Kobre & Kim is looking for a U.S. qualified litigation associate with 4-5 years' post-qualification experience to join our Seoul team. You will be expected to work in our office five days a week.

You will be working on high-stakes matters that frequently involve simultaneous proceedings across multiple jurisdictions. The ideal candidate is focused on “breaking the traditional lawyering mold” by using deep knowledge and cutting-edge techniques to get to the heart of solving the client’s real problem.

The role covers a broad range of disputes and investigations, including commercial litigation and regulatory and government investigations, working closely with U.S.-based clients and colleagues.

Requirements

• 4-5 years' post-qualification experience
• U.S. qualified
• Meaningful U.S. litigation experience gained at a reputable law firm
• General litigation background
• Strong drafting, research and case management skills
• Fluent Korean and English
• Currently based in or willing to relocate to Seoul
• Experience of cross-border commercial litigation
• International law firm background
• Experience working with U.S.-based clients and teams

Why Join Kobre & Kim?

Being part of our team will give you unrivalled experience in the world of premium high-stakes litigation. We recognize that our greatest asset is our people, so we want the best and the brightest to find and fulfil their true potential with us. We are looking for a new breed of litigators who combine substantive legal skills, problem-solving capabilities, intellectual rigour, determination, and a global outlook, with the creativity and people skills to have a real impact on the delivery of our innovative legal solutions. Our lawyers bring their formidable skills and experience to think one step ahead, to address the client’s entire problem and not just the legal aspects. We value excellent written and verbal communication skills, honed to appeal to businesspeople and courts alike. We strike the perfect balance between civility and intellectual aggressiveness to generate unconventional legal strategies that deal with clients’ real problems.

Our way of working is not for everyone – but for the most talented people who share our vision and values and have a genuine passion to work on the litigation products we deliver, there really is no better place to be. If the idea of taking an intellectually aggressive and creative approach to law in order to understand and resolve our clients’ challenges excites you, you’ll fit right in. It's our strategic approach to delivering clients their ultimate outcome that sets us apart as much as our expertise. We are passionate about using the law as a tool to solve our clients’ most complex issues, and by using our genuine intellectual curiosity, we excel at finding new ways to attack a problem beyond conventional lawyering.

Our unmatched global footprint gives us access to the most interesting markets, the most prominent clients and the most exciting cases. As Latin America, the Middle East and China present new opportunities and challenges for our clients, we make it our business to be there to help deliver innovative solutions and push boundaries. Global capabilities are not simply about having offices in all the right places; it is the ability to deploy exactly the right mix of people seamlessly to meet the specific needs of a particular client, irrespective of location. This gives our people a richness of experience and opportunity that is genuinely unique.

Of course, being a global firm means embracing a global culture: To work smoothly across jurisdictions, markets and sectors, our teams are continuously developing their knowledge of new legal systems and cultures. Wherever our lawyers are based or travel to, they make things happen, setting new standards and pushing boundaries to deliver innovative and often ground-breaking cross-border solutions. Doing so takes passion, dedication and a good deal of both personal and professional flexibility, but the rewards are immense. A friendly and supportive working environment is a key component of our business strategy, allowing us to create teams that can take on the world’s most complex litigation.

We pull together the right mix of people and know-how for any situation. It is the depth, flexibility and rich diversity of expertise in our firm that makes us such a unique and critical resource for our clients.

Working at Kobre & Kim will give you an enviable set of career choices. We know that if we help brilliant people reach their goals, it will benefit us in both the short and long term. We are proud to have many ex-colleagues among our clients, and our alumni can be found in leadership roles in many fields of commerce, government and the judiciary.

In return for your dedication, we will offer you excellent rewards, unlimited support, unrivalled training and the chance to add value from day one in a non-hierarchical environment. We are a true meritocracy and our bespoke bonus calculation system rewards those who bring the most benefit to the firm: Rather than focusing on the simple surpassing of target working hours, we reward those who excel in business development, bring unique ideas and skills to the table and develop client relationships for the benefit of the firm and not just themselves.

Learning – constant career evolution

It’s absolutely essential to our business that we provide the very best training and development for our lawyers; after all, the litigation products we offer are cutting edge, and that means constant evolution. We expect all our lawyers to keep a constant focus on deepening their learning and personal specialization within our product areas. The world is constantly changing and each generation of lawyers needs to learn new skills and apply new modes of thinking. We like to work ahead of the pack on unique legal challenges that aren’t commoditized by other law firms, so our lawyers evolve much more frequently than others. This makes our work exhilarating, but it demands a dynamic approach to learning and development.

Diversity

Diversity and inclusion are a core part of our values, and we genuinely value differences in backgrounds, experiences and cultures for the benefit it brings to the firm and our clients. The reason is simple. We will only continue to build on our outstanding success by creating a culture that allows everyone to thrive, generating the best ideas and solutions for our clients. The resourcefulness and ingenuity needed to create these ideas and solutions are assured by hiring lawyers with the widest breadth of knowledge, skills, perspectives and talent.

Our application process

Applying and interviewing with a new firm can be daunting and time-consuming. We do everything we can to make applying to Kobre & Kim feel quite the opposite. There are no tricks, shortcuts or pitfalls. We read every resume with great care, and we work hard to make the right decisions at each stage. You’ll get more out of the process if you come to it with a good understanding of the firm, the work we do, the legal products we specialize in and a clear idea of what you want from your professional career. Selection is a reciprocal process – you will be deciding whether we’re right for you as we learn more about you. You want to make sure you’ll be happy and successful at Kobre & Kim. So do we.

“Aggressive, Global, Conflict-Free”: What does it mean?

Aggressive

Our firm approaches each engagement using intellectually aggressive and innovative legal strategies designed to get to the heart of the matter as quickly as possible.

Our clients trust us to keep their objectives in sight and to focus all of our efforts on key aspects of the controversy that are material to their ultimate success.

Global

Multi-jurisdictional expertise: we regularly execute cross-border litigation and investigation strategies, with many of our cases involving simultaneous proceedings in multiple jurisdictions across the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Offshore and Africa.

We have offices in: New York, Delaware, Miami, San Francisco, São Paulo, Washington DC, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, London, Dubai, Tel Aviv, BVI and Cayman Islands.

Our lawyers work with an international team of analysts, litigation assistants and attorneys, using a range of expertise and skills from across the globe and even the benefit of different time zones when dealing with matters under tight deadlines.

Conflict-Free

Kobre & Kim offers highly specialized services that very few clients will ever need more than once. This minimizes our risk of being required to decline a client because of “conflicts of interest” and allows us to maintain our independence as advocates ready to litigate against most entities. For example, because we do not act as transactional counsel to any of the large banks, we can be adverse to them in more specialized matters, solicit discovery from them or represent individual employees working for those banks.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that we turn down previous clients. The mindset is meant to indicate that we’re not limited to and reliant upon particular clients and their interests.

Kobre & Kim is an equal opportunity employer and considers all applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, or military or veteran status or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local law.