Please check out our daily blog, www.theasiachronicles.com, where we also have a new post today by Alexis Lamb, regarding the rising need for US litigation associates in Asia, among our numerous daily news posts on international biglaw in Asia.

Here we are in the traditional vacation time of July and August, when interview processes can drag out quite a bit. This is especially true in this current still very hot biglaw market in Asia, where busy hiring partners are also juggling 2-week family vacations (sometimes piggy backed around a week or two working from NYC office, making the vacation time seem extended even further).

We feel fortunate at Kinney Asia that we have been able to add two US associate placements this week already – a junior associate placement in Singapore at a top UK firm and a junior associate placement in Hong Kong at a top UK firm’s Korea practice. This continues what has been a spectacular year for Kinney in Asia, with almost 50 US associate placements already this year.

While we expect the US biglaw associate lateral hiring market in HK / China and Singapore to remain very strong during the 2^nd half of ’11, we don’t expect the sizzling hiring pace of the 1^st half of ’11 to continue. The first half of ’11 was an anomaly, a situation caused by combination of extreme boom market for more than a year in HK / China and most of Asia, and the odd circumstance of busy Asia offices becoming very understaffed and not being allowed to hire as needed, and for many months not at all, for a 18 months of a bona-fide boom time. The boom has continued since then, another 7 months so far, although deal flow has been slowing a bit in some biglaw firms’ US practices in HK / China (some IPOs in HK, most notably Prada, has fallen flat and investigations and shareholder class actions filed against some Chinese companies have slowed down IPOs of Chinese companies in the US). It is still a very hot market, but going through a speed bump now and there has been a lot of hiring in the past few months.

More >>