Major Activities

Lee & Ko is constantly recognized for being at the forefront of initiatives to advance gender diversity.
Lee & Ko has been selected multiple times as the best law firm in Korea for the Best Gender Diversity Initiative at Asia Women in Business Law Awards hosted by the Euromoney Legal Media Group.

Lee & Ko is committed to the recruitment, retention and advancement of women lawyers and as part of this commitment, introduced a new one-on-one mentoring program. Through this new mentoring program, every woman associate at Lee & Ko is assigned to a senior woman lawyer and supported to grow as an exceptional lawyer. This mentoring program is globally recognized and selected as the best woman lawyer mentoring program at Asia Women in Business Law Awards hosted by the Euromoney Legal Media Group.

Women lawyers trained and developed at Lee & Ko are leaders in their respective practice areas. They advise clients on the most complex and demanding matters and are named as Korea’s women leaders by domestic and global organizations. Also, they are active members of various practice group committees, contributing to Lee & Ko’s operation and success.

Lee & Ko maintains a diverse and talented body of lawyers of all backgrounds and experiences and leads the global legal market beyond Korea. Lee & Ko’s lawyers are from Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, China and Vietnam and come from diverse national and ethnic backgrounds.

The diversity of backgrounds among our lawyers enhances our ability to provide creative and innovative solutions and enables us to provide in-depth services to solve problems that our clients face in the global market.

As one of the world’s leading law firms and one that represents Korea, Lee & Ko is committed to the diversity and inclusion initiatives and strives to create better and inclusive environment by promoting the values of diversity and inclusion.

The Refugee Litigation Team provides legal support to refugees persecuted in their countries of citizenship due to political or religious reasons or because of their ethnicity.

The People with Disabilities Legal Support Team seeks to improve the rights and regulations for people with disabilities by providing legal support.

In December 2012, the People with Disabilities Legal Support Team initiated an administrative litigation on behalf of people with hearing disabilities to necessitate the inclusion of subtitles and hand language interpretations in presidential election commercials. The court ordered that such commercials respect the needs of people with hearing disabilities, and the executive branch accepted the ruling. Starting with June 2014’s local elections, “in the interest of people with hearing disabilities, all National Election Commission TV advertisements are to include hand language interpretations and must be accommodate subtitles.” Also, “in the interest of people with sight disabilities, each polling place must have telephone instructions, braille promotional materials about clean and elections, and conversational instructions about voting at hand in order to provide information about elections and amenities to voters.”

In September 2014, the People with Disabilities Legal Support Team participated in the evaluation of Korea’s practice of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was held in Geneva, and in the writing Korea’s report on its practice of the Convention.

The North Korean Defectors Legal Support Team seeks to protect the rights of North Korean Defectors, who are normally neglected and find themselves without access to legal services. The North Korean Defectors Legal Support Team provides legal and other support to North Korean defectors.

The Team also provides child North Korean defectors legal education and legal consultation.

The Immigrant and Logistics Workers Legal Support Team provides legal support to people who work amidst some of the worst work conditions you can find in Korea: immigrant workers and mass transit service providers. They are almost entirely neglected by the law. Not only are they always exposed to the dangers of traffic accidents, whenever such an accident happens, they must face the risk of not only prosecution but also termination of their employment. However, because they cannot afford legal costs, they cannot receive the legal protection they deserve.

The Team also helps immigrant workers combat wage theft by filing requests for backpay and initiating attachment and lawsuits against employers on immigrant workers’ behalf.

The Lawyer Mentors for Teens Team cooperate with orphanages to provide mentorship programs to young adults. Team members regularly visit mentees, take them to sports games, watch movies and musicals together, attend school arts festivals with their mentees, and etc.

On 29 March 2013, Lee & Ko agreed to provide UNICEF’s Korean Committee legal support. In April 2013, the Committee established the UNICEF Legal Support Team. UNICEF is requesting the following legal support: support for Korean legislative activity related to children and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child; legal review of contract clauses concerning the protection of private information; review of contracts related to corporate and individual donations. The team has also helped with UNICEF’s Awoo Doll Campaign to gather donations to fund child vaccinations.

Lee & Ko also provides legal support for the social services organization Compassion Korea. Specifically, Lee & Ko has provided Compassion Korea with legal advice concerning estate contributions and still provides answers to Compassion Korea’s other legal questions.