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Even as the regional economy recovers from the pandemic, the risk of disputes remains a major concern with issues emerging from supply chain disruptions, digital transformation, evolving ESG considerations and other factors. Having the best litigators on your side is thus critical, and the ALB Top 15 North Asia Litigators ranking spotlights some of the leading practitioners in Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea.

Can you tell us about a particularly challenging case you have handled in the past year or so?

One particularly challenging case in 2022 involved a lawsuit ﬁled by my client seeking speciﬁc performance against a majority shareholder of Company A, who had refused to transfer his controlling inter-est in Company A as agreed in the SPA signed with my client. In his one-sided pleadings, the majority shareholder offered various factual and legal arguments to justify his refusal, including claiming certain conditions to closing – although not stipulated in the SPA – have not been met and raising the legal issue of simultaneous representation of both parties at the time of the execution of the SPA. Also, the majority shareholder employed delay tactics to drag out the lawsuit.

In response, my litigation team at Yoon & Yang successfully advocated my client’s position in a very methodical manner by effectively refuting each of the majority shareholder’s legal and factual arguments and convincingly demonstrating the damages suffered by my client and the interested parties of Company A as a result of the delayed and protracted proceedings, contrasted with the beneﬁts reaped by the majority shareholder. Accordingly, the lawsuit concluded quickly in favor of my client.

How do you stay up to date on the latest developments in the legal field, and how do you use this knowledge to benefit your clients?

I closely monitor and track all the new legislative or enforcement developments, systematically organize and evaluate such developments, read the latest court decisions and scholarly journals, and attend internal and external seminars and conferences to stay abreast of expert knowledge and of the latest legal trends at home and abroad.

If I ﬁnd any information obtained from such sources to be useful or important for a speciﬁc client or a group of clients, I send out a newsletter to the clients or propose a seminar or information session for the clients to explain in person. Of course, as a litigation lawyer, I compile all such information into a database and store them in my mind for use in my future trials.

How do you approach the process of preparing for a trial, and how would you describe your strategy for effectively presenting a client’s case in court?

In preparing for a trial, my top priority is identifying and understanding the facts of the case at hand. To do so, I request as much information and materials as possible from my client during the engagement stage. Afterward, I examine legal principles applicable to the given facts and analyze the assigned judges’ propensity, which can undeniably affect the outcome of a trial. Once I complete this initial fact-gathering and issue-spotting process, I distinguish important issues from less important ones, and present my case in court focusing on the important issues. I try to keep my presentations short and concise, and I utilize audio-visual materials to the fullest extent during my presentations because actual images and sounds from the case are extremely important and very useful in forming and leaving a strong impression on the judges.

A conversation with Youbum Kim one of ALB Asia's Top 15 North Asia Litigators 2023

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