At SJKP Smarter, faster, and more precise legal services from SJKP

SJKP is a global One-Firm built on a matrix system, in which lawyers and specialists across the world work in concert for a single client.

Rather than placing a matter in the hands of one lawyer expected to command every area of law and respond alone, the firm draws on teams of several hundred lawyers and specialists worldwide, each deeply specialized in a defined field — M&A, antitrust, intellectual property, international arbitration, financial regulation, corporate criminal law. On a single matter, multiple lawyers, several practice groups, and senior specialist counsel act as one, collaborating as a single organism in a coordinated response.

Consider a large-scale acquisition. The work is never confined to drafting the agreement: questions of taxation, human resources and labor relations, merger control clearance in multiple jurisdictions, and environmental regulation arise simultaneously. SJKP addresses them together, through the collaboration of the practice groups and specialists in the relevant fields across its offices worldwide.

The same holds where a single matter carries interlocking risks of different character — a corporate governance dispute that develops a criminal dimension, or an M&A dispute that turns on a real estate question. Here too, the firm's practice groups and specialists across its global offices confer, examine the matter from every angle, and work toward the result the client is seeking.

At SJKP, senior partners within our specialized groups and expert attorney teams — each comprising a substantial number of experienced lawyers — conduct legal consultations and carry matters forward under their own responsibility, directing a large complement of associate attorneys.

The firm maintains a Special Division assembled from senior attorneys and calibrated to the scale and complexity of the matter at hand. Senior partners within each specialized group form expert attorney teams and, directing associate attorneys and field specialists, personally undertake every dimension of a matter's execution: consultation, drafting, appearances before the court, and communication with the client. Recognizing that a client without legal training can rarely be expected to identify the precise discipline into which a matter falls, SJKP has established a sequenced and systematic consultation structure — much as a patient is first assessed at a primary care clinic or emergency department before referral to the appropriate specialist within a major hospital. This takes the form of a two-stage system: Basic Legal Consultation followed by Specialized Legal Consultation.

In the first stage, dedicated consulting attorneys — the firm's emergency physicians, in effect — establish and confirm the client's circumstances, however complex, through an initial consultation with clients whose matters demand immediate attention. They propose urgent measures and provide representation where required. They then determine and classify, with precision, the discipline and the expert group to which the matter properly belongs, and on that basis assign the second stage of specialized consultation to the team or group of lawyers whose accumulated experience in the relevant field is most directly applicable.

Put differently: acting as specialists in the emergency handling of legal matters, our dedicated consulting attorneys identify, through the initial basic consultation, both the specialized field engaged and the expert group or attorney team best suited to resolving the client's matter. They then assign the second, specialized consultation to that group or team, whose experience and expertise in matters of the kind is extensive.

Once a matter has been assigned following consultation, the dedicated consulting attorney continues as case manager. In that capacity they take part in the assigned group's or team's execution of the work — the formulation of defense strategy, the drafting of submissions, the provision of legal advice, attendance at hearings, and further strategy meetings — in a supporting role.

A client who has passed through the initial basic consultation, and who has received the assessment of urgent measures and, where necessary, representation from a dedicated consulting attorney, then receives a second, specialized consultation from a group or attorney team composed principally of SJKP partners and matched to the matter. It is these attorneys who resolve the matter directly.

Throughout, the specialized group or attorney team composed of SJKP partners works within a structure in which the principal partner personally leads every stage — from the second specialized consultation through to the identification of concrete solutions, strategy meetings, the drafting of documents, the provision of advice, appearances before the court, and further strategy sessions — with associate attorneys and specialists across disciplines assisting and supporting throughout. SJKP's approach to resolving a matter thus operates as a single integrated whole under the responsibility of its partners: every stage, from the first and second consultations through strategy, drafting, and final execution, is led by a team of specialists or specialist attorneys and supported by associate attorneys and experts in the relevant fields.

SJKP is fortunate to enjoy a degree of client confidence that exceeds what its own capacity might reasonably invite. It is common for new clients and long-standing clients alike to bring further matters to the firm.

As clients return having seen the firm's work at first hand, the volume of matters requiring resolution across the firm has grown rapidly. The consequence is that SJKP's lawyers handle a considerably greater number of matters than is typical of the profession.

Every lawyer at the firm accumulates substantial experience at pace by resolving matters in volume within their own field, and in doing so develops the capacity to resolve a great many matters within that field with both speed and precision.

Our lawyers have, in addition, mastered the technical means of applying artificial intelligence directly to the handling of matters; as that experience compounds, the resulting gains in capability compound with it.

The result is that SJKP's attorneys are equipped to resolve a substantial volume of matters quickly and accurately, and their command of their fields is correspondingly strong.

In the professions — law and medicine among them — the measure of a specialist's competence is the experience accumulated in resolving matters, which is to say practical experience in the field itself.

It is widely understood across the professions that the outcome a client obtains in a legal dispute bears a direct relationship to the experience of the senior lawyers assigned to it and to the number of practitioners engaged.

