With China becoming an increasingly complicated place to do business, a boutique co-founded by an ousted Hong Kong legislator is beefing up its specialty practice offering conflict-free representation for entities looking to reassess their operations in the region.

Commercial litigation and white-collar defense firm Elliott Kwok Levine & Jaroslaw has named Benjamin Qiu, who was a partner in Loeb & Loeb corporate and capital markets department in the firm’s Beijing and Hong Kong offices, to co-lead its China practice alongside Dennis Kwok, who represented the Hong Kong’s legal profession in the region’s legislature from 2012 to 2020.