Sleeping Club
Episode 19
The moment I opened the classroom door, I was greeted by familiar faces.
“Oh, you’re doing the Legal Clinic too?”
Yoo Tae-woon waved his hand as if he was happy to see me.
“Because of the supervising professor.”
“Ah, Professor Jang Yong-hwan? I heard he was making you do all sorts of things. It seems like that’s true.”
“What about you?”
“Me? Well, I just thought that if I practiced doing consultations and writing briefs, it might help when I apply for internships at law firms.”
That was a decent idea.
The tasks given during internship programs at large law firms were also ultimately the type where you had to search for materials and write opinion letters.
The essence of it wasn’t that different from the activities at the Legal Clinic.
Of course, by its nature, the Legal Clinic mainly dealt with everyday legal issues related to the lives of ordinary citizens.
On the other hand, the tasks for law firm internships were deeply connected to major cases such as corporate law and capital market law.
So, although they were a bit different, it was true that this kind of experience itself was a meaningful help.
“That’s good. If you’re here too, there will be a lot of people to learn from.”
“You’re here too, huh.”
I turned my head in the direction that Yoo Tae-woon was pointing.
And it was true, the lineup for this Legal Clinic was quite impressive.
The first thing that caught my eye was Jeong Min-shik, who was sitting on a desk and shoveling a handful of chocolates into his mouth. He was the third-ranked student in the first year.
He seemed to be absorbed in his smartphone, but the PDF file of a collection of past exam questions was displayed on the screen he was looking at.
But there was no PDF version of that.
If he had scanned each page manually, then that was a remarkable amount of dedication.
While I was watching with admiration, Jeong Min-shik suddenly raised his head and made eye contact with me.
He frowned as if he had seen something unclean and clicked his tongue.
‘Why is that guy being like that all of a sudden?’
While I was stunned, Jeong Min-shik buried his head back in his past exam question collection.
Then, someone approached him and greeted him.
“You’re here early?”
“You’re the one who’s late. There are only 5 minutes left.”
“Haha. I was buying this.”
Even with Jeong Min-shik’s rebuke, Shin Seo-joon just laughed and took something out of a bag.
It was coffee with a famous chain store logo on it.
“You must be sleepy after dinner, so please have this.”
“……You should have said so earlier.”
Only then did Jeong Min-shik scratch the back of his neck awkwardly and receive the coffee.
From the original story, Shin Seo-joon was the type to take care of his people for sure.
He repeatedly showed small acts of kindness, kept them on his side, and revealed that to others so that they would think that they wanted to be with him too.
In fact, even now, the female students in the lecture hall were casting envious glances at Jeong Min-shik.
Or was that just because of his looks?
Anyway, since outstanding people were gathered together, a group began to form around them.
Since they were both already famous people in the school, it was only natural.
“Seo-joon, hi! Have you heard about that lecture that I told you about last time?”
“That lecturer was good. The explanation was so detailed, like the people who teach police criminal law, so it was good for reviewing.”
“Hehe, right! But when are you going to stop using honorifics?”
“I’m comfortable with this. Haha.”
Even with his gentle way of drawing a line, the female student didn’t shrink back and continued to talk to him.
Starting with her, the topic of conversation of the people who had gathered one by one eventually ended with talk about grades and rankings.
That was the way of law school students.
“But both of you are really amazing. You were first and third in the entrance ceremony, first and third in the first evaluation, and first and third in the overall rankings. You just don’t change.”
“Look at Jeong Min-shik. He’s still looking at multiple-choice O/X questions on his phone. There’s a reason for it.”
“Seo-joon also plays tennis and goes out for drinks, but he’s still first place.”
“He’s…… just on another level.”
“That’s an overstatement. I’m just more familiar with it because I saw it a bit earlier than you all.”
Although it seemed friendly, there was an atmosphere where they were subtly rating Shin Seo-joon as a level above Jeong Min-shik.
I had clearly witnessed Jeong Min-shik’s expression slightly crumple for a moment.
