South Korea‘s law firm Yulchon said Wednesday it has signed a strategic partnership with international consultancy firm Environmental Resources Management to strengthen its corporate legal advisory capability with respect to environmental, social and governance, or ESG, issues.

The partnership is a leap forward from Yulchon’s move in December to establish an in-house unit devoted to legal advice as to how corporate clients should cope with ESG issues, such as regulatory risk management, execution of business strategies under ESG frameworks and strategic ESG reporting and disclosures. The signing ceremony took place at Yulchon‘s headquarters in southern Seoul on Tuesday.

Yulchon said the partnership with ERM will allow its in-house unit to provide a quality legal ESG advisory service at international standards. The unit is currently led by career bureaucrat and Yulchon senior adviser Lee Min-ho,

“It is imperative that companies go further than just responding to the ESG assessment from the outside,” Yulchon Managing Partner Yoon Hee-woong said in a teleconference jointly held with ERM Wednesday.

“Companies should take into account ESG factors when it comes to corporatewide risk management and business strategy in a preemptive and comprehensive manner, and companies here are facing a strong call to ingrain ESG factors into their corporate culture.”

ERM was founded in the United Kingdom in 1971 and has provided sustainability advisory services including formal materiality analysis to gauge how ESG issue systemically impacts capital. ERM currently has operations in 45 countries, including Korea. The Korean unit is led by its country managing partner, Seo Hyun-jung.

By Son Ji-hyoung (consnow@heraldcorp.com)