"Future Legal Market Dominated by AI" Lawyers Spark Legal Tech 'Startup Boom'

Major Law Firms and Corporations Depart to Provide Specialized AI Solutions

Generative AI is bringing revolutionary changes to the legal market, and recently, more lawyers are leaving prestigious large law firms or corporations to start legal tech ventures. The demand for services such as contract analysis and translation is increasing in various fields in Korea.

[Photo by Beopryul Newspaper]

The Trend is ‘Legal Tech’… Breaking Away from Traditional Legal Fields to Start Businesses

Jung Jong-gu (36, 8th Bar Exam), a lawyer at Law Firm Logos and adjunct professor at Hanyang University Law School, founded ‘GenIP’ in August this year and introduced an AI solution specialized in patent applications. It is a service that assists patent attorneys in drafting patent applications.

Cha Hyung-jin (35, 8th Bar Exam), who handled real estate cases at Jungwon Comprehensive Law Office, established ‘Onjeon’ last year. In September, he launched the beta version of the real-time video contract solution ‘ONTRACK.’ ONTRACK is an electronic contract solution service developed to reduce the risks of paper contracts by allowing contracting parties to display documents on a shared screen and conduct contracts via video calls, with the entire process recorded.

Foreign lawyer Tommy Kim, who worked at Oliff PLC, Kim & Chang Law Office, Coupang, and Softlunch, founded ‘Snapback’ in July. Snapback provides a legal AI platform service that handles simple tasks such as searching legal information and drafting legal documents.

Kang Sang-won (35, 43rd Judicial Research and Training Institute), formerly of Kim & Chang Law Office, founded ‘Lattice’ in April this year. Lattice introduced ‘Prix,’ a service that supports the entire contract process including negotiation, contract signing, and issuing tax invoices.

The reason for this trend is analyzed as △ lawyers being more sensitive than anyone else to the characteristics and limitations of legal work and △ the rapid daily advancement of technologies applicable to legal tasks such as AI.

Moon Sung-hyun, CEO of Bering Lab, explained, “Recently, AI technologies such as large language models have advanced to a level that can bring substantial changes to the legal profession. This change is becoming a trigger for lawyers to start their own businesses.”

Bold Challenges… Now Leading Legal Tech

There are also cases where lawyers boldly left major law firms such as Kim & Chang, Yulchon, and Sejong to start companies and grow them into solid legal tech firms.

Im Jeong-geun (47, 35th Judicial Research and Training Institute), who joined Yulchon in 2009 and was dispatched to a Japanese law firm in 2013-2014 advising on Korea-Japan corporate international disputes, is known as a ‘Japan expert.’ In 2020, he founded ‘BHSN,’ an AI-based legal document management solution company. BHSN is currently a leading legal tech company providing solutions to CJ CheilJedang, SK Telecom, and others.

Min Myung-gi (36, 45th Judicial Research and Training Institute), who worked at Sejong in 2020 after starting his law practice, left the firm the same year and founded ‘Law&Good.’ Law&Good is recognized as a representative lawyer search platform alongside ‘LawTalk.’

There is also Lee Jin (41, 38th Judicial Research and Training Institute), formerly of Kim & Chang, who founded Elbox Inc. (formerly LegalTech) in 2019. Elbox, which provides case law search services, has established itself as an industry leader by offering various convenient features such as search filters, judgment document storage and notes, and requests for unregistered precedents.

Moon Sung-hyun, a foreign lawyer (New York State), who worked at Yulchon, founded the legal document translation company ‘Bering Lab’ (formerly Bering Legal) in 2017. Recently, Bering Lab provides AI translation services in specialized fields such as law, patents, and finance. Last month, Bering Lab won the grand prize at the international startup competition ‘Huawei Cloud Startup Ignite 2023.’

Lawyers’ Startups Also Increasing Overseas

Talented lawyers who worked at top law firms such as Latham & Watkins and Anderson Mori are consecutively founding legal tech companies.

The U.S. legal tech company ‘Harvey’ provides AI services for editing and researching legal documents. ‘Evisort,’ which offers AI-based contract management software, was founded in 2016 by Jerry Ting and Jack Susman, graduates of Harvard Law School.

‘Casetext,’ which provides legal information search services, was established in 2013 and has become a major player in the U.S. legal tech industry. Japan’s representative legal tech company ‘Bengoshi.com’ was founded in 2005 by Daichiro Motoe, a lawyer and Keio University Law graduate. Bengoshi.com, which offers lawyer search and legal consultation services, has grown into a unicorn company with a recent valuation exceeding 2 trillion KRW.

Soojung Hong, Legal Times Reporter

※This article is based on content supplied by Law Times.