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So You Want To Be A China Lawyer? Fuggetaboutit!

What are the options for a law student who wants to practice China law?

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I get at least an email a week from law students seeking advice on what they should be doing to secure a law firm job involving China. This post is my once and future answer to those emails.

Two kinds of firms have a China law practice: mega firms (I began my career at one) and high end boutiques (I founded one). A small number of in-house lawyers also do China work, but nearly all of these lawyers went in-house after working for a mega firm or a high end boutique. Both kinds of firms generally interview only law students with top grades from highly rated law schools.

This means that entry-level China law jobs in the United States are generally limited to only the best students at the best schools. On top of this, most mega firms do not have recent graduates work on international law matters because they believe associates must first master corporate law or tax law or dispute resolution or labor law or IP law or whatever before being tasked with the additional layer of complexity of an international matter.

So what are the options for a law student who wants to practice China law?

Several years ago, I gave an informational interview to a student with decent (but not great) grades from a decent (but not good) law school. I met with this student as a favor to one of her professors who with whom I am friends. At our meeting I learned that she was fluent in French and looking for a law job in Seattle involving France.

I told her the following (note that I was less blunt than appears below, but the below has any niceties removed):

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  • If we added up all the Seattle-France legal work done by all of the law firms in Seattle, I doubt there would be enough work to keep more than one lawyer busy full time.
  • I do not believe there is a single law firm in town that will view your fluency in French as a plus factor in deciding whether to hire you. In fact, your emphasizing your desire to do France work will likely be viewed negatively because firms will fear that you are more interested in dreaming about France than in doing the legal work they actually do.
  • No firm is going to believe that you will be able to create a France law practice from scratch.

We then talked about the three or four law firms in Seattle that actually do a decent amount of international law, and all but my own law firm were mega firms. We then talked about how these firms virtually never hire middle of the class students from middle of the pack law schools. Sorry, I said, but they just don’t.

By this time, I had convinced her that seeking an international law job in Seattle was not going to work.

We then started talking about her real-world options, and on that, I had this to say:

Get the best job you can. Forget about French law and forget about international law. Focus on getting a job that will teach you how to be a good lawyer and put food on your table. Focus on getting a job with a small business law firm that will hire you. Then after you have had a job there for a year or two, start figuring out how to “make it your own.” Figure out how you can mold your job or your career to suit what you really want to do.

If you find yourself doing dispute resolution and you enjoy it but you still want to be involved with France, do whatever you can to try to get dispute resolution work involving France. You do that by educating yourself on French business, French law, French disputes, French anything. And you get to know every French person in whatever city you are in and you get to know French lawyers in France and elsewhere and you write about dispute resolution involving France. And you do whatever else will position you as an expert on dispute resolution matters involving France. So long as you are doing a good job with your law firm’s core work, they will likely be fine with your efforts to bring in France related work.

And if you are doing corporate work, the same thing holds, but for corporate work.

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About a year later she wrote to say that she was in a job she very much liked in a good-sized city doing corporate work for small businesses and that as soon as she became more comfortable with the legal and client aspects of her work, she would start trying to position herself as the French law expert in her region.

My advice to law students seeking U.S.-based China law jobs is usually similar. Focus on getting the best job you can and worry about China later.

Dan Harris is a founding member of Harris Moure, an international law firm with lawyers in Seattle, Chicago, Beijing, and Qingdao. He is also a co-editor of the China Law Blog. You can reach him by email at firm@harrismoure.com.

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