is a premier corporate, finance and litigation law firm in Seoul, Korea. The firm was founded in 1958 by Dr. Taiyoung Lee, the first female lawyer in Korea who was instrumental in improving women’s rights in Korea, and Houng Han Kim, the first international corporate lawyer in Korea who was a pioneer in developing the international corporate law practice in Korea. As Korea's oldest law firm and the first firm in Korea to engage in international corporate law practice, Kim Chang Lee provides a wide array of legal services to clients in the corporate, industrial, financial and governmental sectors. Since our inception, we have been serving some of the most iconic multinational companies in their investment and operational matters in Korea, including many Fortune 500 companies such as The Coca-Cola Company, Westinghouse, IBM, Delta Airlines and Chase Manhattan Bank. Our current clientele ranges from innovative start-up companies to numerous large global corporations that need sophisticated legal advice for their complex transactions and large operations in Korea and abroad. In particular, Kim Chang Lee is in the forefront of Korea’s most dynamic and innovative corporate and financial transactions, having handled some of the largest and most complex M&A and other corporate transactions that have been consummated in Korea to date.

Many of Kim Chang Lee’s lawyers are bilingual in Korean and English and have practiced with major law firms or studied at major law schools abroad, or have served as judges with the Korean judiciary or as prosecutors, adding their wealth of knowledge, experience and expertise in specialized practice areas to the firm’s resources. Kim Chang Lee advises clients in all major corporate and finance practice areas requiring legal representation, including, among others, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and other foreign investments, corporate restructuring, capital markets, corporate finance, banking and securities, energy and project finance, antitrust, tax, labor, intellectual property and corporate immigration, with some of the best-known partners in these fields in Korea leading the firm’s various practice groups. Aside from handling high-profile corporate and financial transactions and litigations, Kim Chang Lee also counsels numerous multinational and domestic corporations on the legal aspects of their day-to-day business activities in Korea, helping them navigate an increasingly complex maze of laws and regulations and successfully achieve their goals in Korea.

In addition to our corporate and finance practice areas, Kim Chang Lee also provides comprehensive representation in dispute resolution matters, including civil, criminal, administrative and constitutional litigation and international arbitration, by rigorously training and promoting internal talent while also concurrently recruiting recognized experts in the respective fields with valuable experience in the Korean judiciary and the Prosecution Service.

In particular, we have particular strengths in international arbitration matters that arise from cross-border transactions. We provide comprehensive services in this practice area from pre-arbitration negotiations to enforcement of arbitral decisions in a number of jurisdictions globally through close cooperation with our network of foreign law firms.

Centered around our three core practice areas - corporate, finance and dispute resolution - Kim Chang Lee also possesses an extensive track record and deep expertise in representing activist shareholders in their efforts to improve corporate governance, enhance enterprise value and strengthen shareholders’ rights. We also have experience defending public companies against activist shareholders’ efforts to seize management control and peremptorily addressing and preventing corporate governance-related issues before they arise. In addition, our capital markets practice group offers the full range of related services, including issuance of various securities, structured finance (including securitization and project finance), fund formation, incorporation of asset management and investment advisory companies, post-investment management and related dispute resolution matters.

Kim Chang Lee’s strengths are further augmented by its association with the Pacific Rim Advisory Council (www.prac.org), Lawyers Associated Worldwide (www.lawyersworldwide.com) and PLG International Lawyers (www.plg.eu.com), which provides the firm with valuable law firm contacts and ready access to high quality legal representation for its clients in most of the major commercial and financial centers of the world.

Kim Chang Lee has a storied history as a pioneering corporate law firm in Korea. However, we are not, and have never strived to become, one of the largest law firms in Korea as measured by revenue or number of lawyer metrics. Instead, our goal has always been to be the law firm of choice with respect to the most pressing and significant matters for our clients as well as their more routine matters, which we handle with equal and single-minded devotion to quality and professionalism.