过去几年见证了中国律师事务所不断跟随客户脚步走向全球的发展过程，这一全球化历程甚至得到了来自中国政府的支持——2019年早些时候，中国司法部就将发展涉外法律服务定为今年律所发展的首要目标。随后几个月中，一些中国律所相继在乌兹别克斯坦、越南、新西兰等国家和地区设立了办公室。随着律所“走出去”的需求越来越迫切，我们和几位合伙人聊了聊在设立海外办公室过程中通常会遇到的挑战，以及他们下一步着眼开设办公室的国家和地区。
40年前，中国开启了对外开放之路，随后的40年不仅见证了外国投资者不断进入中国，也见证了中国企业通过投资和并购走向海外的历程。随着中国企业走出国门的还有中国的律师事务所，他们为布局海外的中国企业扮演着在法律层面保驾护航的角色。也因此，二者在发展轨迹上有诸多重合之处。
“过去40年间，中国企业的海外发展在经济全球化中有着举足轻重的影响力。”TMF Group中国企业海外业务负责人吴小敏告诉ALB。“中国企业走出的历程可以分为四步，以2001年中国加入世贸组织和2013年‘一带一路’倡议的提出为重要时间节点。”
吴小敏这样总结中国企业走出去的四步：“改革开放后前十年在自我累积经验；第二个十年在学习入华外企的经验；第三个阶段，即2001年加入世贸组织，很多企业融入了海外兼并浪潮；第四个阶段就是通过‘一带一路’，在政府扶持和优惠政策下，在65个沿线国家寻求不同行业的发展。”
驱动中国企业走出的因素有哪些？在吴小敏看来，推动制造业多元化、民营企业通过海外并购推动体制改革，以及亚洲市场的整体发展都是重要动因。此外不可否认的是，受国家政策驱动是中国企业走出去的一个重要特点。“外界认为政策驱动会构成局限，”吴小敏说，“但从数据上看，根据‘一带一路’走出去实际上非常适合中国企业。我们认为政府帮助企业塑造了更适合走出去的环境。”
段和段律师事务所的走出去历程，紧密回应了中国企业这样的海外发展历史。
段祺华律师1993年从美国西雅图回到上海创立了段和段，1994年，“ 当时中国律所还不知道什么叫走出去，我们已经在海外建立了第一个分支机构”，这家分所就设在段律师曾经生活的西雅图。
段和段目前有6家海外分所，外加一家处于不同司法管辖区的香港分所。段律师也将段和段的海外布局分为三个阶段。“1993至2003年，我们做了大量将世界五百强企业引进来的业务。这个阶段成立了第一家美国分所，起到了联络作用，但其实业务是在国内做。”
“2003至2013年，我们提出要‘两条腿走路’，中国加入世贸组织后，由于双边和多边投资增加，我们的涉外业务也该包括为国有和民营企业走向国际保驾护航。”段律师特别提到了2006年开设香港办公室的重要性，“ 很多中国企业都是先在香港设个桥头堡，然后再向外扩张。”
“第三个阶段是从2013年到现在，我们海外布局主要放在‘一带一路’沿线，比如柬埔寨金边、日本名古屋和乌兹别克斯坦塔什干。”段律师说。
作为海外扩张的后起之秀，泰和泰律师事务所管委会委员、北京办公室执行主任沈志君律师也强调了“一带一路”的重要作用。泰和泰的海外发展之路2015年才开始，但是这两年随着政策导向加强，新开设的澳大利亚悉尼和尼泊尔加德满都分所都直接呼应了“一带一路”的需要。
有趣的是，如果说中国企业寻求海外机遇是为了进行产业调整和制度升级，作为市场经济的一部分，中国律所也几乎在同一时间产生了类似的自我升级需求。
大成律师事务所管委会主任马江涛律师告诉ALB：“2008年大成‘二五规划’开局时，当时的管理者已经注意到，经济的全球化必然带来法律服务的全球化。”
泰和泰的经历和大成不谋而合。2016年底，泰和泰发现已经不能再将目光聚焦在某个区域，于是推出了五年发展规划，除了完善国内布局，还要延伸至海外。“这是出于打造品牌的需要。”沈律师说。
“另外也有客户需求的指引。”沈律师提到了律所海外布局的另一个驱动力。“做到一定规模后，客户活动逐渐扩大到东南亚和西亚，这就需要我们在一些比较具体的地区设立分支机构，设立尼泊尔分所，是因为客户在尼泊尔有能源和旅游业投资的需求，筹建中的泰国分所是迎合客户在泰国日益增长的投资意向。”
段和段的经历也呼应着这样的说法。段律师举了金边和塔什干的例子。“我们有具体的客户在金边投资地产等，需要我们的服务。塔什干最明显，有客户在那里开矿，希望我们开设办公室，继续帮他们做业务。”
“用当地人做当地事”
2019年7月，司法部下达了《律师事务所境外分支机构备案管理规定》 ，“《规定》希望律所海外分支机构在人、财、物方面有实控，列出的分支机构类型一般有律师事务所、代表处、法律服务公司等。”泰和泰的沈律师介绍说。
但他坦言，“我们海外分支机构的设立还是要结合当地实际情况，比如正在推进设立的泰国曼谷分所，就是法律服务公司的形式，已经设立的美国华盛顿分所，就是律师事务所的形式，我们品牌、风控和合伙人准入都有要求，在人、财、物的管控上面会根据不同的设立方式和合作形式，确定不同的管理模式”。
“在人员组成上，泰和泰海外办公室通常以核心华人律师作为纽带，加上本地的律师和员工。”沈律师说。