Jeong Min-shik’s feelings for Shin Seo-joon were ambivalent. He was happy that he was being recognized, but on the other hand, there was also a gloomy sense of inferiority that he couldn’t catch up no matter how hard he tried.
Knowing that, Shin Seo-joon kept Jeong Min-shik by his side because he had seen through the fact that such inferiority was the driving force for Jeong Min-shik’s growth.
In the end, capable talent was useful.
Even in this Legal Clinic scene, the difference between the two was clearly revealed.
When faced with the first client’s consultation call of the day, Jeong Min-shik bravely stepped forward to deal with it, but he froze up completely when faced with a case that he was seeing for the first time.
On the other hand, Shin Seo-joon immediately grasped the main point of the case and saw through that the issue required an expert review.
He soothed the client and calmly transferred the case to the faculty side to seek a solution.
‘It was a case about a fall accident at a nursing home. It was interesting.’
It was a passage that I had read so many times that I had memorized it.
I had also thought about how I would have answered it, and I had organized my thoughts by searching for precedents and posting them in the comments.
Thanks to that, solutions came to mind one by one, as clear as if they were happening right in front of me.
I was about to sink into my thoughts, reminiscing about the past.
“Oh, everyone’s here? Should we start soon?”
The door clicked open, and Vice Dean Choi Sung-chul entered.
Although his tone was casual and friendly, you couldn’t be fooled.
It was all a calculated act to create the image of being ‘easy to get along with.’
“You’re all seeing my face for the first time, right? My name is Choi Sung-chul, and I’m the vice dean. I’m in charge of the Legal Clinic, commercial law, company law, and capital market law. Those who came from the business school might have seen me in undergraduate elective courses. Like corporate law.”
As he said that, Choi Sung-chul threw his gaze toward the students.
His eyes, which had been scanning each person’s face, stopped in front of me.
“There’s one person here too. It’s a strange thing, Park Yoo-seung. I never thought that I would see you at law school.”
“That’s how it turned out.”
“The bumper of my Bentley that you broke while drunk is still dangling, you know.”
‘……Just how many accidents did that Park Yoo-seung guy cause?’
To have a record of damaging a university professor’s car.
No wonder Choi Sung-chul was so emotionally pushing for Park Yoo-seung's expulsion in the original story, apart from the internal school politics. It seemed like there was a story behind it.
“I heard that you were fifth place in the pre-law program. That’s something that shakes the heavens and earth.”
“I finally came to my senses.”
“Hmm, is that so.”
His eyes were as if he was weighing a person on a scale, trying to figure out their value.
When I returned his gaze without flinching, Choi Sung-chul slightly turned his head away first.
“Well, good.”
Choi Sung-chul soon began to explain the basic procedures and rules of the Legal Clinic.
“The contact with the clients will be done through the Legal Clinic's dedicated phone in this lecture hall. You must never give out your personal contact information. Okay?”
This was a rule to protect each other.
If they provided their personal contact information, there were often clients who would contact them at any time, asking legal questions or demanding responses, and harassing the students.
On the other hand, there were also cases where students blackmailed clients with information they had obtained during the consultation process through personal channels.
Although that was something that had happened at another law school.
“Consultations will be conducted in three sessions. During that time, you will ask the client to confirm the necessary facts, convey your legal opinions, and submit a report of that entire process to me.”
Ultimately, Choi Sung-chul, the professor in charge, would review everything, make corrections, and then pass it on to the client.
After the explanation was over, and a little while later, when the scheduled time came, the first call from a client came in.
-Ring. Ring.
Choi Sung-chul lightly asked.
“Who wants to take the call?”
But no one readily stepped forward. They all weren’t quite ready yet.
“You’re all such cowards. Give it here.”
In the end, it was Jeong Min-shik who picked up the phone.
‘Up to here, it’s the same as the original story.’
Hello.
“This is the Legal Clinic at Korea University Law School. What is your issue?”
Oh, hello! My name is Oh Gi-tae. I work at the security office at Korea University. Um…… the thing is, my, my father was injured after going into a nursing home.
“Please continue.”
Ha, just thinking about those bad guys makes my blood boil. Anyway, nursing homes are just full of people who are trying to rip off old people and their families.