Just as a general practitioner may be equal to a simple procedure yet unsuited to complex surgery, the greater the difficulty of a matter, the more essential it becomes that specialists in the particular field — whose expertise rests on accurate classification, professional assessment, and extensive experience in resolving matters of the kind — collaborate and assume full charge of it.

SJKP works toward outcomes that meet its clients' expectations by assigning to each matter as many experienced and highly specialized attorneys and experts as its nature and difficulty warrant.

The firm operates on the principle that senior attorneys lead, directing associate attorneys and specialists across disciplines, and that a matter is addressed comprehensively and without omission in pursuit of a result that meets the client's expectations.

SJKP's senior specialist attorneys thus bring to a matter the experience of a great many matters already resolved within their fields; and they resolve further matters daily, accumulating experience at pace within their areas of specialization.

On this foundation, each of SJKP's senior specialist attorneys develops, as a natural consequence of practice, a considerable body of experience in resolving matters within their field. They are recognized for a depth of expertise beyond that of the general specialist, and possess the experience and the capacity to resolve a great many matters quickly and accurately. Several such attorneys are assigned as a single team to one matter.

On these principles, SJKP adopts as fundamental the assignment of the greatest possible number of senior, highly capable, specialized attorneys to the resolution of matters, quickly and accurately. A further reason our lawyers are able to resolve matters at this pace and to this standard is that the firm is staffed with a substantial number of specialists in defined fields and supported by an assistance system built around an artificial intelligence program developed in-house.

The work of a lawyer is to review the facts accurately and apply the law to them in forming a strategy; to maintain constant communication with the client; to gather the evidence that serves the client's position; and to defend the matter with the best strategy available, sparing no effort. In resolving specialized matters, SJKP's lawyers direct themselves solely to these essential elements of the profession. Because the remainder is handled efficiently and accurately by specialists in each field, by the firm's own case management program, and by an artificial intelligence program developed in-house, our lawyers are able to resolve matters in volume with accuracy and dispatch.

As the age of artificial intelligence arrives in earnest, the organization of facts and the preparation of general draft documents are already being carried out by AI. With that assistance, the volume of work a lawyer is able to undertake has increased substantially, and the pace at which it is completed has increased with it.

The lawyer's central task, once concentrated on drafting case documents directly, is shifting toward the preparation of the documents that matter most — informed by the formation of legal strategy, engagement with the client, and the gathering of essential evidence — and toward strengthening the persuasive force of argument through advocacy strategy and technology at trial.

The most important work of a lawyer, accordingly, is to review the facts of a client's matter accurately and apply the law to them in forming a legal strategy; to maintain constant communication with the client and gather the evidence that serves their position; and to advance the argument with the best available strategy and technique, sparing no effort. In this essential work, SJKP's lawyers are supported by artificial intelligence programs developed in-house, and handle matters with greater ease, greater speed, and greater accuracy as a result.

These systems are built and operated entirely within the firm. Client information remains inside it, and is not transmitted to external providers.

Beyond that essential work, our lawyers lead on the tasks that remain. They are able to do so because SJKP's proprietary, high-performance systems — specialists across disciplines supporting the lawyers, the firm's in-house AI program, its case management system, and the real-time communication application MY SJKP — assist the process of resolving a matter with genuine efficiency, speed, and accuracy. With that support, our lawyers handle matters more readily, more quickly, and to a markedly higher standard, and are able to resolve substantial volumes of work accurately and without delay.

The firm applies the latest legal technology across the whole of its practice through these proprietary tools. They include: an assignment system that directs a matter to the expert group and attorney team best suited to it; a review and support system that examines every avenue and supplies what is needed during consultations and in the course of a matter; a simulation system for testing strategy toward efficient and favorable outcomes; contract analysis tools and an e-discovery system built on our own AI programs, capable of due diligence across millions of documents and of extensive research into case law; and a system for prompt, accurate notification of progress and communication with clients.

Through proprietary legal technology, including the AI programs it has developed itself, SJKP carries out each stage of a matter with greater precision, and works toward results that meet its clients' expectations at every stage and in every matter.

The global mega-firms are substantial institutions, engaged on complex and large-scale legal questions for multinational corporations, financial institutions, and sovereign governments. They operate on rigorous efficiency, deep expertise, and considerable economies of scale.

In the manner of the American global firms that shape the international legal market, SJKP brings together recognized specialists across time zones, collaborating around the clock from offices in major cities worldwide — New York, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Seoul, Busan, Shanghai, London, Singapore, Hanoi, and Dubai, certain of which are in the process of opening. On a single multinational acquisition, expert groups and their lawyers across offices in three or four relevant jurisdictions convene simultaneously by video. They examine the regulatory framework and policy environment in each jurisdiction, assess the target's structure together with its strengths and vulnerabilities, and formulate a comprehensive strategy. The advantage is considerable in any transaction or dispute engaging the laws of two or more countries. Regulatory and political risk in a particular jurisdiction, moreover, is identified and addressed immediately and accurately through local counsel at the office concerned.

