Troutman Sanders is set to pull out of Asia after closing its offices in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing by the end of May, according to media reports. The exit comes despite the Atlanta-headquartered firm having seen “a record year for revenue” in Hong Kong last year, as stated by Eric Szweda, the office managing partner, in an interview with ALB in November.
Troutman also recently reached milestone anniversaries – 20 years in Hong Kong (opened 1997) and 10 years in Shanghai (opened 2007) – and was on the verge of completing five years in Beijing (opened 2013).
The firm has about 30 lawyers, including seven partners, across its three Asian offices, although most of them (21) are in Hong Kong, with another five in Beijing. Troutman was at No. 47 in ALB’s top 50 largest international law firms ranking in 2017. It is not known at present what will happen to these lawyers.
In the ALB interview in November, Szweda had said that one of the major challenges facing the firm was recruitment. “Recruiting in particular was very difficult and time consuming for several years as we had to establish our identity and credibility in the market, as well as learn the market on our end. We have generally recruited one lawyer at a time, which has enabled us to avoid the well-known large scale team move blunders made by some of our competitors. But recruiting one lawyer at a time creates its own challenges, including as to integration,” he said.
“Fortunately, for the past few years, we have been enticing high caliber partners and associates already known to our existing lawyers to join us,” he added.
When asked in the Q&A about what was next for the firm in Hong Kong, Szweda answered: “While focusing on growth, we also (like the rest of the legal industry) have to work more at reducing our cost structure. One of our initiatives this year has been to move more work around our three China offices when appropriate, which is resulting in cost savings.”
ALB has contacted the firm for confirmation of its plans to exit Asia, and this story will be updated once a response is received.