Robert here, writing from Hong Kong. The past week has been very busy, thus it has taken a couple of weeks to put up another post.

The number of US associate openings continues to increase in Asia, especially in Hong Kong and Greater China, and especially in now-busy capital markets groups. Two particularly special and urgent openings are for M&A 4th to 7th year associates for Shanghai and Hong Kong. The Shanghai opening, a private equity-focused position, does not require Mandarin fluency, but the Hong Kong opening, a more general M&A spot, does. I consider these openings very special opportunities for a number of reasons, including firm, supervising partner, and the realistic partnership track available in both of them. I am not going to go into great detail here, but suffice to say that I believe these are A+ positions and arguably among the best private equity/M&A spots in all of Asia. They are both extremely selective openings, will be filled soon, and the new hires will likely come from a top 10 US firm, most likely from NYC. We know both supervising partners very well and of course we are happy to fill you in on the details. I am cutting this Asia trip shorter than planned for some business in NYC next week, so can also meet in person with qualified and interested persons.

Last week, we made another placement of a US associate in Hong Kong (continuing a nice placement run of the last few months in Hong Kong and Greater China) and moved very close to placements (offers in hand) of a US partner, a US counsel and two more US associates in Hong Kong. Those successes were all expected, as they have been in the works for some time.

Robert and I spent most of last week together in Hong Kong meeting with partner-level candidates and clients. Many of these meetings were set up by our US and Asia-based recruiting back office. This week the focus is more on associate and firm client meetings. It is truly a team effort of our Asia group that allows us to have the privilege of representing so many very impressive senior attorneys, and remarkable people, in Asia. The meetings happen from three sources: a) already established personal relationships (past career consulting or recruiting for partner’s firm); b) referrals; and c) our impressive back office team of recruiters based in the US and Asia.

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Partner recruiting season is never closed, and there’s normally no bag limit. Nevertheless, as new sharing ratios get set to be announced over the coming months, this is the time of year that many ultimately fruitful and plenty of fruitless discussions between law firms and potential lateral partners begin. The meat of these discussions varies little, whether in Asia, the US, or Europe. Unfortunately, many of the partners who are looking at their options could be saved a lot of time for themselves and the firms that they are considering with some introspection. Particularly in this über-cautious economic environment, prospects for marginal players are slim. With this in mind, since many of our readers are partners and some of our associate readers ultimately will be partners, it seems that now is as good a time as any to discuss what makes a partner a viable lateral candidate.

Every firm asks for some of the same data points which give them information about the financial picture of a lawyer’s practice, not merely billed hours. All of the relevant, basic economic factors can be determined using three pieces of information: personal billable hours for each team member, working attorney collections for each, and billing and/or originating attorney collections for the partners. From these pieces of information, one can derive hourly rate, revenue per lawyer, and most other relevant raw data. But each situation is different and distilling the data to these simple figures is rarely enough. One example (not necessarily from Asia, but very possibly…) may illustrate the point.

The candidate team was from an international law firm. The lead partner came to us with a sizable book of business and a loyal team. He was around 50 years in age. His skill set, the size of the business, his ability to move it to several of our client firms, and his well-constructed team all looked promising because it folded well into the business plan of a couple of our client firms, at least tangentially.

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Robert here. Apologies for the delay in getting this post up. I just returned Tuesday from a few weeks of hectic work travel – Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York – and have been slammed the first couple of days back in the office. It was the typical non-stop meetings for 16 days (with both candidates and firms), plus I also made a few associate placements in HK (two M&A and one cap markets) earlier this month.

We are representing a large number of both US associate and partner candidates in Asia now, especially in HK / China, and our entire team is being kept quite busy. Robert and I traveled to Hong Kong the past couple of weeks mainly in order to help some of our partner candidates pitch their skill set and books to their target firms, as well as help firms attract key partner additions they need.

I plan to return to HK / China later this summer for a longer six week trip, as well, after a short Dubai trip.  Yuliya is in Russia all summer working in that market (things are starting to pick up deal flow wise in Russia, but it will be a while before firms there start hiring again).