在沈律师和段律师看来，“当地化”的落地模式可以有效避免设立海外分所时所面临的法规和文化障碍。更重要的是，海外分所都有自己原本的当地客户及资源。段律师说：“不能局限于和中国企业有关系的服务。想活下来、做得好，还是要从事当地业务。中国有能力扩张海外的律所并不多，很多只是表面文章，实际上没什么业务。我们是希望实际有操作，财务上能盈利。”
在海外布局模式的选择上，大成的故事很有代表性：它经历了从“寻找合作伙伴到开设分支机构，再到与Dentons合并的曲折道路”。到大成“二五计划”末期的2013年，“大成在境外7个城市设有本地化律师事务所，拥有37家大成全球网络成员单位。2014年大成与Dentons高层接触后迅速开启了与之合并的新篇章。”
合并后的大成自然拥有了Dentons原本的律所网络，也加快了全球布局。马律师介绍，2015年合并后，大成新布局的海外分支多达50家，跨越五大洲。“大成不开设海外办事处或派遣律师在新市场开设分支机构。我们的策略一直是合并当地优秀律所，这样可以为客户提供最佳服务。”
最大的挑战
在几位律所管理者看来，海外分所最具挑战的其实是做好融合管理。
“海外布局的一个很重要问题是怎么和分所做好联动。”沈律师说，“基于语言障碍和文化背景的不同，国内更习惯通过华人律师进行对接，尽管更高效，但是也容易造成和本地律师沟通不足的情况，业务的联络机制也很单一，鉴于长期深化合作的需要，这是需要积极改善的。”
在海外分支的市场推广层面，中国律所通常采用分支机构自行安排的方式，但泰和泰会统一规划协助当地分支的市场推广和培训支持，段和段也会对分所进行补贴，或提供其他手段的支持。
大成在这方面的做法则有所不同，作为多中心本地化的律所，由本地律师为客户提供服务，但会投入资源在新市场中提升知名度，支持各地律师获得应有的认可。 “2015年，大成全球范围内在钱伯斯和法律500中排名的律师人数增长了49%，入选第一、第二等级业务领域、律师人数增长了121%，所有入选的业务领域、律师人数增长了129%。”马律师说。
下一步
在段律师看来，“2019年是个涉外年，从中央到地方，特别是司法部，非常强调涉外律师的培养和海外办公室的设立。预计明后年都还会是这个趋势。”
可以相信，下一步中国律所的布局还会继续紧随政策和中国企业的脚步。TMF Group的吴小敏向ALB分享了几个近期及未来中国企业走出去的热点地区：“2018年上半年英国吸引了16亿美元中国投资，成为继瑞典之后最受欢迎的欧盟国家；其次是东盟，持续加强的区域经贸关系导致了投资激增。”另一个新热点是“巴西、墨西哥，我们有很多能源和基础建设合作”。
大成将继续执行其扩大规模的战略，马律师向ALB强调了其中正在发展的热点区域：“我们是法律行业历史上唯一一家泛拉丁美洲和加勒比海律师事务所，是西欧、东欧、中欧地区发展最快的律师事务所，我们在激动人心的市场中成长，如澳大利亚、马来西亚、印度尼西亚、新西兰、韩国、新加坡。我们还在制定策略，以成为第一家由非洲人拥有和控制的泛非洲律师事务所。”
段和段将继续以成熟市场和“一带一路”沿线为布局重点，“我们的韩国首尔、英国伦敦、比利时布鲁塞尔分所已经进入紧锣密鼓的筹备阶段。东盟、欧盟、独联体和阿拉伯、中东地区都在我们的考虑范围之内。”段律师说。
泰和泰的策略也大致相同：泰国曼谷分所和日本东京分所都已经通过合伙人会议表决，正在筹设中。沈律师说，决定在何处布局，取决于律所本身的经营策略。“随着‘一带一路’合作机制愈发成熟，国际合作项目不断增长，律所的海外布点需要充分结合当地的合作对接资源和客户‘走出去’ 的战略规划，曼谷和东京的布点就是因为在当地已经找到了合作伙伴，在国内也有比较成熟的客户市场，所以纳入了律所的布局策略里。”
A Global Mindset
Over the past few years, Chinese law firms have been following their clients overseas, and their global expansion even has government support – the Ministry of Justice earlier this year set the development of foreign-related legal services as a primary development goal for Chinese law firms. With the following months seeing Chinese law firms set up offices in Uzbekistan, Vietnam and New Zealand, among other places, leaders describe their strategies when it comes to expanding overseas.
