Setting their own agenda

The managing partners at these new entrants into the market all claim the partners at firm headquarters have not set any arduous targets to be fulfilled over the next 12 months. Rather, each of them told ALB they have been given a proverbial blank sheet of paper – no financial targets, no headcount targets, no timeline to break even – just a direction to make the office a successful and integral part of their firm’s global network. But that is not to say these managing partners haven’t set their own ambitious targets.
“We need at least 15 people to come on board and I am looking to have achieved critical mass within 12 months,” says Desmond Ong, Eversheds’ Singapore managing partner. 

"This will probably occur through hiring former colleagues and lateral hires or a mixture of both.”
All lawyers firmly agree that bringing new talent on board is much easier in the current economic climate. If 2007 and the first half of 2008 were an employees’ market then the situation has now very much reversed.

“Its an employer’s market now, there is no doubt about that,” Ong says. “Driven by international firm retrenchments and layoffs there is a surplus of talent in the market at the moment, and this makes expanding new offices a little easier.”

Ong estimates he has at least 200 CVs on his desk at the moment, and while this should come as no shock, what is surprising is the seniority and experience of some candidates. “I have certainly been surprised by the quality of some of the candidates I am receiving CVs from,” he says. “[At] partner and of counsel level, and lawyers with very, very impressive track records and a lot of experience under their belt would account for maybe 70% of the CVs I have on my desk.”

The managing partners of other new entrants into Singapore cite similar experiences, but many have been looking to fill vacancies by relocating lawyers from overseas offices instead of dipping into the local talent pool – for one very good reason.

“I am always a little suspicious when I get a CV from a lawyer who is not gainfully employed at the moment,” says one international firm’s manging partner, who declined to be named. “But in Singapore I am doubly suspicious. Domestic firms here have a relatively low turnover rate, international firms maybe marginally higher. A lot of due diligence is needed when looking at lawyers who are currently out of work,” he continues, noting this is just as applicable to a would-be associate as a would-be partner.

The last roll of the dice?

Singapore is a hospitable place. No country knows the value of opening its markets more than the Lion nation – it has thrived on the back of more than 600 years of open markets and free trade has been critical in establishing it as both the financial and legal hub of south Asia. But while domestic firms extend the warmest of wishes to their foreign counterparts, there is a sense that for some the opening of a Singapore office may be a bit of a last resort in increasingly difficult economic conditions.

“Some of the firms that have opened up, or some of those that are planning to open in Singapore, have been hit hard in their home markets,” says a partner at one Singapore domestic firm. “You really do get the impression that is the last throw of the dice for some of them.”

The same partner questions whether the move into Singapore is guided more by the amount of work on offer rather than a pre-existing stream of client instructions. “The view in the market is that some firms are entering Singapore for its capacity to deliver new work and of course no one can fault that. But is there enough work to keep lawyers in the new office occupied in the interim? That’s the question – some may be sitting idly by for a while waiting for the instructions to come in.” The implication is clearly that as soon as times get tough, these new entrants may be among the first to go.

On the other hand, the new arrivals are, ostensibly at least, impressive in their commitment to Singapore.

Time, and the markets, will reveal the answer.

NEXT: The China Connection

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