“……”
The client, Oh Gi-tae, was spewing out words like a waterfall.
Actually, I can kind of see people's faces. From the start, that director had greed all over his face. No, that’s not what I was trying to say. Anyway, I want to know how to punish them or get compensation.
‘The case itself is the same as the original story.’
Even his rambling way of talking was the same as the original story.
I calmly listened to the client's rambling story, as Jeong Min-shik asked questions.
And then, I excluded the meaningless complaints and emotional language, and I organized the main points on a memo pad.
By the time the story was over, the contents written on the memo pad were as follows.
The client’s father is an elderly man who recently had surgery for a cerebral infarction and back surgery, and he is recovering. He does not have any other age-related diseases such as dementia. He was not in a condition where he could not move on his own, but because there was no one at home to take care of him, he was admitted to a nursing home.
On a day when hot water supply was interrupted due to internal construction at the nursing home. After the caregiver had left work, the client’s father went to the public bath alone, using a walker, but he slipped and fell due to the walker slipping.
Immediately after the accident, the nursing home had the client’s father examined at the internal orthopedics department of the nursing home, and they contacted the client and informed him that ‘there was a small fracture in his shoulder, but it will get better in two months.’
However, about ten days after the fall accident, the client’s father complained of pain in his pelvis, not his shoulder, which was diagnosed by the orthopedics department. After a re-examination, it was confirmed that there was a fracture in his pelvis.
The nursing home side stated that they would ‘wait and see,’ but the opinion of a specialist at a university hospital that they visited, just in case, was different.
‘He should have hip joint surgery as soon as possible to even be able to sit down,’ and ‘the injury to the shoulder area is also serious, so he needs to have artificial joint replacement surgery.’
In the end, the client’s father had artificial joint replacement surgery on his hip joint and shoulder. The client suspects that the nursing home lied and tried to conceal the injury of his father, causing his father’s condition to worsen.
They were acting weird from the beginning when they gave their diagnosis at the nursing home. I had a feeling that they were hiding something.
“……Wow, what is this.”
“I have no idea how to even start.”
The students who had moved back were whispering.
It was different from looking at well-organized content for an exam problem.
It was a very unfamiliar problem to extract issues from a story that an ordinary person with no knowledge of law was haphazardly spitting out.
Although we had done something similar during the second evaluation in the pre-law program, the original data had still been a court document, so it had been somewhat organized.
But this was nothing more than a raw outpouring of grievances.
Even just removing the unnecessary content and organizing the necessary parts like I did was not an easy task.
Moreover, the case itself was also a problem.
“……What should we do about this?”
Even Jeong Min-shik, who had stepped up bravely, was at a loss, just holding onto the phone.
‘In the original story, Shin Seo-joon ended up taking charge of the situation.’
“Let’s give up.”
Shin Seo-joon, who had been watching, cleanly dismissed it.
“When medical or caregiver issues are involved, proving anything becomes very difficult. Medical lawsuits against institutions are very difficult to win, and the process is also very burdensome.”
He shook his head.
“To be honest…… I don’t think it’s a case that can be solved by a regular first-year student, or even a current student who has not had any practical experience yet, regardless of their year.”
That was the truth.
The case itself was so unfamiliar that it was difficult to even determine the issues, let alone figure out what should be used as evidence.
This kind of legal dispute was a bit too much for law school students with no experience to solve.
In the end, under Shin Seo-joon’s leadership, the case was handed over to the faculty, and Professor Park Soo-geun stepped in to resolve it.
It was an episode where the process of solving the case was described in relatively great detail, and I had admired the professor, thinking, ‘As expected of a professor.’
“Yeah, it’s not a case that we can handle at our level.”
“Min-shik, let’s explain it well and wait for another case.”
The other students also seemed to agree with Shin Seo-joon’s opinion. It was that hopeless.
Just when Jeong Min-shik was about to open his mouth to say that, Choi Sung-chul, who had been silent, suddenly turned the arrow towards me.
“Park Yoo-seung. What do you think? About this case.”