Singapore boutique law firm Legal Solutions LLC has poached Henry Heng, former head of litigation at Tan Peng Chin LLC, and his team of lawyers, adding to its rapidly expanding litigation and international arbitration practice.

Legal Solutions, a firm that has been in practice for 6 years, has taken on four new hires in the past 2 months – including recently hired litigation lawyer Joanna Poh, who joined in Dec 2010. 

“There has been a significant rise in international arbitration work for us over the last 12 months. Interestingly, we have also been instructed in international arbitrations conducted outside of Singapore, such as in Hong Kong, London and China by clients from neighbouring countries because of our language abilities,” said the firm's director, Kevin Quek. “We see international arbitrations as being a great growth area in the next year or two and we intend to further expand our arbitration practice to deal with the anticipated increase in such cases.”

According to Kwek, 70% of its disputes work is locally based, with 30% of its pipeline of work international. “That 30% has risen steadily in the last 12 months and we expect further growth this year,” Kwek said. “We are getting more international work from foreign law firms because Singapore is increasingly the seat of arbitration.”

For calendar year 2010, the firm has witnessed a 50% jump in the number of arbitration cases they handle.