K3 Insights

K3 Legal’s growing Korean legal team is rapidly growing in reputation within the Korean community in Auckland. K3’s Korean capability began with the recruitment of Korean born, Kiwi, Julia Leenoh in 2018. A Senior Associate, Julia has since been joined by two strong hires, including Solicitors’, Jane Jung and Sam Kim.

Managing Director, Edwin Morrison says “while we weren’t specifically starting out to grow a Korean team within our firm, we’ve seen strong leadership and drive from Julia, which has meant team growth has been a natural progression. This has been more a result of demand than anything else, which is a real credit to Julia and the team”.

K3 Legal’s Korean advocates haven’t been tasked with working only within the Korean community. In fact, Julia and the team work across a number of our team’s large litigation projects, including civil, family and employment as well as commercial matters for many different business entities.

According to Julia, “this ability to offer an understanding of the Korean language, culture, and business practices backed by the wider K3 legal team, is a great advantage to the Korean community.”

K3’s push into the Korean market comes as part of their longstanding strategy to become a truly multi-cultural law firm. With strongly established Chinese and Japanese teams already thriving within the firm, Morrison says that “while there are many law firms which may be Chinese or Korean, or larger firms with ethnic legal divisions, we wanted to have these cultures completely engrained. This is the only way to authentically bridge the gap between these cultures’ traditional business practices, with New Zealand culture and, of course, law”.

K3 Legal Korean team

Julia Leenoh

After completing her undergraduate studies at the University of Auckland, Julia went to North Carolina, America to complete her LLM degree at Duke University. She sat for the New York bar exam while she was there and got admitted in New York state before returning to New Zealand to focus on building her experience.

Julia has worked in a number of boutique law firms across Auckland, focusing on general practice and litigation work before moving to K3 Legal. With her wide breadth of knowledge in a variety of different legal specialisations, Julia is able to offer clients specialist advice that is pragmatic and does not lose sight of the final objective for clients.

Sam Kim

Sam started his legal career at a general practice firm, gaining experience in defamation, medical misconduct, and immigration cases. He then moved on to work for the Public Defence Service providing legal advice and representation for the marginalised members of the society, as a criminal defence lawyer.

Within K3, Sam will be working across Criminal and Litigation, as well as assisting the wider team.

Jane Jung

Jane is a recent graduate, joining K3 in early 2021. Since joining, Jane has worked with partners and senior lawyers across the firm, gaining exposure to the different specialisations of law including civil, family and construction law. Jane is currently in the litigation team and hopes to further expand on her skills and knowledge across general litigation practice.