International law firm announces 83 new partners
Baker & McKenzie has promoted 83 lawyers to its partnership with 28 per cent of them in Asia-Pacific. The Europe, Middle East and Africa region has 34 per cent of the promotions, North America has 20 per cent and Latin America 18 per cent. Almost 40 per cent of the new partners are women.
In Asia-Pac there were promotions for:
Masato Honma (Tokyo), Chu Kah Chin (Singapore), Somika Phagapasvivat (Bangkok) and Kullapa Stavorn (Bangkok) in the banking & finance practice;
Vivian Wu (Beijing) in compliance; Andrea Kennedy (Melbourne) in corporate; Mia Imperial (Manila), Bryan Ng (Hong Kong) and Pradthanaadt Ratanatanungpong (Bangkok) in dispute resolution;
Melanie Ho (Taipei) in energy, mining and infrastructure;
Jonathon Flintoft (Sydney) in intellectual property;
Julius Cervantes (Manila), Dang Chi Lieu (Hanoi), Gwyneth Gu (Taipei), Yutaka Kimura (Tokyo), Ornsiri Samarnmitr (Bangkok) and Cherrie Shi (Shanghai) in M&A;
Belle Chiou (Taipei) and Cahyani Endahayu (Jakarta) in pharmaceuticals and healthcare;
Shiu-man Wan (Hong Kong) in real estate;
Nancy Lai (Shanghai) and Amy Ling (Shanghai) in tax;
and Yukiko Komori (Tokyo) in tax-transfer pricing.
Bakers now has 1500 lawyers worldwide with 134 added this year including lateral hires and the new offices in Jeddah and Brisbane.
Indian law firm expands in Singapore
India’s SNG & Partners has expanded with a new associate partner in Singapore and its second international office in Doha. Kshitij Dua joins the Singapore office from local firm Straits Law to work with partner Rahul Sud. In the Doha office there will be a team of five within the coming months.
Seyfarth Shaw hire sets out vision in unusual fashion
International law firm Seyfarth Shaw will have a new chief strategy officer from July 1
st and he has taken an unusual route to set out his vision. Joshua Kubicki has posted an open letter on the self-publishing platform Medium.com in which he says that firms in America’s AM200 are “chained to the short-term” and think only of the current financial year. He criticizes the widespread issue of law firms that do not have a strategy.
Kubicki says his role is to continue Seyfarth’s policy of looking further into the future. He says that clients need law firms to help them with the medium term future of the next 1-3 years and that he shares the firm’s view that “accolades, rankings, lateral hires, acquisitions are all secondary to the client experience we deliver every day.” He highlights three things that lawyers must do in the changing environment of the legal profession; engage more deeply with the individuals and businesses they serve; take an active role in identifying the right problem to solve; and solve for a bigger proportion of the client’s problem.
