Three years ago, Paul Mitchard QC’s firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, put him in charge of international dispute resolution for Europe and Asia. He’d spent the last seven years building a European disputes practice in Skadden’s London office—but Asia was a whole new challenge. After trying—and failing—to find a suitable lawyer to head up an arbitration-focused team in the region, Mitchard decided to go to Hong Kong, where he had qualified in 1984, and do it himself. He moved to Hong Kong in 2009, and the following year was joined by litigation partner Frances Kao, who relocated there from Chicago.

Mitchard and Kao are part of a very small club. American arbitration lawyers are scarce on the ground in Asia. Many of Skadden’s U.S. competitors have no arbitration partners in Asia at all. Of the ten firms that handled the most large arbitrations in 2009–10, according to The American Lawyer ‘s 2011 Arbitration Scorecard, four—Shearman & Sterling; Debevoise & Plimpton; Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton; and Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle—have no arbitration partners at all based in Asia-Pacific countries. Other top-ranked firms have just a few arbitration partners in Asia: White & Case has two arbitration partners in each of its Tokyo and Singapore offices; King & Spalding has one in Singapore. Latham & Watkins has one in Hong Kong and one in Tokyo, while Sidley Austin has three in Hong Kong. (Baker & McKenzie is an exception: Besides Hong Kong–based arbitration partner James Kwan, many of the firm’s partners in Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, and Taipei practice arbitration alongside their other practices.)

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