As our readers know, members of our Asia team each year participate in numerous seminars related to US biglaw recruiting in Asia.  We record these events from time to time and will begin sharing them on the Asia Chronicles since most of our readers cannot attend such events. Please follow the links below for excerpts [...]

Happy Chinese New Year! We were extremely busy the past few months, including most of our US based team working from our Hong Kong offices during November and December. As a follow up from our recent post, which listed our 62 US associate and counsel placements in Asia last year (vast majority in HK / [...]

The lateral hiring market for biglaw US attorneys has slowed down substantially in the past four months.   We at Kinney have been fortunate to have continued a nice run of placements, but even our pace has slowed due to market conditions.  We have made 62 placements of US associates and counsels at law firms in [...]

I learned the hard way on an early trip to Hong Kong that spending a week or two in the terriory roaming on a US mobile phone can get expensive quickly. Fortunately, there are several solutions, and probably many more I have yet to discover.  Here are my favorites. 1.  The first solution is by [...]

We have recently been working with several firms in Tokyo on hiring needs which range from M&A/cap markets to project finance to litigation/dispute resolution.   In the past 5 months, the following roles in Tokyo BigLaw have popped up: Junior to mid-level US associate candidates with capital markets experience.  Ideal candidates will also have experience in [...]

In our ever-present quest to read the tea leaves for candidates who are attempting to time their moves to Asia to maximize the development of their skills while not “missing the boat”, one place we always want to look is the IPO market. Current IPO market sentiment in China is slightly gloomy, but the headlines [...]

In the past month, while cap markets hiring has finally slowed, we have made 4 placements in fund formation at US and UK firms, and we expect a few more of such hires in the next few weeks in the region.  In years past, we would make less than four of such placements in Hong [...]

Please feel free to check out this link to see some of our recent articles on expat / cola allowances in Asia. As we predicted in November, ’10, US$80,000 has become much more the standard in Hong Kong and China.  80k has replaced 60k as what is considered a highly competitive number. Most US and [...]

A good number of our placements over the last six years have been of Korean-speaking attorneys, most of whom are Korean natives who were educated in the United States after a preliminary legal education in Korea.  There are very few UK-trained Korean transactional lawyers interested in practicing in Asia.  [If there are any out there [...]

Mongolia.   The name itself conjures up images of warrior horse-lords, high-end cashmere, vast expanses of steppe, endless “ceremonial” toasts of vodka and fermented mare’s milk, and the legendary Genghis Khan (who, in my mind’s eye, looks a bit like Jason Momoa in HBO’s Game of Thrones).   OK, maybe I’m the only one who thinks of [...]

Please check out our daily blog, www.theasiachronicles.com, where we also have a new post today by Alexis Lamb, regarding the rising need for US litigation associates in Asia, among our numerous daily news posts on international biglaw in Asia. Here we are in the traditional vacation time of July and August, when interview processes can [...]

Alexis Lamb here.  Midsummer is a mighty fine time to be in Hong Kong and July is one splendid month to be sitting on a junk in the middle of the South China Sea with 30 of your closest friends and a sea-breeze in hand.   Fortunately for all you Asia-minded US litigators, the number of [...]