We have a few urgent associate openings right now in HK / China (many more slower moving openings, but these are the most urgent):

1) 5 to 10 years cap markets US associate / counsel, fluent Mandarin, Hong Kong
2) 7+ years energy / project finance US associate / counsel, fluent Mandarin, Hong Kong / China
3) 4 to 7 years PE / M&A associate, Mandarin preferred, Hong Kong
4) 7+ years IP / TMT (litigation and transactional experience needed) associate / counsel / junior partner, Mandarin fluent, Hong Kong

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Robert here. Although the lateral market in Asia continues to be very slow, as expected in the downturn, we have seen a substantial upturn in interviewing of our candidates in Asia recently. For example, currently the following of my associate candidates are actively interviewing in Asia, each at multiple firms (there are others with single interviews):

*mid-level cap markets associate (Mandarin fluent) from HK interviewing in HK
senior cap markets associate from HK (Mandarin fluent) interviewing in HK
*mid-level PE / M&A associate from US interviewing in HK
*mid-level M&A associate from US (Mandarin fluent) interviewing in HK
*senior M&A / cap markets associate from US (Korean fluent) interviewing in HK
*mid-level project finance associate from US (Korean fluent) interviewing in Tokyo
*mid-level M&A associate from US (Mandarin fluent) interviewing in HK
*mid-level M&A associate from HK (Mandarin fluent) interviewing in Beijing
*mid-level IP associate from US (Mandarin fluent) interviewing in Beijing
*mid-level project finance associate from US interviewing in Abu Dhabi
*junior M&A associate from US (Mandarin fluent) interviewing in Beijing and HK
*mid-level funds associate from US interviewing in HK

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This is Robert again following up on last week’s introduction to the sort of people who become partners in firms in Asia. Before breaking down the specific categories of people who make partner as promised, it may be helpful to provide the common threads that connect all the people we have gotten to know in Asia who are successful partners in their firms. In the first place, whether you are a US/UK native, Chinese, Japanese, or some other nationality, there is no one we know in Asia who is a partner in a major law firm who does not have above average people and cultural skills. When we meet partners who may be candidates at law firm clients for lateral partner, we rate them on several criteria: language skill, legal skill (as evidenced by the type of work, clients, and our gut), client following, and people/cultural skill, each on a scale of one to five. If we can’t rate a person a four or five in each of these categories, we don’t view them as viable candidates for partner placement. Our experience at this sort of rating has been pretty successful. I can think of one candidate off of the top of my head whom we rated a five on the language and legal skills categories, but only a 3 and a 1, respectively, on the other two categories: client following and people/cultural skill. We did not work with him but he was hired as a junior partner by a firm that is a rung or two down on the league tables and does not get first grab at the better candidates. He did not work out in that position so far.

Clearly the client following and people/cultural skills are intertwined: people who are nerds normally don’t have many clients. The fact is that in Asia there are very few clients who do not expect to have personal relationships with their attorneys. Even the most high end firms have to work hard to maintain client relationships. So, if you’re a dork and can’t stomach the concept of selling your services every day, don’t expect to make partner in Asia on the basis of working for institutional clients.

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Robert here. As promised, in this post we will provide some basic evidence of encouraging signs that China’s economy could recover in ’09.

As mentioned in previous AC posts and comments, we are, naturally, in frequent conversations with law firm partners and other business leaders in Asia, and the prevailing opinion, even from the most conservative and pessimistic, is that the major law firm deal flow in China could recover somewhat, if not yet to previous recent boom levels, by second half 2009 and that 2010 will likely be a good year. Keep in mind that the downturn hit China about one year after the US markets and it will likely recover well ahead of the US markets.

The Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia Limited, Dr. Stephen Roach, has predicted recently that China’s economy will recover by the second half of 2009. In contrast, Roach predicts that the U.S. is only 20% through its deleveraging cycle and it will be a number of years before adjustments are complete. Merrill Lynch & Co., Hong Kong, economist Lu Ting: “China looks set to be the first major economy to recover from the current global meltdown.”

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