# Korean law-firm database — v1 Collected 2026-09-16. Open `law_firms_index.html` for the readable index; `law_firms.sqlite` is the single authoritative database. HTML is a generated snapshot and will not update after manual database edits. ## Professional profile links Open [professional_profiles.html](professional_profiles.html) for searchable links and per-firm counts, or [professional_profile_counts.md](professional_profile_counts.md) for the count table and coverage notes. Raw page acquisition is documented in [profile_snapshots/README.md](profile_snapshots/README.md). The staged extraction and career-database design is in [career_database_pipeline.md](career_database_pipeline.md). The database contains **7,884 distinct professional profiles and 7,884 URLs across 19 firms**. All 21 firms were searched. HMP required human verification and ClassHankyul returned 403 Forbidden; zero obtained links does not mean zero professionals. Barun and Pyeong An totals are unions of available practice/team directories and may omit people not assigned to those categories. `professional_profiles` identifies each firm-local profile ID/slug. `professional_profile_links` is the separate URL table, linked by foreign keys to its profile and law firm. `profile_discovery_sources` preserves source URLs, request parameters, retrieval times and evidence digests. `profile_collection_coverage` records scope and gaps; `profile_url_checks` records 61 sampled URL checks, all HTTP 200 after transient failures were retried. Original law-firm/ranking tables were preserved unchanged. Views: `profile_counts_by_firm` and `profile_link_directory`. ```sql SELECT name_en, distinct_profiles, profile_urls, coverage_status FROM profile_counts_by_firm ORDER BY distinct_profiles DESC; SELECT * FROM profile_link_directory WHERE firm_id = 'kimchang'; ``` Counts describe published profile records, not lawyer headcounts or verified current employees. Advisers, patent professionals and other listed legal specialists are included; global directories include overseas offices. Language variants were not exhaustively enumerated. Profiles are deduplicated within a firm, not across firms. Biographies were not extracted into database fields; cached public directory responses and validation pages can contain embedded biographies. The evidence cache is under `.ai/scratch/profile_pages/` at the project root; `profile_discovery_manifest.json` indexes the sources used. Minju and KnC's public directories and sampled individual profiles were successfully accessed in this collection. The original homepage-evidence fields below remain a historical record of the earlier firm-list pass. ## Coverage - 21 distinct firms: union of ALB's 2025 South Korea top 10 and Hankyung's 2025 overall top 20. - 35 list memberships: ALB 10, Hankyung 20, ABLJ Best Overall five (unranked). - 14 original seed URLs; four verified professional-directory entry points. - English/Korean names, aliases, homepage evidence and provenance for every firm. - Founding year, Seoul address and telephone for the five seed firms. - ALB lawyer counts for ten firms and 2025 reported revenue for five, with sources and periods. ## Interpretation There is no universal rank. The initial five are exactly the supplied seed firms and coincide with ALB's first five and ABLJ's five Best Overall winners. ALB uses Asia-based lawyer headcount; Hankyung uses a best-law-firm survey. Do not combine the ranks into a composite score. ALB's published totals are preserved as reported, including cases where partner and associate subtotals do not sum to the total. The complete country table was readable in the publisher's search index; direct page opening failed. The methodology permits fallback to websites and previous submissions. Counts are not necessarily Korean-bar membership or Korea-only staffing. The 2025 revenue values are newspaper reports, not independently audited financials. Kim & Chang is expressly estimated. Addresses/phones are from Hankyung directory profiles and may lag subsequent changes. NULL means unavailable or not applicable; absence from a selected list is not zero and does not imply a particular lower rank. Minju's English label is a transliteration. Minju and KnC homepages were identified through third parties but could not be directly verified. Homepage evidence states are retained for every firm. The seed document's 14 URLs are preserved verbatim, with separately encoded clickable URLs; they are not a validated person-level dataset. Market means inclusion in Korean-market rankings, not legal domicile. Barun and Dongin are retained separately; the 2026-09-14 merger MOU is a proposal, not a confirmed completed merger. ## Tables and views `firms` stores identities; `firm_facts` stores sourced profile fields; `ranking_lists` and `ranking_entries` retain each methodology and membership; `metrics` stores dated quantitative observations; `links` retains seed and directory URLs; `sources` records provenance; `database_metadata` holds definitions. Views: `firm_directory`, `top_five`, `alb_top_10`, `hankyung_top_20`, `profile_counts_by_firm`, `profile_link_directory`. ```sql SELECT name_en, name_ko, homepage FROM top_five ORDER BY alb_2025_rank; SELECT hankyung_2025_rank, name_en, homepage FROM hankyung_top_20 ORDER BY hankyung_2025_rank; SELECT f.name_en, m.metric, m.period, m.value, m.unit, m.estimate, s.url FROM metrics m JOIN firms f USING(firm_id) JOIN sources s USING(source_id); SELECT f.name_en,l.link_type,l.url_original,l.verification_status FROM links l JOIN firms f USING(firm_id) WHERE source_id='seed'; ``` ## Principal sources - [Seed document](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UtOI--KiCUr2WtbG1hol88ZXFUyh_0xnmApatP5dAKs/edit) - [ALB 2025 rankings](https://www.legalbusinessonline.com/features/alb-asia-top-50-largest-law-firms-2025) - [ALB methodology](https://www.legalbusinessonline.com/other-news/closing-soon-alb-top-50-largest-law-firms-2025) - [Hankyung 2025 top 20](https://www.hankyung.com/lawbiz) - [ABLJ 2025 Best Overall awards](https://law.asia/korea-top-law-firms-2025/) - [2025 revenue reporting](https://www.asiae.co.kr/en/article/2026011510110358573) Full source and homepage records are inside the database and HTML index. The current version does not import foreign-firm lists or all ABLJ practice-category winners. Validation: SQLite integrity and foreign-key checks passed; all expected table/view counts and agreement of the five-firm memberships checked. Operational builder and curated input remain under project `.ai/`. The builder refuses to overwrite an existing database. ## Public release This is a fixed public release of the preliminary firm and profile inventory. The SQLite download is a transactionally consistent snapshot. Raw profile response bodies and the local evidence cache are not distributed with these browsing pages. Snapshot metadata may describe acquisition still in progress when this release was captured. The two HTML pages contain their own data and do not query a running database.