Anthony Lin the correspondent for Law.com group in Asia has just published an? article….The New China Hands….Global firms are carefully grooming mainland-born, Western-educated lawyers to lead their China practices.
?
Well worth a read if you want to know who you’ll be dealing with in 5 years time
?
He writes…
Nearly 20 years ago, Z. Julie Gao graduated from Peking University with a law degree and left China for the United States. Eventually landing in Los Angeles, she earned a second law degree there in 1998. She and her husband, a fellow Peking University graduate, became naturalized U.S. citizens, and their son was born in the U.S. in 2002. Her parents and brother moved to America as well.
Today, however, she’s a corporate partner working out of the Hong Kong office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom — at least, when she’s not in Shanghai or Beijing. “I lived in the States for 13 years,” says Gao, still sounding surprised at the turn her life has taken. “We had a comfortable life. We had no conscious plans to go back [to China].”
Just a decade ago, China’s rise as an economic superpower still seemed distant and uncertain. For Chinese lawyers able to study or work abroad, the United States seemed a safer bet than their homeland. Back then, the China practice of major international firms was still mainly the province of the Old China Hands — lawyers in the mold of Jerome Cohen and Owen Nee, who co-founded the first foreign law office in Beijing for Coudert Brothers in 1979. These early practices, which attracted many lawyers who perhaps had a deeper affinity for Chinese language and culture than the practice of law, were mainly “inbound” practices, focused on representing U.S. and other multinationals in opening factories and shops in China.
Link to full article at? http://www.law.com/jsp/law/international/LawArticleIntl.jsp?id=1202445964493&src=EMC-Email&et=editorial&bu=Law.com&pt=LAWCOM%20Newswire&cn=NW_20100310&kw=The%20New%20China%20Hands