Asia Chronicles

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 Asia in 2011 thus far (the vast majority in Hong Kong/ China and not including partners or in house placements), but 42 of those had come by the end of June.

As we predicted in November, 2010, a COLA/Expat package of US$80,000 (annually) has become the standard in Hong Kong and China, up from $60,000. Please feel free to check out this link to see some of our recent articles on expat / cola allowances in Asia...

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 we don’t know yet, we hope you will get in touch.]

For the record, we continue to remain extremely busy in the Asia markets, making already this year 42 US associate or counsel placements at law firms in Hong Kong / China and Singapore, as well as five in-house placements in Hong Kong / China. Our partner work in these markets, though we try to keep a tighter lid on that data, has also been increasingly fast and furious.

Housing markets tend to be a barometer of more general market conditions, and nowhere is that more apparent than in more emerging economies. While China is more of an emerging superpower than an emerging economy, the grand fall and rise of the Hong Kong property markets are evidence of general economic strength and renewed optimism in this part of the world.