BoYoung Lee is a Korean lawyer at Dongin Law LLC, practising in international matters, criminal and civil litigation. In June 2026, BoYoung participated in our International placement programme. In this blog, she details her experience, highlighting the differences between our legal jurisdictions.
In my sixth year of practice as a Korean lawyer, this year has been one full of hopes and aspirations, along with an almost equal amount of insecurity and self-doubt. The last 5 years have been about learning the basics:
- How to write legal arguments
- Apply for evidence (there is no disclosure system in Korea, so evidence has to be obtained through the court)
- Face opposing counsel during mediation
- Orally present my arguments before a panel of judges.
This year, I felt I’d reached a turning point. It was time for me to level up in some way or another. The problem was that I had no idea how.
That’s when I came across the Bar Council’s International placement programme for Korean lawyers. I didn’t know what to expect; only that I would be placed in chambers for the second week and tour various courts during the first.
And so I took the 14hour flight, leaving behind my two-year-old, on my very first visit to London. I was with 4 other accomplished Korean lawyers of a similar age and at about the same stage in their careers as me, sharing similar aspirations and anxieties. One of us was sponsored by his firm to pursue an LL.M. at Harvard the very next month, hoping eventually to land a secondment position. Two were self-employed, running their own law firms. The remaining three of us - including our Harvard-bound colleague - were from mid-sized to large law firms, looking either for a career change or for ways to strengthen the paths we were already on. So, with different but similar expectations, there were 5 of us.
Day one: We were introduced to three barristers who were King’s Counsel and members of the International Committee, including its Chair. I was surprised to learn that this International placement programme dated back 30 or 40 years, and that after Covid-19, Korea was the first country chosen to participate. Even more surprising was that one of the barristers we talked to had been there from the start, which meant that he’d been practising for over 40 years.
Kirsty Brimelow KC, 2026 Chair of the Bar Council, kindly made time in her busy schedule to have lunch with us. We spoke about how Kirsty was campaigning to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 11 to 14, and we also shared how, in Korea, the very opposite debate was going on. Juvenile crime is a big concern in Korea, with some children reportedly committing crimes knowing full well that they are too young to be held criminally responsible.
Day two: We visited the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. This must be basic knowledge in the UK, but I hadn’t known that the history of the Supreme Court is relatively short, because before 2009 the House of Lords performed its function. Learning about the role of the privy council, which serves as the final court of appeal for many jurisdictions outside the UK, broadened my rather narrow perspective. I secretly envied the way the English legal profession was striving to extend its reach across the world.
Our visit nicely coincided with London International Disputes Week, so we were able to attend some of the talks that were hosted. I stumbled into one of the sessions, which, judging from its title, I thought would be about international arbitration, an area of interest of mine. Only after taking my seat did I realise that it was in fact a session focused specifically on India. It was a funny mistake on my part, but a memorable experience through which I was able to appreciate the breadth of the English legal market.
Day three: We wrapped up our tour of the London courts with the Rolls Building, after visiting the Royal Courts of Justice, the Old Bailey, the Supreme Court, and others. Our cohort could not stop talking about how magical the Inns of Court were, like the four houses in Harry Potter.
Day 4 and 5: We finished our first week with a trip to Bristol. We gave a PowerPoint presentation about the legal system in Korea, which led to a brief roundtable discussion with the barristers from Guildhall Chambers, joined by two law students from the University of Bristol.
Week two: We were each placed in different chambers where we shadowed barristers, observed hearings and reviewed case bundles.
The work of a barrister itself didn’t feel entirely unfamiliar to me. What struck me more was how the work was distributed. In Korea, high-value or cross-border disputes involving tens of billions of Korean won tend to be dominated by the largest law firms, and lawyers outside those firms may have very few opportunities to work on cases of that scale or breadth. The structure of the English Bar seemed quite different.
In London, clerks in each set of chambers play an important role in allocating work among barristers, and the ‘cab rank rule’ restricts barristers being able to pick and choose their clients. And of course, the English legal profession has its division between solicitors and barristers, with solicitors instructing barristers, and barristers taking on the advocacy in court. This made me think that, depending on how the systems around us are designed, the lives we have as lawyers can be quite different, even though the work we do may be similar.
Korea, in the meantime, is also having its own discussions about the future of the legal market, as the number of lawyers has increased threefold in the past 15 years. My experience in London led me to think about how I could build my career within the system Korea currently has.
It’s been over two months since my visit to London. I’m back home, handling 50 cases - an average caseload for an associate lawyer at a mid-sized law firm. I’m thankful for the meaningful opportunity given to me this summer and I’m sure this experience will prove to be a steppingstone when I look back.
I would like to thank Hannan from the Bar Council for facilitating our two weeks in London, the five chambers that were kind enough to have us, the Bar Council and the Law Society, barristers and solicitors with a Korean background who gave us valuable insights into the English legal market, and all those who received us.