To anybody in the region we’re all pretty aware that in HK & Singapore UK law firms are under serious challenge from their USA counterparts and now European and Australian firms too.. Here’s an article by recruiters “Law Alliance” that reinforces this.
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They write…
http://www.asialawblogging.com/2011/09/27/uks-legal-empire-danger/
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As we mentioned last week, some officials are pushing to make sure that the UK remains THE legal hub of the world, which (given the influence of English law worldwide) seems like a no brainer. But Alex Aldridge says not so fast my friends:
?It takes a while to get over squandering an empire. As our habit of placing the prefix ?Great? before ?Britain? suggests, we?re still not quite there yet. But deep down we know we blew it. The evidence is everywhere: from our dentists, who don?t really know what they?re doing anymore, to our universities, which are crumbling, just like our schools, hospitals, and public transport.
Somehow, though, the U.K?s legal system has avoided being dragged into this spiral of decline. Yes, we?re still good at law ? so good, in fact, that London is the top destination in the world for international companies to settle disputes, and English law the most popular among international in-house counsel (40% use it, with just 14% opting for New York law). And, in spite of the relatively tiny size of the British domestic legal market, our law firms manage to give yours a run for their money, with the Magic Circle quartet of Clifford Chance, Linklaters, Freshfields and A&O outdoing most of their U.S. rivals in terms of turnover and profits.?
However, he says, changes in home legal markets are leading new firms to Asia, where the U.K.?s long dominance can be challenged.
?The battle ground for now, though, is China and East Asia, where U.K. and U.S. law firms are currently fighting it out for dominance. Can we, the plucky underdogs, win? In the short term, you?d have to back us. After all, British firms have been present in Asia for far longer than most of their U.S. counterparts, having been driven by the constraints of the local U.K. market to expand abroad. Certainly, the new U.S. arrivals in Hong Kong, such as Sullivan & Cromwell, Davis Polk and Simpson Thacher, have a lot of catching up to do before they match the likes of Linklaters and Clifford Chance, which have been there over 30 years.
Further down the line, however, we could face problems. Worryingly for us, many of the young dual-qualified Chinese lawyers beloved of the international firms in Asia are choosing U.S. law schools over U.K. ones to get their international qualifications. They seem to be put off by our weird system of legal education, which sees law studied either as an undergraduate degree ? meaning students embark on legal study at just 18 ? or via a hurried year-long postgraduate conversion course, which lacks the rigour of a three year JD. Another turn-off is the fact that graduates of U.K. law schools complete their studies unqualified to practice, with the title of ?lawyer? only conferred at the end of an additional two-year long ?training contract? spent with a law firm.?
