As Korea pushes to embed artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics across its factories and offices, the impact on jobs is no longer abstract. Workers are already feeling it. This is the third in a four-part series examining how AI is reshaping work on the ground — the opportunities it creates, the protections it erodes and the rules that unions, employers and policymakers are, or are not, putting in place to govern that transition. — ED.
A Seoul-based lawyer surnamed Ha spends about 600,000 won ($410) a month on artificial intelligence (AI) subscriptions such as Claude and Korean legal platforms such as SuperLawyer and LBOX. Hiring a junior lawyer would cost him close to 100 million won a year, roughly 14 times as much. The math, he says, is no longer close.
“Without AI, I’d probably have one more person in the office by now,” Ha told The Korea Times, adding that over the past two years, he has used large language models intensively for work. “I still need to review the quality of final drafts, but the need to hire new lawyers has definitely gone down.”
Only a few years ago, Korean law firms routinely hired swarms of new law school graduates to plow through ruling precedents, check statutes and draft the first versions of briefs. Now, more managing partners reach for a subscription instead of a job posting, and the same calculation is playing out across other white-collar professions, from legal offices to counseling rooms, as AI forces a reckoning over what kind of work still requires a human.
“I don’t regret it at all. In the past, all of this would have gone toward labor costs,” Ha said.
In his small office, the shift has been quiet but profound. Ha built his own specialized system by scanning his legal reference books and feeding them into a personalized database. Now, he can ask questions in everyday language and the AI searches his digital library, identifies the most relevant sections and provides analysis — a process he says he has fully automated.
It is unclear how widespread such AI adoption is. But according to LBOX, the most popular legal AI platform among Korean lawyers, it has roughly 22,000 members; there are a total of around 38,000 registered lawyers here.
According to Ko Hak-soo, a Seoul National University law professor who specializes in AI and technology law, the legal establishment is dangerously unprepared for what’s coming.
“The most troubling thing is that no one is systematically examining what changes are taking place with the rise of AI,” the professor said. “Everyone has opinions about changes brought by AI, but there is no organized effort to assess the real impact or prepare for it, especially in terms of training aspiring lawyers or those who recently became lawyers.”
Ko believes that AI adoption, still in early stages, threatens to deepen polarization within the profession. He described a scenario where experienced lawyers at major firms will capture even more value using AI, while tasks traditionally handled by junior lawyers are automated.
Source: Korea Times News
