Following success in Australia and Singapore, AdventBalance is setting up shop in Hong Kong in competition with traditional law firms with its untraditional model of legal services provision.
The managing director of AdventBalance Asia, John Knox, told China Business Law Journal after the Hong Kong office opening in late April that the firm was in the midst of a recruitment drive, having just hired Lesley Hobbs as head of client solutions for the office.
Hobbs started her career as a lawyer, both in private practice and in-house at Rothschild in the UK, and then moved to legal recruitment, working for the likes of LPA, Hays and Kingswood Global. She has been in Hong Kong since 2007.
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“Around Lesley we’ll be hiring a number of lawyers, as and when we see fit. We’re in advanced interview stages with a number of people,” Knox said.
AdventBalance has pioneered a successful business model across Asia-Pacific, seconding experienced top-tier lawyers in-house as needed, for an agreed duration and fee.
Knox said Hong Kong would be brought online in similar fashion to its Singapore office, which after two years has a staff of about 30 lawyers. Around the region they now have over 100 lawyers. Practice areas will include financial services, regulatory and compliance, general corporate and commercial, litigation, property and construction, among others.
“Our model is very different in a number of ways,” Knox said. “The first part is nearly all of our lawyers have in-house and private practice experience. And our offices are really just for the management team and support services – HR, IT, finance, business development, etc.
“Our lawyers actually work in the premises where they are engaged, and that could be for anything from a few weeks up to 12 months.”
Knox said this in-house secondment model was successful for two main reasons. “One is to support an in-house team where they might have a gap, for example someone on leave, or a resignation where there’s a three-month gap,” he said.
“The other part is projects, like a large M&A or regulatory project, or compliance review. Our lawyers come in as a supplement to the client’s in-house team and actually drive and manage that project.
“We also don’t work on hourly rates. It’s a fixed fee model, so clients are guaranteed budget certainty, which we get a lot of positive feedback on.”
Knox said there are no plans to expand further into China at this stage. “In future we may, but Hong Kong is the logical next step for us,” he said.
“A lot of traditional law firms are here to service the mainland from Hong Kong. We’re here because most of our clients are large international companies with a large Hong Kong presence. And we need a presence here to service our global clients.”
Knox nods a head to the success of similar models in the UK and US, and his own expanding team in Asia. “My view is the days of just outsourcing legal work to top international firms at US$800 to US$1,000 per hour are gone,” he said.
“Yes there’s still a need for that type of service, but there is a huge amount of day-to-day work that in-house teams are required to do that can be done more cost effectively, and that’s what we’re about.”
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