Two More Korean Law Firms Merge

by Brendon Carr

On the heels of last month’s merger between Horizon Law Group and Jisung Law Group, today I get news that two more mid-sized Korean law firms have decided their hope for survival and prosperity in the marketplace lies in achieving greater mass. DeRyook International Law Firm and AJU International Law Group have announced their own mergers as well.

DeRyook and Aju in total have 90 attorneys, plus a few dozen allied professionals including foreign legal consultants, patent attorneys, and advisors (former government officials). Thus, this can be seen as part of the larger trend in the marketplace toward size. For several years now, it’s been obvious that 100 has become the smallest size firm considered credible by Korean business, the Korean power elite, and many foreign investors. So 100 has been the target toward which so many firms have built their merger activity.

But as more firms achieve the century mark, not all of whose members can actually do the kind of sophisticated business work which used to be the exclusive province of the 100 Club (but I’m not commenting here on the skill levels at Horizon, Jisung, DeRyook, or AJU), one can expect that size will continue to stand as a proxy for quality—with the new cutoff falling somewhere around the 200 level.

And smart consumers of legal services know that size doesn’t guarantee quality at all. Sadly, very few Korean enterprises are smart consumers of legal services, although it is definitely much better now than when I started my career in 1997. But that’s for another day.

6 Responses to This Entry

1. ckjustice on June 21, 2008 @ 10:33 am

   Hi Brendon,

   I’ve discovered your site recently purely by accident. It’s really really informative and helpful!!! Thank you so much!

   I just want to get some cold and honest facts from the readers of this blog and you, Brendon, concerning a getting a legal job in Korea.

   I went to a regional law school in the U.S and am currently preparing for the Cali bar.  I have a pretty extensive judicial clerkship experience working for two different judges at (my state’s) court of appeals. I also worked for a private law firm last summer as a summer associate.  I am korean and speak Korean fluently.

   When I looked at some of the profiles of the foreign attorneys at Kim and Chang and other similar law firms in Korea, I noticed that many of whom were graduates of top law schools in the U.S.

   What would be my chances of getting a foreign legal consutant job at a place like Kim and Chang or HMP Law?  Will a Cali bar license compensate for the lack of pretige of my law school?  Your kind replies will be much appreciated.

2. InKorea on June 21, 2008 @ 11:15 am

   Good post. This mentality is present in other industries as well. The small B2B services firm I work for has a hard time attracting large Korean companies as customers. I’ve never heard a logical rationale for their argument, but it has been made clear over and over again that small companies aren’t seen to be as competent as large ones.

3. Brendon Carr on June 21, 2008 @ 6:30 pm

   ckjustice—I can’t speak to any random commenter’s individual chances of finding a job at Kim & Chang or any other law firm in Korea, or elsewhere in the world for that matter.

   I did write a fairly popular Korea Law Blog post last year called How to Get a Job at a Korean Law Firm and I do recommend you read the post and its numerous comments. For “Korean”-Koreans (as distinguished from ethnic Koreans who grew up overseas), it’s harder to get into the market because you’re judged by Korean standards of achievement, but ultimately your own individual talents and drive make the difference.

   Anyway, that “top law school” education is as stupid a proxy for talent as law-firm headcount is for service quality. On a recent deal, there was one Korean-American foreign lawyer, dispatched by a large firm, across the table from us who made himself out to be a be a fool every time he opened his mouth (thankfully, he did eventually shut up). Curious as to whether he was a brand-new graduate, I looked him up on LinkedIn and found he’s a 1999 bar admittee and graduate of a “top three” US law school. So there’re useless loafs to be found from those schools too.

   Just remember: Your first job is, in all likelihood, not the last job you’ll have in your coming 30- or 40-year career. So just get started somewhere, doing something, and keep moving forward.

4. ckjustice on June 22, 2008 @ 9:41 am

   Oh man, that post is really great!!  Thank you so much for the help.  I’ll reading some of the comments in that post right now. I don’t know how you find the time to maintain such an informative and elaborate blog site.  But rest assured, I’ll be a frequent visitor here. Thanks Brendon!

5. NYC Lawyer on July 02, 2008 @ 7:46 am

   Interesting post, Brendon.  Need to call old friend re: his former firm.  And I’ll second InKorea with even wider generalization that Korea/Koreans still have a long way to go in discerning differences in quality, as measured by value vs. actual cost.  Elitism still rules the day, whether it’s law firms, companies, small businesses, consumer products, a person’s alma mater.

   (And ckjustice, be sure to note difference between a US JD and LLM)

6. Foreign Attorney in Korea on July 03, 2008 @ 4:28 pm

   Korea/Koreans still have a long way to go in discerning differences in quality, as measured by value vs. actual cost.

   If Brendon will forgive me getting off topic, let me take a moment to agree. When I shop in Korea, the salesperson almost always tries to persuade me to buy a given item by informing me either that the item “goes out well” (the equivalent of “flies off the shelf”) or “looks expensive.” They don’t know what to say when I reply that I don’t care how popular it is or how costly it appears to be; instead I want good quality, good design, ease of use, or some other factor(s), depending on the nature of the product. Value in this sense seems to be a foreign concept.

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