Jason W. Shim is a California-based attorney whose work focuses on digital assets, securities regulation, and cross-border financial matters. His practice integrates legal analysis with technical and evidentiary considerations arising from blockchain-based systems and emerging market infrastructure. 

The practice emphasizes first-principles analysis over formulaic compliance. Many matters involve questions for which there is no controlling authority—only competing interpretations and evolving institutional signals.

The following matters illustrate selected aspects of Jason W. Shim’s practice, including cross-border securities disputes, enforcement proceedings, and litigation arising from contested corporate control. Summaries are informational and exclude confidential details. 

Jason W. Shim served as U.S. counsel to businessman Kim Kyung-joon in a securities dispute involving BBK Investment Advisory and DAS Corporation, an automotive-parts company later implicated in Korean criminal proceedings. DAS filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court seeking approximately USD 15.8 million in alleged investment losses arising from BBK’s collapse. Mr. Shim represented Mr. Kim in the U.S. proceedings, and the action was dismissed for insufficient evidence shortly before Korea’s December 2007 presidential election. The broader BBK/DAS controversy later intersected with Korean criminal and political proceedings concerning nominee ownership and corporate control, culminating in a 2020 Korean Supreme Court decision addressing beneficial ownership issues that had also been central to the earlier U.S. litigation.

Mr. Shim served as defense counsel for a law firm and its partners sued following a protracted corporate-control dispute involving competing claims to represent the same entity and control its property. After resolution of the underlying dispute, the prevailing faction brought a follow-on action against opposing counsel alleging breach of fiduciary duty, legal malpractice, and conversion. Mr. Shim demurred to all causes of action, arguing that no attorney-client or fiduciary relationship existed and that adversaries in litigation are not owed duties of care. The trial court sustained the demurrer without leave to amend, and the California Court of Appeal, Second District, unanimously affirmed in an unpublished opinion, reinforcing principles protecting the adversarial system and the finality of judgments.

Mr. Shim represented Korea Water Resources Corporation (KOWACO, now K-water), a Korean public enterprise, in enforcing a Korean money judgment against a debtor who had relocated to Southern California. Rather than wait for full domestication of the foreign judgment followed by post-judgment collection, Mr. Shim sought prejudgment attachment in San Diego Superior Court, presenting evidence of the Korean judgment, identifiable California assets, and the risk of dissipation. The court granted the attachment, freezing approximately USD 15 million in U.S. assets, demonstrating the availability of U.S. remedies to support cross-border enforcement by foreign public institutions.