts, and bar examiners are absolutely fundamental.
We cannot succumb to the status quo. We cannot retreat from the active engagement required to disrupt the narrow lenses of exclusivity and selectivity that reduce the public good.
I look forward with great anticipation to today’s sessions and to hearing from the esteemed Korean experts gathered here. May our dialogue today deepen our mutual understanding, build profound institutional trust, and illuminate brand-new pathways for Korea–US collaboration. Let us apply systems design and design thinking together to uphold, sustain, and humanize the rule of law.
Thank you very much.