SJKP holds a body of resources and data assembled through the many matters it has handled in-house for government agencies, corporations, and individual clients across a wide range of fields. It holds, at the same time, an extensive collection of precedents, contract precedents, and case analyses obtained through partner firms around the world.

The firm has also invested substantially in the systems that make its internal precedent database genuinely usable — artificial intelligence programs developed in-house, case management systems, and the real-time communication application MY SJKP. That investment advances efficiency and quality of work together.

On this foundation, even the most unusual question — one encountered for the first time anywhere in the field — is likely to find its answer somewhere within these resources, held across SJKP's global network of offices. The firm is therefore able to put forward solutions in complex and demanding matters, by examining closely the character of the matter and the questions it raises.

The lawyers and specialists at SJKP are distinguished from the general run of the profession in career, in qualification, and in capability.

Members of the firm are lawyers of high capability, high qualification, and substantial experience, selected through a rigorous internal process.

Several hundred lawyers and field specialists admitted through that process form the firm's specialized organizations — its practice groups and special units. To bring greater completeness to the handling of a matter, these organizations work in concert, with several groups matched the requirements of the matter collaborating so that transactions of scale and complexity may be advanced simultaneously. With years of accumulated knowledge in particular industries and fields of law, they are equipped to respond effectively to questions without precedent, drawing on comparable experience.

The firm supports these individuals with compensation and benefits at the highest level, and continues to strengthen its complement by recruiting specialists in regulation and policy, among them graduates of the leading law schools worldwide and former prosecutors.

For a firm of SJKP's scale, the breadth of its international network — and the volume of experience that follows from it — carries weight in its own right.

The firm's name is known to opposing parties and to the regulators before whom it appears. Beyond recognition, the fact that a firm of this standing has acted for a company, or has issued a legal opinion, offers boards, investors, the market, regulators, and counterparties a measure of assurance as to the rigor with which the matter has been examined. That assurance carries its own weight at the negotiating table.

SJKP maintains an infrastructure capable of supporting not only the conventional forms of assistance — comprehensive advisory work, litigation, arbitration, representation, and management consulting — but also specialized fields that extend what the firm can offer a client: the investigation and collection of evidence, digital forensics, security, and psychological support.

Under the fundamental principle that a case rests on its evidence, the outcome of any dispute follows from what can be proved. The gathering of that evidence is work the firm takes on rather than leaves to the client.

SJKP undertakes careful evidence gathering through a tailored investigative process, working with licensed specialist agencies and investigators. This allows the firm to identify the definite and material evidence capable of altering the course of a matter. Working with specialist digital forensics agencies and practitioners, we go beyond the simple recovery of data, drawing on proven technique: we establish a strategy for selecting evidence and putting it to legal use, following the sequence of events as they occurred.

With the assistance of licensed partner security firms, we have established a crisis response capability directed at the personal safety and peace of mind of our clients. Where circumstances require, protective services are arranged through those partners.

SJKP also works with independent providers of psychological care, who offer structured support to clients directly. This extends to the objective assessment of psychological harm and to recovery from the trauma that an incident may cause.

SJKP operates a transparent and equitable retainer system, built on clear fee standards and fixed pricing by matter.

The firm also maintains a service quality assurance system, so that a client may entrust a matter with confidence.

Under that system, where a client is not satisfied after a matter has been accepted, corrective measures are taken across the firm in respect of the factors concerned. Where those measures do not resolve the client's concerns, it is our policy to settle and refund the retainer already paid, having regard to the stage the matter has reached.

Membership of SJKP is open only to practitioners who have satisfied rigorous verification against the standards of the international firms. It is on that basis that many clients express confidence in our work and continue to bring further matters to us.

That said, no undertaking is without exception. Notwithstanding such verification, there may be a small number of practitioners who do not meet the expectations a client holds, or the standard the firm sets for itself. We are conscious that this can be a source of dissatisfaction. The firm therefore maintains a personnel system under which any individual found to fall short is released from the matter and a stronger legal team assigned in their place, so that the firm's capacity is held at a consistent level.

We have also introduced MY SJKP, a real-time communication application developed in-house, which gives clients a dedicated channel to their assigned lawyer and support team for questions and answers in real time, for following the progress of a matter, and for exchanging documents.

No client observation, however slight, is passed over. Every view is examined, and reasonable feedback is carried into our services and our systems.

We improve those systems continually, so that the same concern is not met twice, and we strengthen them further rather than resting on the satisfaction already expressed to us.

SJKP and its members hold in mind, with humility, that the firm exists because clients come to it, and we remain grateful to them. It is through the encouragement and support of clients satisfied with our work that the firm has grown stronger. We give our utmost to meet the expectations of the many clients who return to us, and to offer them an experience they will find nowhere else.

Sustained by the encouragement and support of those clients, SJKP will continue to advance toward a position of preeminence in the profession worldwide.