Asia Pacific Legal Market Summary February 2018

(As excerpted from our monthly Associate Newsletter - Asia Pacific)

Associate Newsletter – Asia Pacific is a monthly resource that reports current legal market news, trends, partner moves and active opportunities in the Asia Pacific legal markets.

Legal Market Summary

HONG KONG

Happy Chinese New Year! Kung Hey Fat Choy! We wish you and your families a happy and prosperous Year of the Dog.

Given the festival, recruitment has slightly slowdown in February. Firms remain interested in hiring across practice areas, but partners are away and interviews cannot be arranged. We foresee the recruitment activities will pick up again after Chinese New Year. UK and US firms are generally active in corporate finance, banking and finance, dispute resolution and funds sector. The hiring is mainly in junior to mid-level.

CHINA

China is picking up with a small flurry of new corporate roles in the past few weeks, although we still expect more activity after 春节. We are seeing the most activity with US firms and think this is where there will be significant opportunity in the Year of the Dog to take a step up to these platforms.

SINGAPORE

Recruitment has picked up in Singapore. US firms in particular are actively recruiting for junior to mid-level finance and corporate lawyers. They are open to relocating the right candidates to the region and lawyers with overseas experience are at an advantage. UK firms are generally actively seeking strong mid-level finance lawyers. They are open minded to look at locally and internationally qualified lawyers. Asia language skills are always a plus.

SOUTH KOREA

South Korea remains steady with opportunities focused around corporate M&A and PE. There is still a strong preference for US-qualified talent with fluency in Korean looking to return to Seoul with a small handful of firms open to candidates being based in Hong Kong. English fluency is important for drafting, sometimes preferred over Korean fluency. High-quality training and academics are essential for the market at the moment.

AUSTRALIA

Sydney is busy across Corporate (M&A, ECM and DCM), IT/TMT, banking & finance, real estate and litigation with most large firms having needs at different levels across these practice areas. In the last couple of weeks, we have seen increased demand for employment lawyers across top-tier firms as well.

Demand for real estate lawyers in Melbourne remains strong along with corporate and finance lawyers. Construction litigation and environment & planning are two further areas where demand is still significant.

Demand for legal talent in Perth is high with global and top-tier law firms looking to hire associate and senior associate candidates across their corporate, real estate and construction practice groups.

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Recent Partner Moves in Asia Pacific

These listed partner moves are obtained from both public sources and Major, Lindsey & Africa. This list is not intended to represent Major, Lindsey & Africa as the consultancy involved in the moves, although some moves may have been brokered by Major, Lindsey & Africa.