After Coupang's massive personal data leak, law firms rushed to recruit participants for class-action (joint) lawsuits. It appears they expect success fees worth hundreds of millions of won if enough people join.
As of the 9th, more than 60 online communities were preparing or recruiting for class-action lawsuits against Coupang. The cumulative membership stands at 600,000. Although there are ghost accounts mixed in, because about 33.7 million people were victims of the Coupang data leak, tens of thousands could join the class action.
Legal professionals expect, based on precedents in data-leak cases, that if plaintiffs win a class action against Coupang, the per-person compensation will be around 100,000 won. In the 2016 Interpark and 2024 Modetour Network personal data leak cases, the courts also ordered compensation of 100,000 won per victim.
The success fee rates presented by law firms and law offices recruiting class-action participants range from 10% to 30%. Attorney Ha Hee-bong at Lopid Law Office offered a participation fee of 11,000 won and a 10% success fee. That applies if the case ends at the first instance; if higher appeals proceed, 5 percentage points are added to the success fee per appellate stage.
Illo, the law firm that attorney Kim Gyu-hyeon belongs to, is pursuing a class action on the condition of a 30% success fee with no retainer or litigation expense. Attorney Lee Don-ho, the head of Nova Law Office and a YouTuber, is recruiting participants with a 11,000 won retainer and a 20% success fee.
The reason attorneys charge no retainer or only a relatively small amount is that, given the nature of class actions, they can earn revenue from success fees if enough people join. For example, if they handle a class action with 10,000 participants and win 100,000 won per person, they could earn about 300 million won at a 30% success fee.
A legal professional said, "Class actions do not carry as heavy a pleading burden as individual cases, and the paperwork templates are repeated almost identically, so profitability is good relative to the workload."
Law firms recruiting class-action participants launched promotional drives mainly on YouTube and other social media (SNS). That is because class actions tend to gravitate toward places with larger participation.
There are also cases seeking differentiation by filing for punitive damages in U.S. courts. SJKP, the U.S. local entity of law firm Daeryun, said it plans to file a consumer class action against Coupang Inc., Coupang's parent company, in the U.S. District Court in New York. The retainer alone was set at 100,000 to 200,000 won. The United States allows punitive damages even in personal data leak cases, so the compensation amount could grow.
However, for lawsuits in the United States, it is hard to gauge the compensation amount. In the Equifax case, where 143 million people's personal data was leaked in a 2017 hack, a total settlement fund of $700 million (about 900 billion won) was created, but the amounts actually paid to individual victims reportedly mostly ranged from $5 to $125 (about 7,300 to 183,800 won). Whether Coupang Inc. falls under the jurisdiction of U.S. courts could also become an issue, raising the possibility of a prolonged lawsuit.