Freshly cleared LawTalk targets $1 billion unicorn status

Industry

Published: 04 Oct. 2023, 19:05

Freshly cleared LawTalk targets $1 billion unicorn status

From left, Law&Company Director Eom Bo-un, CEO Kim Bon-hwan, Deputy CEO Jung Jae-sung and Ahn Ki-soon, director of AI Lab at Law&Company, participate at a press event at the company’s headquarters in southern Seoul on Wednesday. [LAW&COMPANY]

LawTalk, Korea's largest legal consulting app, has set the goal of reaching a corporate valuation of $1 billion in three years after the Ministry of Justice cleared a regulatory burden last week.

On Sept. 26, the Justice Ministry canceled the Korean Bar Association’s (KBA) decision to penalize 123 lawyers affiliated with LawTalk. In May 2021, the KBA revised its Attorney-at-law Act so that no lawyer can advertise or cooperate with a service that proposes to estimate the outcome of a case despite not being a lawyer, therefore potentially making it illegal for lawyers to be registered with LawTalk.

“As we’ve broken free from all shackles, Law&Company will become the very first legal tech unicorn company in the next three years,” Law&Company CEO Kim Bon-hwan at the press event held at the company’s headquarters in southern Seoul on Wednesday.

“We strive to set a good example abiding by all the legalities as well as do our best to carry out our social responsibilities,” Kim continued. “For emerging, young lawyers, for the first six months since they started their practice, LawTalk will help them settle into the legal market by not receiving any advertising fees. We will also set aside three percent of our annual revenue to be used to support the consulting fees of financially struggling clients.”

The operator is also working on the launch of a new AI-powered legal assistant sometime next year to aid lawyers in time-consuming tasks such as legal research, document reviews and contracting, similar to functions offered by California-based legal AI company Casetext’s AI legal service CoCounsel.

Law&Company, founded in 2012, runs the legal service app LawTalk that connects users to lawyers by expertise. Users do not pay to use the app but the lawyers must register and pay the service a lump sum for advertising for more exposure to potential clients.

LawTalk once peaked with nearly 4,000 registered lawyers, but the number dwindled below 2,000 as KBA continued to take strong measures against members who perused the service since March 2015.

The company forecasts that the number will recover to over 3,000 by this year.

“There are over 1,000 lawyers who have turned their account dormant instead of dropping out of the service altogether,” said Law&Company’s Deputy CEO Jung Jae-sung. “We think of them as potential users who will use the service again once all the risks [involving penalties] are removed, and we believe that momentum will be driven by the Justice Ministry’s decision.”

Kim set the tipping point for Law&Company to succeed as a unicorn company when 20 percent of the total lawyer population registers with LawTalk.

“Once we reach that figure, the number will snowball on its own,” Kim forecast.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]