KPMG Law in Taiwan > Taipei, Taiwan > Firm Profile

Jerry Cho, Managing Partner

What do you see as the main points that differentiate KPMG Law Firm (Taiwan) from your competitors?

What differentiates KPMG Law Firm (Taiwan) from our competitors and other traditional law firms in the market, is that our firm possesses the capability and expertise in new practice areas such as GDPR, FinTech and family constitution. However, what more differentiates us is our ability to provide our clients with a truly comprehensive and integrated service. Our firm has continuously developed and evolved with KPMG (Taiwan) and its audit and assurance, tax, and advisory arms over the past few years. And as a result, our firm does not just provide our clients with legal services. We hope to provide our clients all-in-one solutions to help them solve their accounting, tax and commercial issues at one time.

Which practices do you see growing in the next 12 months? What are the drivers behind that?

We anticipate growth in practice areas such as FinTech, the GDPR, and family constitution in the area of family business and wealth succession. These growth areas are largely driven by recent law reforms happening around the world, the emergence and maturation of new and complex financial technologies in the market, and an increased awareness of entrepreneurial families for the need to implement transparency and efficiency in managing and safeguarding their family businesses and wealth.

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

Our firm strongly believes in continuous education and firm culture; to which I believe are the main changes in our firm that will benefit our clients in the long-run. We tried to establish a strong firm culture to think of what clients’ need when providing services. We are conscious of our fees, and we always place ourselves in the perspective of our clients, to create commercially practical solutions for our clients that add value and are accurate.

Is technology changing the way you interact with your clients, and the services you can provide them?

Modern technology has created an expectation that our clients will be able to interact and work with us in real-time, and whenever and wherever they are. The traditional notions of cross-border and time differences are no longer barriers to the way we do our work as lawyers and as a law firm. As such, our lawyers are encouraged to make use of mobile applications to facilitate better communication and collaboration with clients. And as mentioned above, technology has paved way for new practice areas for lawyers. We are now working very hard to become the forerunners and experts of these practice areas.

Can you give us a practical example of how you have helped a client to add value to their business?

At the beginning of 2017, our firm successfully assisted a client in obtaining ownership in the McDonald’s chain in Taiwan. During the two years this deal has lasted, whether it was during negotiations, at closing or after closing, our firm has collaborated and combined our expertise with that of the audit, taxation and consultancy teams of KPMG (Taiwan), and together, we successfully provided our clients with a multi-faceted and all-in-one service and successfully assisted our client in completing this transaction. Not only were we able to assist our client to seamlessly take ownership in one of the biggest fast food chains Taiwan, we were able to successfully assist our client to continuously counter operational difficulties and ensure that our client’s business takes off.

Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms – where do you see the firm in three year’s time?

Even though KPMG Law Firm (Taiwan) is a relatively young firm, we have managed to increase our firm size, our profit margins, and our clientele significantly and in a relatively short amount of time. Our firm has been one of the fastest growing law firms in Taiwan.

Looking to the future, we believe that in addition to continuous growth and gaining new clients from existing and new industries, our firm’s goal moreover is to stabilize our operations and really develop long-term relationships with our clients. I am confident that KPMG Law Firm (Taiwan) has the chance to become one of the biggest law firms in Taiwan in the next few years.

Lawrence Ong, KPMG Law Firm

What do you see as the main points that differentiate KPMG Law Firm from your competitors?

We offer a true multidisciplinary practice comprising of legal, financial advisory, tax advisory , and cybersecurity advisory services from all KPMG departments.

Which practices do you see growing in the next 12 months? What are the drivers behind that?

Cybersecurity, privacy and AI law (growth of AI and chatbots)

Renewables law (green energy transition)

Cross border investments (decoupling of China/US, on-shoring and near-shoring)

Family and estate planning law (growth of private wealth and de-risking of family assets)

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

We now have stricter quality controls involving multiple partner review of a project, without increasing client’s financial burden.

Is technology changing the way you interact with your clients, and the services you can provide them?

Somewhat. We use more AI in our service delivery and in analyzing client trends.

Can you give us a practical example of how you have helped a client to add value to their business?

A client approached us to help them negotiate a purchase of another company, which would greatly add to its value. Once we stepped in we realized the main issue holding up the purchase involved a proper valuation of the seller and emergency funding the seller required to stay afloat during the sale process. We therefore asked our financial advisory team to conduct a third party valuation that was acceptable to both sides, and to coordinate for private investor funding of a bridge loan. The deal was negotiated over 3 months and closed, purchase successfully accomplished.

Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms – where do you see the firm in three years’ time?

In terms of developments in emergent fields such as renewables, AI, and privacy, and in traditional fields such as corporate governance and commercial compliance, our clients look to us for advice and guidance of their business activities.  We expect such trend to continue over the next five years.