[Law Firm Now] Mission Law Firm Leading the Venture Investment Ecosystem Venture Investment M&A Team

Mission Law Firm Venture Investment M&A Team. From the left, Youngsoo Kim, Dahye Ok, Dongjoo Kim, Sunghoon Kim, Sujin Lee, Jihoon Kim, Gun Jang Attorneys
[Photo by Mission Law Firm]

Mission Law Firm is a specialized law firm born from the startup founding ecosystem. Initially providing legal advice mainly to social ventures and impact investors, Mission has now grown into a guide for venture capital and innovative companies expanding beyond Korea to the global stage, leading the direction of venture investment.

At the center of this is Mission's Venture Investment M&A Team. With 14 out of 20 lawyers at Mission belonging to this team, it is the firm's flagship and the largest specialized venture investment team in the law firm industry. The team members responsible for venture investment contract review and related legal fields include Representative Attorney Kim Seong-hoon (Bar Exam 1st), Partner Attorney Lee Su-jin (4th), Attorney Lee Tae-jung (2nd), Attorney Park Jin-woo (9th), and Attorney Ok Da-hye (10th). Cross-border deals (multinational mergers and acquisitions) are handled by Jang Geon (6th), Kim Seo-ryong (9th), Choi Ji-yeon (8th), and U.S. attorney Kim Seong-do. M&A structuring and legal due diligence are managed by Representative Attorney Kim, Partner Attorney Lee, Jung Seong-hee (2nd), Jang Geon, Shin Jae-yoon (9th), and Attorney Jang Hyo-jun (11th). The completion of board of directors meetings, shareholders' meetings, and commercial registration according to each procedural execution is exclusively handled by Attorney Yoo Seok-hyun (10th).

Representative Attorney Kim directs strategies based on extensive practical experience in the venture investment ecosystem and engages in research, education, and policy activities for the venture investment ecosystem. He lectures on venture investment at the Venture Capital Association Training Institute and was the first to establish the course "Venture Investment and Startup Legal Management" at Yonsei University Graduate School of Law, thereby systematizing venture investment studies. Through Mission’s newsletter "Losgui," he provides easy-to-understand explanations of venture investment terminology and has organized legal issues such as joint liability of stakeholders and problems with investors' management consent rights in columns for the Korea Venture Investment Venture Finance Research Institute.

Mission serves as the official legal counsel for Korea Venture Investment Corporation and is the dedicated legal advisor for the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s Venture Fund. In January, Mission took a leap forward as a law firm specializing in cross-border venture investment and M&A by establishing its first Silicon Valley office in Korea. The team possesses expertise in formulating M&A strategies for successful venture investment exits and designing various deal structures. In the first half of this year, Mission Law Firm ranked joint 3rd with Kim & Chang Law Office in the Bloomberg M&A league table based on the number of transactions.

Last month, immediately following a Supreme Court ruling related to investors' management consent rights, the team held a forum attended by over 250 investors, founders, journalists, and members of the National Assembly. Together with Korea Venture Investment, Korea Startup Forum, and The Frontier, they hosted the "Investment Contract Management Consent Rights and Startup Governance Forum" to gather opinions from founders and investors regarding investors' management consent rights and discuss alternatives considering future startup governance. In the second half of this year, they are also preparing a policy improvement project related to corporate bankruptcy and liquidation.

Representative Attorney Kim said, "In reality, not all startups can succeed, but even if a startup fails, we will propose policy improvement measures to ensure that the failure does not lead to the failure of innovation itself."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.