Four decades ago, China began to open up the world. In these 40 years, not only have foreign investors come in, but Chinese companies have also ventured overseas through acquisitions and investments. And following them are Chinese law firms, who are helping meet the ever-increasing demand for legal services from Chinese companies that are expanding overseas.
“Over the past 40 years, Chinese companies’ overseas development has played a significant role in the process of economic globalization,” says Wendy Wu, director of the China Outbound Desk at TMF Group. “The journey of Chinese companies’ going global can be divided into four steps, among which China’s accession to the WTO in 2001 and the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 are two important time nodes.”
And as Chinese companies have expanded overseas, so have law firms. Take Duan & Duan Law Firm, whose foreign expansion is closely connected to the journey undertaken by their clients.
In 1993, lawyer QH Charles Duan returned to Shanghai from the U.S. city of Seattle and founded Duan & Duan. In 1994, “we established our first overseas office in Seattle, back then most Chinese law firms did not know what it meant to ‘go out,’” Duan says.
Duan & Duan now has six over-seas offices, plus one Hong Kong office. According to Duan, the firm’s overseas expansion could be divided into three stages. “From 1993 to 2003, a lot of work we did was in connection with Fortune 500 companies’ entering into China. Our first office in the United States was established during that time, which served as a liaison. But back then, bringing in foreign investment meant lots of our business were done in China.”
“From 2003 to 2013, after China’s accession to the WTO, there were more and more bilateral and multilateral investments. So we decided to ‘walk on two legs’ – we should help both State-owned and private enterprises go global,” Duan adds, emphasizing the importance of the establishment of the Hong Kong office. “Many Chinese enter-prises choose to set up an operation in Hong Kong first, as a base to expand their businesses globally.”
“The third stage is from 2013 to the present. Our overseas expansion is mainly along the Belt and Road, such as Phnom Penh in Cambodia, Nagoya in Japan and Tashkent in Uzbekistan,” Duan said.
