Bloomberg has published a fairly detailed profile of one of the “new kids on the block” from China .. King and Wood
Here’s some of what they have to say about the firm and the new up and coming China firms..
Access the full article at? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-27/china-s-kid-law-firms-lure-attorneys-from-london-new-york-competitors.html
China’s `Kid’ Law Firms Lure Attorneys from London, New York Competitors
Rupert Li, international managing partner of King & Wood. Source: King & Wood via Bloomberg
Robert Lewis, senior international legal counsel for AllBright Law Offices. Photographer: Doug Martin/AllBright Law Office via Bloomberg
King & Wood, the Beijing-based law firm that advised on the world?s largest initial public offering, isn?t like the City or Wall Street rivals it worked with on the deal, International Managing Partner Rupert Li said.
?We?re kids. Light years behind,? Li said of his 17-year- old firm compared with others like the foreign legal advisers on the Agricultural Bank of China Ltd.?s $22.1 billion share sale.
Maybe not much longer, though. Firms like King & Wood, which cut its legal teeth helping clients comply with Chinese law, are now hiring international lawyers like Li, who used to work for the U.K.?s highest-grossing firm Clifford Chance LLP.
They?ve also opened offices outside mainland China to offer advice on local law in places like Hong Kong, the former British colony where Agricultural Bank listed.
?By doing that they could try to eliminate the middlemen – -the U.S. and other big international firms who guide their clients into China or who do the big IPOs of Chinese companies,? said Joe Sevack, a Hong Kong-based partner of Atlanta?s Troutman Sanders LLP. ?You gotta admire their ambition.?
Another Beijing firm, Jun He Law Offices, this year hired James Zhu from Seattle-based Perkins Coie LLP and Steven Cui from Cleveland-based Jones Day to open a Silicon Valley office, its second in the U.S.
Jun He?s midtown Manhattan office was the first overseas for any Chinese firm when it opened in 1993. That was 10 years after the Communist country first allowed a private law firm to set up in the southern province of Guangdong, where a special economic zone was established to attract foreign investment and help spark China?s economic transformation.
Dynamic Regulation
A complex, dynamic regulatory regime has developed, helping a group of elite Chinese law firms grow, said Robert Chu, who headed the Beijing office of New York-based Sullivan & Cromwell LLP from 2007 to 2009.
?The secular rise of these Chinese firms is part of a seismic shift in the competitive landscape for international firms in China,? said Chu, who now heads his firm?s Australia practice.
The new international focus of Chinese firms is ?very similar to Baker & McKenzie?s growth on the back of capital flows, following clients? expansion outside their domestic market,? said David Fleming, China managing partner of that law firm, which grew from its Chicago base to become the highest- grossing in the U.S., with offices in 39 countries.
Brand Building
King & Wood learned from the international law firms that it?s worked with and wants to build a brand as one of China?s best firms, said Li, 53, a Chinese national who graduated from Columbia Law School and New York University.
?In 20 years time, there will be a cluster of extremely good, full-service Chinese firms that resemble the operations of foreign firms and with a commitment to legal excellence,? said Li, who had been a member of Clifford Chance?s partnership council and its chief representative in Beijing until May.
With 190,000 lawyers, China has one attorney for every 6,977 people, compared with one for every 303 in the U.S. and for each 393 in the U.K. as of 2008, according to a March report by London-based Jomati Consultants LLP.
?The quality can become patchy once you get beyond the leading firms and individual lawyers,? said David Flavell, Asia Pacific general counsel for Groupe Danone SA, the world?s largest yogurt maker, which last year settled two years of disputes with its former Chinese partner.
