[Law Firm Now] HwaWoo Wins ALB Korea Law Awards 'Overseas Practice Firm of the Year'... Also Receives 'Young Lawyer of the Year' Award

The overseas legal team of Hwawoo Law Firm, awarded "Law Firm of the Year in Overseas Business" at the ALB Korea Law Awards 2024, and Attorney Seongju Lee, selected as "Young Lawyer of the Year," are posing for a commemorative photo. Provided by Hwawoo Law Firm

Photo by Hwawoo Law Firm.

Law firm Hwawoo (Representative Lawyer Myungsoo Lee) was honored to receive two awards at the ALB Korea Law Awards 2024, hosted by ALB (Asian Legal Business), a leading legal publication in Asia under the global media group Thomson Reuters.

Hwawoo announced on the 13th that it won the ‘Overseas Practice Law Firm of the Year’ award at the 2024 ALB Korea Law Awards held on the evening of the 6th at the Conrad Hotel in Yeouido, Seoul. On the same day, Lawyer Sungjoo Lee of Hwawoo (passed the 5th bar exam) was selected as the ‘Young Lawyer of the Year.’

Now in its 12th year, the ALB Korea Law Awards is an annual ceremony hosted by ALB that recognizes the best law firms, deals, lawyers, and in-house legal teams in various fields through evaluations by a panel of experts including in-house lawyers from major domestic and international institutions and law school professors. ALB stated that the winners were selected based on the importance, complexity, and innovation of transactions conducted from July last year to June this year.

Hwawoo has provided top-tier legal services that satisfy clients across various overseas practice areas, including traditional cross-border investment and financial transaction advisory, as well as advisory services responding to increasingly stringent global trade regulations related to the overseas expansion of major Korean conglomerates. These include responses to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s anti-dumping investigations, the EU Foreign Subsidies Regulation, the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), anti-corruption laws, personal data protection, and fintech regulations. This award once again recognizes Hwawoo’s outstanding capabilities in overseas legal affairs.

Junwoo Lee, head of Hwawoo’s Overseas Legal Team, said, “As a result of the tireless efforts of Korean lawyers, foreign lawyers, and overseas office professionals across various fields to expand overseas work, our global legal advisory capabilities have been strengthened in diverse areas compared to before, and it seems this effort has been well recognized. Moving forward, Hwawoo will continue to provide the best advisory services for overseas expansion, including advice on various trade regulations, competition law, financial regulations, taxation, and personal data related to Korean companies’ entry into the U.S., EU, and Southeast Asia.”

Attorney Seongju Lee, selected as the "Young Lawyer of the Year" at the ALB Korea Law Awards 2024. Provided by Law Firm Hwawoo

Meanwhile, Lawyer Sungjoo Lee of the Advisory Group, who was selected as ‘Young Lawyer of the Year,’ was highly evaluated for successfully completing major M&A deals such as the sale of Ostem Implant, the world’s number one implant sales company, and Grande Clip’s acquisition of Stayfolio, as well as for leading successful outcomes in shareholder meeting responses and voting rights advisory in major listed company management disputes including the injunction victory in the Hanmi Science management dispute and disputes involving financial companies such as Daol Investment & Securities.

The ‘Young Lawyer of the Year’ award is given to one lawyer under the age of 40 active in Korea who has successfully handled the most important deal or dispute during the year and is expected to be a next-generation leader in the legal market. Lawyer Lee graduated from Sungkyunkwan University’s Department of Law and was the top graduate of the university’s Law School (5th class). After passing the 5th bar exam, he joined Hwawoo’s Advisory Group and has been active mainly in management disputes, mergers and acquisitions, insolvency, and corporate governance.