미국과 영국의 MDP 동향

Abstract

Multi-disciplinary Practice(hereinafter MDP) refers to the practice of lawyers and nonlegal professionals engaging in a business partnership. The approval of MDP and its extent differs in each country, depending on factors such as the country’s legal system, lawyer system,and legal environment. A typical country that disapproves MDP is the United States, while England is a representative case that approves the practice. In 1998, American Bar Association’s Commission on Multidisciplinary Practice was organized in the United States, and the commission filed two reports each in June 1999 and May 2000. The core points of both reports were that the approval of MDP was necessary, but the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates turned down both reports and dissolved the commission in July 2000. With this, the country’s discussion on MDP and the other remaining latent problems were closed. However, as England passed The Legal Services Act in 2007, the United States was stimulated to set up the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 in August 2009, where studies are in progress to devise plans for such circumstances where MDP should be approved, as one of the preliminary issues of legal profession. Discussions in England on MDP were made around the government, especially the Office of Fair Trading. The Clementi Report(Review of the Regulatory Framework for Legal Services in England and Wales), which was announced in 2004, first distinguished Legal Disciplinary Practice(the practice of business partnership among lawyers, or between lawyer and paralegal professionals) from MDP(the practice of business partnership between lawyers and nonlegal professionals), and went on to suggest that LDP should be approved and adopted first, and the approval of MDP should wait until proper safety device has been set up. However, the Legal Services Act, which was passed in 2007 and went into effect from March 7,2008, did not take the two-step approach of LDP and MDP as the Clementi Report did, but rather used the term Alternative Business Structure to approve both LDP and MDP. With this, it is expected that MDP will first be practiced in England in 2011. The need and call for an one-stop service from the market will likely increase more and more,consequently resulting in the global trend of MDP’s approval. At this point, Korea should immediately launch studies and discussions on MDP to come up with a ‘Korean MDP’ and systemize the practice. Not only would this be a means to provide the people a service that well suits the changing phases of time, but it would also be an opportunity to expand Korea’s legal market as well as increase the country’s legal competitiveness. Korea is a country with an unified lawyer system, but also one that has an unusual variety of paralegals unlike any other country in the world. Therefore, discussions in Korea on MDP should be mainly focused on business partnership between lawyers and paralegals, and business partnership between lawyers and non-lawyer professionals such as CPA, financial consultants,should be studied and reviewed discretely over a sufficient period of time.