Robert here, writing from home in Miami. Please note that I will be available to meet US biglaw associates thinking of an Asia move while in San Francisco April 14 to 17 and in NYC April 24 to 26 and May 2 and 3. For most of May Robert and I will be working from our Hong Kong offices and of course available there to meet our readers.
Kinney Recruiting will be participating in the VietAbroader Career Conference at NYU, April 24 – 25, sponsored by VietAbroader and NYU’s Asia Law Society. I will be giving a presentation, and available to answer questions, on working in biglaw in Southeast Asia. Thus, even if you are not specifically interested in living and working in Vietnam, feel free to stop by NYU at 12noon Sunday, April 25, if you are interested in lateraling to a market in Southeast Asia, such as Singapore or Hong Kong, for example.
Things continue to go well in our US associate and counsel recruiting efforts in HK / China, with now well over 20 placements already in ’10, including 2 more this week. We have a number of offers outstanding as well, so expect more placements soon.
As for the state of the biglaw US associate lateral hiring in Asia, things have not changed much since our last post. The number of openings and hiring in HK / China and Singapore continue to increase substantially, although keep in mind that firms are being very selective (much more so than what was the case in ’06 through mid ’08 Asia hiring boom, for example), due to the flood of very qualified candidates on the market (especially those seeking to lateral from NYC). Also, please note that the interview / hiring process is still taking much longer than what is typical. As long as the US major markets are in only a slow recovery, firms will hesitate to give even their busiest and understaffed Asia offices a full green light on hiring laterals. Therefore, US and UK firms in HK / China, for example, are typically looking to hire only about half of their actual US associate lateral need. Further, firms sometimes at the last minute try to band aid a need with an internal secondment, especially at the more junior levels. Firms also have a lot of leverage in the market now, considering how many impressive US associate lateral candidates are available (in contrast, in ’06 and ’07, for example, firms were giving quick offers because of the scarcity of highly qualified US associate candidates on the market in Asia). So in short, be prepared for a rather long interview process at your eventual landing spot and also a job search that is more likely to take months than weeks.
Cap markets continues to be the most in demand practice area, while M&A is still a bit slow in HK / China (although we are making M&A focused associate placements). Other areas, such as project finance, banking & finance, and IP, for example, are a tougher job search in HK / China, although we did just place a project finance ‘06 associate last week. HK / China is by far the most active US biglaw attorney hiring market, while Singapore is picking up quite a bit and Tokyo is still slow.
To give you an example of how selective US practices (in both US and UK firms) are at present, of our most recent 20 US associate placements in HK / China this year, 17 have come from top 10 US firms and 19 are fluent in either Mandarin or Korean.
By all means, I don’t mean to dampen the enthusiasm of those seeking a move to Asia, but not hailing from top 10 US firms. Just keep in mind that it may be a long process. It is a very big career move though and at the end of the day, it is not going to be all that important, career-wise, whether your job search lasted 1 month or 1 year. Even if you are not yet ready to start a job search, but have some interest in a potential future move to Asia, feel free to reach out to us at Kinney for any advice on such a big move and to discuss the Asia markets in general. Most of our US associate placements in Asia are of people we have known for months or even more than a year in advance, who were referred to us as they were just thinking about a possible move to Asia.
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