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The Asia Chronicles: STATE OF LATERAL US ASSOCIATE HIRING - KOREA PRACTICES

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[Ed. note: This post is authored by the Asia Recruiting Team at Kinney Recruiting, sponsor of the Asia Chronicles. Kinney has made more placements of U.S. associates and partners in Asia than any other firm in the past two years. You can reach them by email: asia at kinneyrecruiting dot com.]

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While Korea practices, mostly based in Hong Kong, have been busy over the past year and in some cases even quite understaffed, there has up until just recently not been much hiring going of US associates with Korean background. We recently made a couple such placements at top 10 US firms in HK, one class of ’07 and one ’08, and appear close on another ’08 and an ‘05. However, there are many more very well qualified Korean US associates on the market in Asia than there are openings. Further, firms that do have needs in this area are moving very slowly to make hires, sometimes waiting months to complete an interview process.

Part of the reason is because firms have so much leverage in the lateral hiring market, due to the large number of native Korean US associates seeking to lateral at present from top US firms in NYC to Asia. The other main reason is that many of the top US and UK firms in Asia, while off hiring freezes months ago, still do not have the full green light to hire all the US associates they need. When firm management back in US or UK is only allowing one or two US associate hires in HK, for example, those offices are hiring the biggest area of need – native Chinese US cap markets associates.

We are predicting that there will be more hiring US associate hiring in Korea practices this fall and in early ’11 than was the case in the first half of ’10. There will also be more hiring of Korean native US associates at firms in HK that do not have a Korean practice, per se, but have a strong need for an associate or two with Korean fluency and ability to work on the ground in Korea for much of the year. One of our recent ’08 placements fits this description. Such needs arise as firms have more deal flow out of Korea, but not any Korean native associates. This type of hire will not be for only Korean deal work, but will be a mix of Korean and Pan Asia markets deal flow, with special responsibilities coming in the Korea work of course.

At present there are many very well qualified Korean native junior and senior US associates on the market. There are not enough Korean native mid-level US associates on the market though. Two of our client firms are just starting to interview at the junior level in HK, one is about to hire at the junior level in HK, and two others have new and fairly urgent need at the mid-level in HK.

While firms are especially selective at present for all US associate hires in Asia, for junior hires Korea practices will usually put more weight towards Korean language skills, past professional experience in Korea, and JD academics than they will the ranking of the firm the candidate is coming from (it is ok to come from 2nd tier US or a Korea firm). We are seeing a number of extremely well qualified Korean native junior US associate candidates who attended top law schools, but did not graduate near the top of their class. Considering some of the better Korea practices in HK happen to be top 10 US firms, academics can be a tough issue to get over. Recently, most of the Korean practice US associate hiring has been at the most highly ranked Wall St. and magic circle firms in HK, but that is starting to change. With more of a variety of international firms hiring Korean associates in HK, it make it easier to penetrate the market, especially with regards to JD academics.

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There is also Korea practice hiring from time to time in Tokyo, but HK has much more of a Korea focus than other Asia markets. Some UK firms are about to open offices in Seoul, while US firms of course have to wait for the free trade agreement with South Korea to be ratified.

When US firms start opening offices in Seoul, and this will happen, there will be a flurry of Korean native US associate hiring at that time, but it may be a couple of years before such office openings occur. Those offices will be very small for some years, but even so there will be a need at a number of Korea practices to hire one or two more associates.

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