Series Index
Part 1 | Attorney Hong Seung-kwon: “AI Enters the Legal Field”
Part 2 | How Should Lawyers Use AI?
By Hong Seung-kwon
Principal Attorney, PAN Law Firm (skh@law-pan.com)
Human judgment now operates in an environment shaped by machine speed. Wherever you look—across industries and professions—AI has already taken its place. It is no exaggeration to say that how well a person uses AI has become part of what defines their competence. For lawyers as well, AI is no longer a distant concept. It has already become embedded in the texture of everyday work.
My first clear awareness of “AI” goes back much further than today’s headlines. It began with the film The Terminator, where an AI called Skynet appears. My memory of the plot is not precise, but the core premise was unmistakable: Skynet decides humans are unnecessary and triggers nuclear war. The first AI I encountered, in other words, was less a symbol of capability than one of fear—an emblem of danger.
Years later, I met AI again through the historic match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol. I still remember the attention that followed Lee’s single victory against AlphaGo. Of course, the deeper implication was equally clear: even Lee’s one win felt remarkable precisely because AlphaGo’s dominance was overwhelming. Watching that match, I felt as if a fragment of the Skynet that had lived in my childhood imagination had quietly stepped into reality.
Another moment stands out from law school, during a civil procedure class. It was around the time ChatGPT began to signal the opening of a new AI era. Our professor, explaining how AI might reshape the legal profession, showed the class a live exchange with ChatGPT. At the time, the model misinterpreted the legal term yuryubun (遺留分)—a concept in inheritance law—mistaking it for a phrase associated with “oil components” (油類分), and produced an absurdly irrelevant response. It was an unexpectedly sloppy error for something that had once resembled Skynet in my mind. And for a brief moment, it was enough to make me feel relieved.
Today, however, AI is no longer an occasional classroom demonstration. As a practicing attorney, I use multiple AI tools as part of my routine. ChatGPT is the one I rely on most, and I maintain a paid subscription. I use Gemini to refine phrasing and make sentences read more naturally, Perplexity for research that requires sources, and Clova Note to organize and structure voice transcripts. I also use a lawyer-specific AI tool called “SuperLawyer.” I quickly used up the standard plan’s monthly limit of 150 questions and moved to the professional tier, which allows up to 300. In that sense, the “Skynet” of my childhood has become a partner I can no longer work without.
Some speak of the risks of an AI-driven world. Others focus on the optimistic future it may bring. The legal industry, at least for now, seems slightly closer to the former—cautious, skeptical, and uneasy about what may be lost.
Still, one conclusion has become clearer the more I use these tools in practice: AI is not a substitute for judgment. It is closer to an instrument that rapidly organizes the raw materials of judgment. In repetitive and structured tasks—case law searches, drafting initial outlines, sorting issues into a coherent frame—AI can be remarkably efficient. But reading the context of a case, identifying what truly matters, and deciding which option carries real meaning for a client remain responsibilities that cannot be handed off. That still belongs to the lawyer.
This column begins at that boundary. As AI accelerates the pace of legal work, I want to record what should remain of a lawyer’s judgment—and which abilities become more essential, not less. Before grand predictions, there are the daily realities: practical trial-and-error, small discoveries, and subtle but undeniable shifts that emerge only through experience.
In the next piece, I will start from a simple question: from the perspective of a lawyer using AI as a tool, how far has AI entered legal practice—and where does the human still remain?
