InterviewIn AI-augmented legal market, clients will judge firms by final results: BKL chief

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes a standard tool across the legal profession and beyond, clients will ultimately judge law firms not by whether or how much they use the technology, but by the quality of the results they deliver with it, said Yi Joon-ki, managing partner of Bae, Kim & Lee (BKL).

“Clients do not really care what tools we use,” Yi said in a recent interview with The Korea Times at his office. “What they want is a compelling and useful analysis — one that addresses their needs. In the end, it is BKL’s judgment, and BKL will be responsible for it. As long as we deliver a reliable answer, that is what matters to them.”

The Seoul-based law firm has emerged as one of the most active adopters of generative AI among Korean law firms, rolling out the technology across the organization this year after conducting pilot projects in litigation, legal research, due diligence, document drafting and other legal tasks.

Yi said BKL’s broader ambition is not merely to automate routine work, but to redesign legal workflows so that lawyers can deliver deeper analysis, sharper strategic judgment and more useful advice to clients.

“The introduction of AI in work can only raise the floor,” Yi said. “But what matters more is raising the ceiling, which depends on how it is used by people … The real competition will be over who can use it to produce a better final product for the client.”

The distinction is central to BKL’s approach. AI can quickly summarize documents, identify clauses, compare testimonies and draft routine documents — tasks that previously required many hours of work by junior lawyers. But Yi said the greater competitive advantage will come from combining the technology with a firm’s accumulated know-how, the judgment of experienced lawyers and systems designed to make the best use of AI-generated materials.

“If a law firm simply asks AI a question and accepts one answer, that is one level,” he said. “But if it can generate several possible approaches, compare them, verify the facts and legal grounds, and use them to build a better strategy, it becomes a completely different kind of service.”

When ChatGPT was introduced to the public in late 2022, Yi thought it was premature for BKL to adopt the technology, which seemed promising but not dependable enough for work. Security, particularly client confidentiality, remained a key concern.

But as AI tools improved, he concluded that both the technology and its internal governance safeguards had advanced enough to manage the risks. Yi also pointed to changing corporate attitudes toward “shadow AI” — employees’ use of unapproved AI tools outside company systems — even at major companies with stringent security requirements. Rather than trying to ban AI use altogether, he said, it would be better to use managed platforms that could bring such activity under institutional control.

Asked where AI has proved most useful, Yi pointed to matters involving large volumes of documents, including complex criminal cases.

Lawyers, for example, once had to spend many months reviewing interrogation records and witness statements to identify inconsistencies, contradictions and corroborating evidence — a task AI can now handle in a fraction of the time.

AI is also changing the way BKL handles cross-border matters, allowing its lawyers to carry out more substantive preliminary research.

“Instead of asking overseas counsel an open-ended question about what the law is there, we can now say, ‘Based on our research, we think the answer is yes. Can you confirm that?’ That changes the nature of cross-border legal work completely,” Yi said.

Yi said BKL’s next goal is to connect AI with the firm’s four decades of accumulated legal materials and the tacit judgment of its experienced lawyers. Rather than limiting an internal AI system to a narrow set of recent documents in a single practice area, the firm has used AI-aided preprocessing to organize its most recent years of records across the firm and aims to complete the broader historical archive by year-end. The new system will incorporate BKL lawyers’ reasoning criteria, allowing it to produce high quality advice that cannot be imitated by general-purpose AI tools, he said.

BKL recorded 440.2 billion won ($320 million) in revenue last year, overtaking Lee & Ko for the first time in six years to become Korea’s second-largest law firm by revenue after Kim & Chang. Its growth has continued this year, with revenue reported in value-added tax filings for the first half rising 29.3 percent from a year earlier.

Yi outlined three priorities for BKL’s next stage: expanding AI across day-to-day legal work to deliver tangible value to clients; building an outcome-driven culture and developing talent capable of delivering results for clients; and strengthening the firm’s ability to resolve complex cross-border matters.

“These tasks ultimately converge on one goal: qualitative growth and stronger international competitiveness,” Yi said. “What matters is not simply becoming larger, but raising the level at which we solve difficult problems — and ensuring that level meets international, not just domestic, standards.”