An economy that has rebounded quicker than most in the region coupled with a chaebol-led wave of outbound investment is keeping lawyers busy in the land of the morning calm. ALB reports from Seoul on a legal services market that has recovered

Korea 2010: Outward bound

The Korean economy suffered like most others in the region during the dark days and months of the global financial crisis. Exports volumes fell off, the Korean won depreciated at a rate few had seen before and many analysts were predicting deep-seated and long-lasting recession for what was hitherto one of North Asia’s fastest growing economies. But if Korea’s experiences over the last 18 months were typical of other Asian countries during the GFC, what has been occurring over the past few months has been anything but.

Spurred on by a proactive government intent on establishing Seoul as an international financial hub in North Asia, exports have again started to pick up, the won is strengthening versus the greenback and the country’s nascent capital markets have deepened — for the first time attracting international interest — through sheer innovation and a number of new and exciting financial products such as sukuk, covered bonds and foreign dual-tranche IPOs.

Somewhat ironically, in years to come the financial crisis may be viewed as a watershed development for the Korean economy. As Min Euoo-Sung, the chairman and CEO of the Korea Development Bank (KDB) pointed out earlier this year, “It [the GFC] may have slowed our economy down…but it has given us time to think, time to take a breath; to evaluate where we have come and the next steps required for our economic development.”

The GFC is set to be just as profound for the nation’s legal services market. Korean law firms have emerged from the crisis rejuvenated and with a renewed sense of purpose. New players have surfaced and old ones have regrouped, reorganised or merged (or are looking to merge). The result is an increasingly fluid legal market hierarchy in the country.

However, it would be wrong to assert that any of these changes are ‘new’ developments. While they may have gathered pace during the financial crisis, these processes have been underway for much of the last decade and will continue to loom large in the future as the market grapples with the challenges presented by profound shifts in client behaviour, Korea’s changing role in the global economy and impending legal sector liberalisation.

There's a Korean saying which describes something changing so much that it becomes unrecognisable in the space of 10 years, typically describes how the face of Seoul has changed over the last decade. However it is perhaps just as apt to describe how far the Korean legal services market has come – and how much more change is in store.

NEXT: The Korea Wave

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