On Nov. 16, a stellar line-up of top lawyers and legal teams gathered at the InterContinental Seoul COEX for the ALB Korea Law Awards 2022, the country’s most prestigious legal extravaganza, which celebrated the exceptional legal work done in the past year.
It marked the 10th time that these annual awards were held in Korea. “A decade since ALB started the Korea Law Awards, we have continued to shine a spotlight on the development of the country’s legal fraternity,” said Amantha Chia, Head of Legal Media Business at Thomson Reuters, in her welcome address. “We continue to work hand in hand with the legal industry to highlight new trends.”
This years’ awards saw 318 submissions from 44 organisations across 38 categories. These included two new categories - ESG Law Firm of the Year and ESG In-House Team of the Year – which saw strong participation, according to Chia, “as growing momentum in environment-related developments means an increasing number of companies are coming on board.”
Kim & Chang and Bae, Kim & Lee emerged as the night’s biggest winners with ten and six awards across categories, respectively (excluding deals). For Kim & Chang, these included Woman Lawyer of the Year (for Yunjoh Lee), Young Lawyer of the Year (for Heesung Ahn), Litigation Law Firm of the Year, Korea Deal Firm of the Year, and the big one – Korea Law Firm of the Year.
Meanwhile, Bae, Kim & Lee’s haul included Banking and Financial Services Law Firm of the Year, Technology, Media and Telecommunications Law Firm of the Year, and ESG Law Firm of the Year.
Disputes-focused law firm Peter & Kim also had a solid night, claiming Boutique Law Firm of the Year, Dispute Resolution Lawyer of the Year (for Kap-You (Kevin) Kim), and Foreign Lawyer of the Year (for John P. Bang).
In other notable individual categories, the Dealmaker of the Year award went to Daniel Kim of O’Melveny & Myers, while Jong-Han Oh of Shin & Kim won the prestigious award of Managing Partner of the Year,
In the in-house categories, Hanmi Pharmaceutical won Innovative In-House Team of the Year and shared the ESG In-House Team of the Year award with Veolia. McDonald’s Korea won the Korea In-House Team of the Year, while Liz (Kyo-Hwa) Chung of Netflix was named as In-House Lawyer of the Year.