Tahota Law Firm is another rising star when it comes to overseas expansion. Shen Zhijun, managing partner of Tahota’s Beijing office, also emphasizes the important role of the Belt and Road Initiative. Tahota’s overseas expansion started only in 2015, but it has already established six offices abroad since then. The offices in Sydney, Australia, and Kathmandu, Nepal have opened to cater to the needs of the BRI.
As Chinese companies seek overseas opportunities, they also seek to upgrade themselves, either through diversifying their manufacturing or supply chains, or through becoming more international. Similarly, law firms need to raise their standards as well. Ma Jiangtao, China CEO at Dentons says: “ From the final stage of our ‘First Five-year Plan’ to the beginning of the ‘Second Five-year Plan’ in 2008, Dacheng began to implement the strategy of global legal service network. The management at that time had noticed that economic globalization would inevitably spark the demand for globalized legal services.”
Tahota has had a similar experience. By the end of 2016, the firm found that it could not limit its business in a certain region anymore. It then started a five-year development plan to expand both domestically and globally. “We did so to build our brand,” Shen says.
“Of course, (the overseas expansion) was also driven by the needs of our clients,” he adds. “After reaching a certain scale, our clients’ activities have gradually expanded to Southeast Asia and West Asia, which called for us to set up offices in some specific areas. So we set up offices in Thailand and Nepal.”
Duan echoes the observations of Ma and Shen. He cites Duan & Duan’s offices in Phnom Penh and Tashkent as examples. “We have clients who invest in the real estate sector in Phnom Penh and needed our services. Tashkent is another good example. We have clients who do mining business there and asked if we could set up an office there to continue to help them do business.”
WHEN IN ROME
Like all profit-making organizations, law firms need to plan carefully when setting up overseas offices. Of course, they all need to land safely and establish a solid presence, but beyond that, firms take different approaches.
In July 2019, the Ministry of Justice promulgated the Provisions on the Administration of the Record-filing of Overseas Branches of Law Firms. “According to the Provisions, the over-seas offices of law firms should have actual control over personnel, property and materials. I have studied the landing modes filed by law firms with local judicial bureaus. Most of them establish their overseas offices through registering a new law firm, setting up direct offices, or setting up legal service companies,” Shen of Tahota says.
But he admits: “We have to accommodate to the actual situations of different places. For example, our Bangkok office would be registered as a legal service company, while our Washington D.C. office is a law firm. We have requirements for brand, risk control and absorbing new partners, and we adapt flexibly in terms of personnel, property and materials.”
Duan believes that “localization” is the key to his firm’s overseas strategy. “In terms of landing modes, some of our overseas offices are local firms directly turned into our brand of Duan & Duan, while others are new firms set up through partnership with local firms. Every place has its circumstances, but overall, we respect the principle of ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’”
Shen and Duan both believe that choosing “localization” as the way of landing can help effectively avoid the regulatory and cultural barriers when setting up overseas offices, and more importantly, overseas offices can in this way develop their resources and clientele. “To get a foothold and grow in a new market, we cannot do businesses related to Chinese enterprises only; instead, we need to build local connections and do local businesses. There are not many Chinese law firms having the capability to expand overseas, the offices are purely branding tools without solid business. We want to actually operate our businesses overseas and make profits there,” Duan says.
As for Dentons, the firm “has experienced a tortuous path from identifying partners case by case, establishing offices to carrying out a combination with Dentons in the process of its globalization,” says Ma.
By 2013 - in the last phase of its Second Five-year Plan, “we had established localized offices in seven cities overseas and have made 37 law firms members of our global network,” Ma adds. “However, with the continuous development of social economy, the response speed and quality requirements of clients to the services provided by law firms are getting higher and higher. However, the cooperation mode of strategic partnership, which is relatively loose in integrated management, is increasingly powerless to adapt to this new trend in the market. In 2014, we quickly opened a new chapter in the combination between Dentons and Dacheng in the form of Swiss Verein.”
