Yulchon was ranked as South Korea’s most innovative law firm by the Financial Times, coming in at No. 4 among 25 law firms in the Asia-Pacific region.

The FT’s Innovative Lawyers Award for this year was released last week by assessing each law firm’s corporate, finance and business categories.

Yulchon received 21 points in corporate, 47 in finance and 21 in business, raking in a total of 89 points.

The FT said Yulchon’s last year helped publicly listed STX Corp. proceed with an unprecedented $155 million debt-to-equity swap for publicly held bonds by securing the approval of 2,548 of STX’s 2,565 bondholders, which it said has set a precedent that other overindebted Korean companies hope to follow.

Of the Korean firms, Shin & Kim came after Yulchon at 7th place, by receiving 26 points in corporate, 21 in finance and 19 in business.

Korea’s largest law firm, Kim & Chang, came in 10th by earning a total of 63 points.

First place went to King & Wood Mallesons, a multinational law firm headquartered in Hong Kong, China, garnering a total of 156 points.

In a close second place was Australia’s Gilbert + Tobin with 145 points, followed by Japan’s Mori Hamada & Matsumoto.

India recorded the largest number of law firms to be included in the list at seven, followed by China, Singapore and Australia with four each.

Currently in its seventh year of publication and second in Asia, the FT award drew over 400 submissions and nominations from more than 100 law firms and in-house legal teams in this region and hundreds of clients, experts and lawyers were interviewed.

From news reports ()


koreaherald@heraldcorp.com