[Interview] Lee Jin, CEO of Elbox, who introduced 'Elpined': "Lawyers should be evaluated by case performance, not 'advertising'"

"Lawyer Industry Challenges, Aiming to Solve Inefficiencies"

"Lawyers should be evaluated by clients based on their substantial 'case handling experience,' not 'advertising.' Data that demonstrates expertise. I thought there needed to be a genuine meeting place between lawyers and clients. Since LBox, which has lawyer members and secures court rulings, can do this well, I decided to take on the challenge."

[Image source=Beomryul Newspaper]

These are the words of Lee Jin (42, Judicial Research and Training Institute class 38, photo), CEO of the legal tech company LBox. He is a former attorney at Kim & Chang Law Office and has continued to take on challenges since founding LBox, a legal tech company providing court ruling search services in 2019.

On the 28th, CEO Lee introduced 'Lfind,' a service that allows clients to directly search for lawyers who have handled cases similar to their own. Instead of relying on advertisements or personal recommendations, it is now possible to find lawyers based on information contained in court rulings. When we met at LBox’s office in Yeoksam-dong on the 26th, he said, "My goal is to solve the difficulties and inefficiencies in the legal profession."

The following is a Q&A.

Q. What inspired you to think of 'finding lawyers based on court rulings'?

A. After working as a lawyer and moving into the legal tech industry, I was often asked to introduce a lawyer someone knew. However, due to lack of information, people had no choice but to rely on personal networks, which was frustrating. I have felt this problem for a long time. But in the early days of LBox, we focused on our main service, the 'precedent search service,' and have since secured 3.3 million court rulings, the largest scale in Korea. Now, we are developing a solution to this problem. Many lawyers around me also often said they wanted to be evaluated based on objective data. This is a shared concern in the legal profession, and I thought it was something LBox, with its large amount of precedent data, could solve, so I jumped in.

[Image source=Beomryul Newspaper]

Q. What is the difference between lawyer advertising and Lfind?

A. In advertising, lawyers who pay for ads are exposed. Customers are exposed to information about those lawyers first, even if they do not want to. Lfind is a search service. Clients directly search for cases similar to their own and find the lawyers who handled those cases. The key difference is that clients find highly relevant experts themselves. Another difference is that it does not cost anything. Lawyers can create their profiles on Lfind without subscribing to LBox for a fee. They just need to agree to create a profile or register their court rulings. Since November last year, before the official launch, pre-registration was open, and already 735 lawyers have registered, with about 45,000 court rulings linked to them. Consumers using Lfind also do not need to pay separately.

Q. Some lawyer introduction platforms have had conflicts with lawyer associations. How about Lfind?

A. First of all, Lfind is different from lawyer introduction platforms, so it is hard to compare. Lfind is a search service, not a platform. LBox does not intervene in the stage where clients search for lawyers themselves, such as mediation. However, complying with current laws like the Attorney-at-Law Act is important. Therefore, during the development stage, we received legal advice on every phrase displayed on the screen and conducted compliance checks.

Q. What direction do you want to take as a legal tech company going forward?

A. We started the LBox business with court rulings, the most important data for lawyers. Now it is time to expand the scope of our content. We will diversify the use of the accumulated data. Although Lfind is somewhat different from the existing LBox, it can be seen as a separate service to meet lawyers’ expectations. The main service of LBox remains the precedent search service, and we will continue efforts to improve it.

Hong Sujeong, Legal Times Reporter

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