After the merger, the new Dentons naturally gained Dentons’ original network of law firms, and also accelerated its global expansion. Ma says that after the merger in 2015, Dentons set up 50 new offices overseas, covering all five continents. “ Dentons does not open overseas offices or send Dentons lawyers to open branch offices in new markets. Our approach has always been to combine with leading local firms who are in and of their community, as we believe this provides the best outcomes for clients.”
THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE
Law firm leaders say that the biggest challenge facing their overseas offices is being able to manage them well.
“One of the most important issues concerning the overseas expansion is how to interact with the branch offices,” Shen says. “We found that we are usually closely connected with Chinese lawyers, no matter where we are; but we do not pay enough attention to or do not have a lot of connections with overseas lawyers.”
Duan & Duan also has had problems in this regard. But “now through the cloud platform, all offices have access to learn about our system, policies and development. Everyone could stay connected,” Duan says.
Dentons uses a quite different approach in this regard. With a “multi-centred and localization” strategy, it focuses on using local lawyers to provide local services, but it will help the offices to enhance market visibility and invest resources to support lawyers of all offices to obtain due recognition.
“ In 2015, Dentons has increased the number of individual lawyers ranked by Chambers and Legal 500 by 49 percent, the number of Band 1 and Band 2 ranked practices, sectors and individual lawyers by 121 percent and the total number of ranked practices, sectors and individual lawyers by 129%,” Ma says.
However, in spite of the challenges, overseas expansion brings unexpected benefits. “The establishment of more overseas offices helps to expand our reach and improve our presence. For example, if an electric power company in Shandong Province is going to arbitrate in the Hong Kong SAR, or our New York office needs to deal with European-related business, they can all go to offices of Duan & Duan in the respective regions. They form an effective internal platform for the briefing of case sources,” says Duan.
Ma of Dentons echoes this view:
“Dentons now has more than 18 offices around the world. For clients from China, these offices can easily be accessed through the client’s local Chinese relationship partner in Dentons China.”
NEXT STEPS
In Duan’s view, “2019 is a year of foreign-related matters. Authorities, from the central government to local governments, especially the Ministry of justice, attach great importance to the cultivation of lawyers handling foreign-related matters and the establishment of overseas offices. It is foreseeable that this trend will continue in the years to come. “
It is believed that Chinese law firms will continue to expand according to the policies, and as their clients continue to venture out. Wendy Wu of TMF Group shared with ALB several hotspots for Chinese companies expanding soon: “In the first half of 2018, the UK attracted $1.6 billion of Chinese investment, becoming the most popular EU country after Sweden; the second popular destination is the ASEAN countries – the continuously strengthened regional economic and trade relations has led to a surge in investment.” And the new hot spots include “Brazil and Mexico where we have a lot of cooperation in energy and infrastructure.”
Dentons will continue its strategy of expanding globally and Ma says there are some key areas for future development: “We are now the only Pan-Latin American and the Caribbean law firm in the history of the legal profession. We are the fastest-growing law firm across western, eastern and central Europe - where we are the largest firm in such countries as Poland, Germany, and Russia. We are growing in exciting markets such as Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, New Zealand, South Korea and Singapore. We are building on our strategy to become the first pan-African law firm owned and controlled by Africans.”
Duan & Duan will continue to focus on the expansion in mature markets and along the Belt and Road. “We are working to set up offices in Seoul, London, and Brussels. And we are also considering expanding our presence in the ASEAN, the European Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States, Arab and Middle East regions,” Duan adds.
Tahota’s expansion strategy is roughly the same. The establishment of its Bangkok office has been internally approved, and the firm is currently negotiating the opening of offices in Japan, Turkey and Pakistan. But Shen also says that the decision on where to expand next depends on the firm’s business strategy. “We want to expand robustly – developing stable clients and stable business flows along the Belt and Road Initiative, thus building a solid presence for marketing success,” Shen adds.
To contact the editorial team, please email ALBEditor@thomsonreuters.com.
