“Customer feedback, another growth engine for Daeryun”...Kookil Kim, CEO of Daeryun Law Firm [Interview]

Establishment of a law firm’s first ‘Customer Satisfaction Center’... “Improve service until customers are satisfied”

Nowadays, law firms provide a wide range of legal services to individuals and companies beyond just representing legal disputes. The scope and role are expanding, including legal advice and consultation as well as preparation and review of necessary documents such as litigation, arbitration, and contracts.

Daeryun Law Firm, which celebrates its 9th anniversary this year, has shown rapid growth and has established itself as an emerging powerhouse in the domestic legal market.

On the morning of the 9th, CEO Kim Gook-il, who met at the Seoul headquarters branch office of Daeryun Law Firm in Yeouido, Seoul, began the interview by saying, “The motto of ‘Improve service until customers are satisfied’ has been the driving force behind Daeryun’s growth.”

CEO Kim emphasized the importance of ‘customer-centered legal services.’ He emphasized, "We do our best in every case, but we are not perfect either, so there are customers who are disappointed with Daeryun's service. However, to avoid repeating the same mistake, we immediately improved the service until the customer was satisfied. We expanded these cases to the entire system and created a system to prevent the same disappointment from repeating itself."

In addition to customer-centered service, Daeryun’s other strength is ‘challenge.’ The ‘three-lawyer team system’ was the first step in that challenge. At that time, it was common in the law firm industry for one lawyer to handle only one client's case, so there were many voices of concern. It was also unfamiliar to lawyers who were not accustomed to collaboration.

CEO Kim said, “Change was necessary because multitaskers, where one lawyer takes charge of all cases, had clear limitations both physically and in terms of expertise,” and added, “There were gaps in the legal services provided by each lawyer, but we considered this as a process to provide legal services of the same quality across the country, maintaining the strengths and complementing the weaknesses.”

From this period, Daeryun established the ‘One Firm’ system. All cases received from across the country are collectively managed by the main office, and the case allocation system has been reorganized to increase professionalism by assigning lawyers with the most appropriate skills to the case. And the most important part of this process was, of course, ‘customer satisfaction.’ This was the reason why it was the first large law firm to establish a ‘Customer Satisfaction Center’.

CEO Kim explained, “Through the Customer Satisfaction Center, we received detailed feedback on the legal services provided by Daeryun. This is because we cannot find improvements if we do not listen carefully.”

Daeryun conducted a customer satisfaction survey targeting 3,800 case clients early this year. Regarding the fact that 98% of respondents expressed ‘satisfaction’, CEO Kim said, “We tried to immediately improve most of the negative feedback received through the customer satisfaction center.”

CEO Kim explained, “Most clients feel a great burden just by being investigated by an investigative agency or caught up in a lawsuit,” and added, “It is also important to relieve clients’ anxiety by disclosing the details of the case handling process.”

Daeryun expanded its customer satisfaction center to the ‘Customer Management Center’ last month with the goal of ‘achieving 100% customer satisfaction.’ While the Customer Satisfaction Center focused on customers’ ‘after-action opinions’, the Customer Management Center plans to quickly listen to the voices of clients whose cases are in progress. In addition, we plan to continuously improve the system for customer satisfaction by activating the ‘Online Communication Program’ launched last July to strengthen communication between the dedicated lawyers for each case and clients.

Meanwhile, recent legal circles have pointed out that law firms that have branch offices across the country, compete for advertisements, and take on a large number of cases are managing cases poorly. The main basis is the ‘number of applications for legal service damage relief’ filed with the Korea Consumer Agency.

Regarding this, CEO Kim pointed out, “The ratio of the number of civil complaints compared to the 20,000 cases in progress at Daeryun is about 0.2%,” and “They are lining up only fragmentary civil complaints without any consideration of the total number of cases and their ratio being carried out by each corporation.”

Lastly, CEO Kim emphasized, “Daeryun has grown by constantly pursuing change centered on customers, so no matter what customers ask, we want to convey the story that we are already satisfied with the improved service.” He added, “We will constantly change and grow centered on ‘customers’ by weaving negativity into positivity.”

Reporter Cho Hye-jeong (hjcho@kyeonggi.com)

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“Customer feedback, another growth engine for Daeryun”...Kookil Kim, CEO of Daeryun Law Firm [Interview] (Shortcut)