War against English

After the LLM, interestingly, there have been several opportunities at the workplace for me to draft initial opinions in English. I, as an English as a Second Language learner, never expected myself to use English this much during my professional career. In my first years as a lawyer, I had a colleague who was super fluent in English - I bet she felt free to write documents in English, and hence I never had a chance to use English beyond reading contracts and raw materials written in English.

My first experience of using English was during an outbound deal. One Korean company invested in a Southeast Asian company. There, lawyers weren't familiar with "Koreanized" concerns - they were dealing with evolving countries and some regulations, which exist but lawyers aren't aware of, had not been executed. Still, investors were worried as there were so-called laws. During the project, I had to use my broken English to understand the whole picture and regulations, communicate with local lawyers, and navigate and alleviate the concerns of the client.

The next experience was also a foreign investment in the Southeast Asia region. This time, I needed to collaborate with several law firms in the region, ask them to write an LDD report, translate it (not word for word but summarizing and highlighting the important features), and report it to the client. I had to collaborate with a Singaporean law firm. Before such incidents, I never had a connection with Singaporean lawyers - I wasn't used to the accent. I remember one night the Singaporean associate called me, and I was super embarrassed. I somehow succeeded in communicating with her, but as I was super panicked - at the last point of the call, I forgot all the details I talked to her about. I asked her - Hey, could you summarize the whole conversation for me? I need to report this call to my boss. - She kindly did it for me.

Nowadays, I draft Korean legal opinions in English for my firm's US attorney. He speaks English fluently but prefers my 'broken English.' Occasionally, I translate sentences for a foreign investor who is not a native English speaker. While my firm has a translation team, there are times when circumstances are challenging. In such cases, when I update the Korean draft, I also revise the English draft accordingly. Despite my concern about my 'broken English,' nobody takes the time to revise it.

Luckily, there are many AI-based LLM models. Of course, I can't use it for the client's information or factual findings. But for some legal opinions (where I only describe current regulations in Korea) - I draft them and ask ChatGPT to "proofread" them. For some sentences I can't translate well - when I'm blocked I ask DeepL to translate it first.

I hope that technological progress allows these tools to break down barriers, making translation more seamless in the future. Well, then I might lose my job.