[Contribution] Will we follow in the footsteps of the Korean Empire?

In 1881, King Gojong of the Joseon Dynasty dispatched a shrine tour group consisting of 60 people, including 12 inspectors, to Japan to inspect the new civil affairs system. Joseon sought to transform itself into an independent modern nation through the Gabo Reform in 1894 and the declaration of the Korean Empire in 1897, but it was unable to develop its own power and depended on powerful countries until it was annexed by Japan.

As we approach Law Day in 2025, I feel a sense of déjà vu, wondering if our lawyers living in modern times are in a similar situation to the scholars of the Joseon Dynasty at the end of the Joseon Dynasty. In the days when liberal arts and science majors were separated, it was taken for granted that liberal arts students who were good at studying would take the bar exam or enter law school and become lawyers, and this continues to this day. It is the same as the scholars of Joseon who took the civil service exam and passed the civil service examination as an opportunity to improve their careers even in the late Joseon Dynasty.

Some of Joseon's scholars participated in the Susinsa Temple and Shinto Sightseeing Tours, opened their eyes to the rapidly changing international situation, and attempted to promote reform in Joseon. However, due to opposition from conservative forces with vested interests and a focus on reforms centered on the upper class that depended on foreign powers, it was unable to reach consensus across society, and ended up failing after being dragged around by foreign powers.

There is something that our law firms living today should keep in mind. Rather than refusing to open in response to the domestic legal market demand, which is expected to intensify after President Trump takes office, considering only the immediate decline in revenue, the plan is to actively accept the organization, customer management, and operation systems of Anglo-American law firms and improve the structure to a ‘global standard operating method.’ Based on this, it is time to enter overseas markets and compete fiercely with global law firms at home and abroad.

However, just as the conservative forces at the end of the Joseon Dynasty stuck to the existing methods, only obsessed with vested interests and did not accept changes in the international situation, if our law firms are satisfied with guaranteed a certain amount of income as a professional group in Korea and insist on the existing operating methods such as the separate system and separate operation between headquarters and branches in the domestic legal market, let alone entering overseas markets, there are concerns that they will become subordinate to global law firms along with the opening.

As we have already experienced the verbal abuse of the conservative forces at the end of the Joseon Dynasty who oppressed reformers, if regulations and oppression continue instead of encouragement and support to internal reform forces such as legal tech companies newly emerging in the legal market or advanced law firms that provide information using platforms such as AI and big data, will the situation at the end of the Joseon Dynasty not be repeated again?

Are our law firms prepared or preparing to avoid falling behind in the competition with global law firms that will develop with the opening of the legal market?

Since the establishment of the law firm in 2018, Daeryun has consistently maintained a global one-firm system called ‘regional distributed-integrated operation’ by benchmarking global law firms in the English-speaking world. Through this, we were able to manage the service quality of our offices across the country in an integrated manner, and we are continuing to make continuous improvements by installing a customer management center and regularly conducting customer surveys to quickly respond to customer requests.

In addition, we maintain uniform services between headquarters and branches and expand expert video consultations and dispatch to ensure that headquarters' expertise can be immediately absorbed and applied to branches, and managers such as CEOs and division managers visit offices across the country every month to conduct on-site inspections. In addition, in order to prevent commonly raised customer complaints, such as poor defense or lack of communication with customers, the Litigation Guidance Management Center was established in March to improve lawyers' defense and communication skills.

As the above global one-firm system alone is at the level of catching up with English-speaking law firms, Daeryun strongly felt that AI legal tech and professional public relations marketing must be combined in order to be ahead of English-speaking law firms, so we decided to open AI for customers and AI for lawyers through our own development. Furthermore, we have sequentially developed our own platform, consultation system, and case management system, while introducing our own promotional marketing techniques that have reached a professional level, allowing us to confidently compete with global law firms anywhere in the world.

Daeryun plans to generously provide global standard operating methods and know-how for overseas expansion to law firms seeking global standard operation methods and know-how for overseas expansion in order to prepare for the encroachment of Anglo-American law firms into the domestic legal market and encourage domestic law firms to expand overseas, so that the situation in Joseon, which was helpless against invasion by foreign powers in the late Joseon Dynasty, is not repeated in today's Korean legal market. Although Joseon's reform scholars were unable to achieve it, we hope that the Korean legal community will continue to see 'K-law firms' that improve the structure of the domestic legal market and pioneer overseas markets.

[View full article]
[Contribution] Will we follow in the footsteps of the Korean Empire? (Shortcut)