LegalTech Stalled... Aiming for a Rebound with 'AI Services'

Following the Ministry of Justice's decision last year, consecutive new services
Rotok to launch 'Super Lawyer' in the first half of the year
Ro&Good releases 'Election Law AI Search Chatbot'

The domestic legal tech industry is making a leap forward this year with new services incorporating artificial intelligence (AI). The Ministry of Justice's decision in September last year to cancel the disciplinary actions imposed by the Korean Bar Association on lawyers registered with the legal service platform Lotoc served as a catalyst for restarting the legal tech industry. Since then, the activities of legal tech companies have been fully resumed.

The press conference by Law&Company regarding the decision of the Ministry of Justice's Lawyer Disciplinary Committee was held on October 4 last year at Law&Company in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. CEO Kim Bonhwan is answering reporters' questions. On the right is Vice President Jeong Jaesung. Photo by Heo Younghan younghan@

According to the legal tech industry on the 1st, Roan Company, which operates Lotoc, will launch the ‘Super Lawyer (tentative name)’ service in the first half of this year. Super Lawyer is an ‘AI legal assistant.’ It was developed by applying multiple language models to the in-house built generative AI system ‘BigCaseGPT’ to enhance lawyers’ work productivity and efficiency. It plans to offer functions such as legal research, legal document summarization, legal document Q&A, and legal document drafting. On the 26th of last month, An Gi-soon, head of Roan Company’s Legal AI Research Institute, demonstrated the alpha version of Super Lawyer for testing at a meeting with the Ministry of Government Legislation.

Roan Company launched ‘BigCase Plus,’ an expanded version of the AI-based integrated legal information service ‘BigCase,’ in October last year, right after the Ministry of Justice’s decision, marking the beginning of a full-scale expansion into the legal AI market. It is a paid subscription service that allows unlimited searches of 4.2 million case law data, commentaries, and paid academic papers. The commentaries include all 64 volumes published by the Korean Society of Judicial Administration, and the paid papers provide 138 types of academic papers in the fields of law and administration through a partnership with DBPIA, the largest academic paper platform in Korea. Members who have passed lawyer authentication and subscribe to BigCase Plus can use the sentencing statistics service ‘BigCase Graph.’ The graph provides information such as the most frequently imposed sentences for individual crimes, the proportion of sentences by sentence length, and trends in sentence length over time. It is based on data from over 840,000 criminal judgments.

Ro&Good, ahead of the 22nd National Assembly election in April, launched the 'Election Law AI Search Chatbot' at the end of last year.
[Photo by Ro&Good]

Another legal service platform, Roan Good, is focusing on its ‘AI chatbot’ and has ventured overseas. After unveiling a ‘prototype AI chatbot for lawyers’ in October last year, it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Mexican law firm Mundus for AI chatbot development. Through this agreement, Roan Good and Mundus are developing an AI chatbot trained on Mexican federal laws and related regulations, as well as proprietary data held by Mundus.

Roan Good launched an election law AI search chatbot at the end of last year ahead of the 22nd National Assembly general election scheduled for April. It has learned about 10,000 Q&A entries and 3,000 precedents registered with the National Election Commission. It is evaluated to provide real-time answers regarding relevant laws, regulations, and voter interpretation guides. Recently, it also released an AI search chatbot equipped with financial law. It has learned about 10,000 financial regulatory law interpretations and Q&A entries registered with the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service, approximately 1,000 dispute mediation cases, and about 500 precedents. Min Myung-gi, CEO of Roan Good, said, “This year, we will focus on investing in the development and improvement of AI chatbots.”

Meanwhile, the legal tech industry has been engaged in legal disputes for eight years with the Bar Association and the Seoul Bar Association over whether lawyers’ advertising regulations were violated. They argued that lawyers’ use of the services violated the Bar Association’s advertising rules. However, in September last year, the Ministry of Justice’s Lawyer Disciplinary Committee canceled all disciplinary actions against 123 lawyers imposed by the Bar Association for being registered and active on Lotoc, effectively siding with the legal tech industry.