Best Bets: Cross Border

By Jeanie R. Wakeland
     
The busiest attorneys in many California law firms this year may be the ones who are always out of the office-making deals in China, negotiating contracts in Singapore, or handling arbitration in Malaysia.
      In 2007 and early 2008, several firms in California boosted their cross-border practices, says Chuck Fanning, a partner with legal search firm Major, Lindsey & Africa. "Everybody is looking at Asia," says Fanning, listing Reed Smith; Latham & Watkins; and Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker among the firms that added attorneys to their cross-border practices in China, Japan, the Middle East, and Europe in the past several months.
      Blane R. Prescott, a consultant with Hildebrandt International in San Francisco, says law firms need attorneys to help the Chinese build infrastructure and to help private clients with finance, international litigation, and intellectual property issues.
      California attorneys with practices in venture capital, intellectual property, antitrust, and mergers and acquisitions are finding plenty of work, as clients seek to benefit from Asia's expanding markets and the weak U.S. dollar.
      Mark Medearis, a shareholder in Heller Ehrman's Silicon Valley office, says he is as busy as he's ever been. Specializing in corporate finance, and mergers and acquisitions for venture capitalbacked companies, his clients have included Paragon Wireless in Beijing, 2dunet in Shanghai, and Bessemer Venture Partners in Menlo Park. "To date, venture capital and the high-tech business have not been impacted by the economic downturn as much as private equity," he says.
      Medearis attributes the expansion of his firm's cross-border work largely to "very young" markets in China and India. But even in those markets, he warns, attorneys have to stay flexible as antitrust laws, venture-capital regulations, and option treatments change in evolving markets-a view seconded by Jesse W. Markham Jr., cochair of the antitrust department at Holme Roberts & Owen.
      More than half of Markham's work this year will be with international clients, including an antitrust case involving All Nippon Airways. Looking ahead, he expects provisions of China's new antitrust law, which goes into effect in August, to present "unprecedented problems in the area of exercising intellectual property rights." Everybody wants to do business in China, Markham adds, but when there are "restrictions on the exercise of intellectual property, the boundaries of permissible conduct causes concern."
      And the work is not restricted to Asia. "When [former Soviet republic] Ukraine became independent [in 1991], it wasn't dreaming about antitrust issues," says Markham, but now, when business interests want to close a deal there, clients seek counsel from other countries. In addition, he says, American lawyers well versed in antitrust laws often take a lead role in coordinating a response to the different laws in "Ireland, China, Korea, Japan, the United States, Brazil, New Zealand-and these are just some of the jurisdictions."
      Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps, a large California firm that has long worked with clients in Mexico and Latin America, seeks ways to provide services to midsize businesses in Chinese cities outside the usual triangle of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, says S. Elizabeth Foster, a partner in the firm's San Diego office. In March she met with companies in what the Chinese consider second-tier cities-such as Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Chongqing-which get less attention from most American service providers.
      Though China dominates the current cross-border market, attorneys such as Jai Pathak, a Los Angeles partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, visits clients in Singapore, India, and Hong Kong several times a month, negotiating mergers and acquisitions and sorting through banking and financial-services rules, capital markets, and international-arbitration issues. "I spend 70 to 75 percent of my time traveling overseas," says Pathak.
      Ryan Goldstein, a litigator in the Los Angeles office of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, spends six months a year in Tokyo working at the firm's new office there, alternating with IP partner Henry Koda. Goldstein, who is fluent in Japanese and a specialist in IP and patent law, says they advise clients on patent-infringement, antitrust, product-liability, and international-arbitration issues. "Cross-border work is growing because litigation work is growing. It's considered extremely recession-proof," says Goldstein.
      California's Pacific Rim location remains an advantage for cross-border work with China, compared with East Coast or European firms, especially for high-tech and venture capital related practices, says Heller Ehrman's Medearis. "You have to have a substantial practice in Silicon Valley. That's why London attorneys joined

us."
     
      Jeanie R. Wakeland is an associate editor at California Lawyer.
     

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