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Reed Smith Bulks Up in China by Adding a Dewey & LeBoeuf Office
The Legal Intelligencer
February 28, 2008
Reed Smith continued its expansion into China with the addition of a Beijing office of recently merged Dewey & LeBoeuf.
The firm will get two partners and what it said was an additional "team of attorneys and legal professionals" including partners Sharon J. Mann and Hugh T. Scogin Jr.
Mann is a former senior director of the Trade Facilitation Office at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and advises clients on Chinese investment, capital markets and trade issues. Scogin is a corporate partner focusing on investment and other corporate transactions, mergers and acquisitions, and dispute resolution. The firm said he is a longtime authority on Chinese law, working in Beijing since 1985. Michael H. Dardzinski will join as counsel. His practice also focuses on transactions, mergers and acquisitions, and dispute resolution. He was an associate at Dewey Ballantine.
Dewey & LeBoeuf has been operating two Beijing offices until the Ministry of Justice of the People's Republic of China approves their merger. Reed Smith is essentially acquiring the Dewey Ballantine side of the practice. That office, according to Dewey & LeBoeuf's Web site, had two partners, three associates, three consultants and one economist, and included Mann and Scogin.
Reed Smith global managing partner Gregory B. Jordan said he expects all of the nine people in the Dewey Ballantine office to make the move.
The Beijing office of the former LeBoeuf Lamb Greene & MacRae still has two partners, three associates and one counsel.
Reed Smith's acquisition in Beijing follows its Jan. 1, 2008, merger with Richards Butler Hong Kong, which gave the firm 110 lawyers and a license to practice in Beijing. Earlier this month, the firm also snagged Greenberg Traurig shareholder Jinshu "John" Zhang in Los Angeles. He was responsible for starting Greenberg Traurig's China practice and now serves in Reed Smith's corporate and securities practice as a partner.
"With more than 110 attorneys in Hong Kong and our expanded office in Beijing, we aim to make this firm the 'go to' legal resource for inward and outward capital investment in Asia," Mann said in a statement.
Jordan said the firm has already seen a number of requests from clients for services in China, particularly in the areas of acquisitions, joint ventures and other types of investments in the country.
The group is a perfect fit, he said, because it gives the firm senior partners who have strong ties to the market. The Hong Kong office, while servicing some work on mainland China, has really focused on corporate, securities, regulatory and litigation work for Western companies doing business in Hong Kong. He said the Beijing office would do similar work for clients doing business in mainland China.
Jordan said Reed Smith's newest acquisition, which is already up and running, puts the firm in a unique position. Aside from the 110 attorneys in Hong Kong, the firm now has American-born and educated attorneys who have long-term ties to Beijing through Mann and Scogin, as well as a Beijing-born and educated attorney working for Reed Smith in the United States through the addition of Zhang.
Jordan said Zhang's practice focuses on Chinese companies investing in the United States.
The combined experience in trade, direct foreign investments and corporate work will be a specific benefit to the firm's core banking, finance and pharmaceutical clients trying to navigate doing business in China, he said.
Steven H. Davis, chairman of Dewey & LeBoeuf, said the departing attorneys are great lawyers, and he wishes them well.
The LeBoeuf Lamb side of the Beijing practice has been in operation for nearly 10 years, he said. The group focuses on outbound work for Chinese companies doing business abroad and has represented several Chinese energy companies in acquisitions across the globe, Davis said.
Dewey & LeBoeuf also opened a Hong Kong office in the summer of 2007 and has about 10 attorneys in that office. The news of the Beijing departure comes just a few days after Dewey & LeBoeuf said it broke the $1 billion mark in gross revenue for the first financial look at the firm since its October 2007 merger.
Jordan said the new attorneys in Beijing are working in temporary office space until they can move into newly leased space in central Beijing. He said the new space would be able to hold up to 30 attorneys and the firm does have plans to grow the office.
Prior to the addition, the Beijing office of Richards Butler Hong Kong was only used on occasion by the firm's attorneys from other offices. He said it was an important step for the firm to have a real presence on the ground in Beijing and to begin to build that out.
When Reed Smith announced in October 2007 its plans to merge with Richards Butler Hong Kong, consultant Peter Zeughauser of the Zeughauser Group said that while 110 attorneys in Hong Kong puts Reed Smith ahead of most Pennsylvania-based firms, an office in mainland China would be a critical next step.
"There's no question that mainland China today is more important than Hong Kong," he said in October.While it may have the largest group of attorneys in China, Reed Smith isn't the only Pennsylvania firm to enter the market.
K&L Gates and Morgan Lewis & Bockius also have Beijing offices. Dechert and Blank Rome are in Hong Kong, along with K&L Gates, which also has an office in Taipei, Taiwan. White & Williams has formed a strategic alliance with a Shanghai-based firm.
