A Bridget Jones-style blogger has lifted the lid on life as an associate in Hong Kong's buzzing legal market. Jessica Seah reports

A few months ago, 28-year-old associate Daisy Wong went to lunch at The American Club in Hong Kong with a partner who tried to convince her to join the local office of his New York-based law firm. If she would only switch firms, he promised, he would "nurture" her for partnership.

"Nurture me for partnership," she thought. "Where have I heard that before? Let me think… oh, yes, numerous times from my own superiors. No wonder I don't feel a thing. It's almost like a young mistress wondering when her married boyfriend will divorce his wife and marry her instead. But two, five and 10 years pass and he never does."

Welcome to the breezy yet cynical world of Daisy Wong, the pseudonymous would-be Bridget Jones of the Hong Kong legal scene. Not ringing a bell? If you can't read Chinese, Daisy will probably remain a stranger. But if her Cantonese slang is no obstacle, Daisy has a Chinese-language blog, newspaper column and book series purportedly chronicling the personal and professional life of a young female associate at one of the top law firms in Hong Kong.

Is she for real? Several lawyers familiar with the blog believe she is not, but that the featured law firm – which she never names but describes as being based in the UK – and the lawyers, who are given nicknames, are based on real-life equivalents.

Six lawyers who work at the local offices of US and UK firms speculate that Daisy may be gossiping about the Hong Kong office of London's Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. Antony Dapiran, a former Freshfields partner who joined the Hong Kong office of Davis Polk & Wardwell last year, says: "A few of the deals that the writer described on her blog were similar to the ones that Freshfields was doing at different times." Dapiran says that while he doesn't read the blog himself, he's been told what's in it by other readers. A Freshfields spokesperson confirmed that the firm has heard of the blog but declined to comment on it.

Daisy has never been publicly identified, but her email address is listed on the blog. In response to a message sent to that address, Daisy replied that she has never worked at Freshfields and is not acquainted with any of the firm's partners or staff. "My writing is about love and taste, [the] life and personal growth of a young professional woman working in [Hong Kong's] central [district]," Daisy wrote.

Perhaps, but several of Daisy's readers think they know who she is – and that she's not really a she. Three lawyers say that the rumour in Hong Kong is that Daisy is the creation of former Freshfields associate Charles Chau, who joined Morrison & Foerster last year as a corporate partner in its Hong Kong office. Christopher Wong, himself a partner at Freshfields before going over to Simpson Thacher & Bartlett last month, adds: "Some say it might be [Chau's] girlfriend, who is a journalist at a local paper."

In an email statement, Chau denied any involvement with Daisy's work: "I am aware of the blog and read it from time to time. However, I am not the author and have not collaborated on the contents of the blog." Daisy was asked via her email address whether she collaborated with Chau, but did not reply.

Daisy's blog, which started in 2007, is called Lancashire Road, after the street in Hong Kong's Kowloon Tong neighbourhood where she says she lives. Excerpts from the blog are published as a weekend column in the Hong Kong Economic Journal, a Chinese-language business daily. (A representative for the newspaper declined to comment for this article.) Daisy also self-published a book, Daisy Wong @ Office, earlier this year.

Daisy doesn't just write about life at her law firm. She ponders the careers of (and occasionally meets) celebrities, worries about addiction to technology and raves about the latest Jimmy Choo shoes. But, as with most associates, interruptions to such thoughts come from a familiar source.

"Eric" is the partner Daisy most frequently works with and is the main character in most of her work-related blog entries. Eric is portrayed in Daisy's pieces as an obstinate and tough boss who at all times expects nothing less than a 100% commitment from his associates.

Who is Eric? Christopher Wong – who was at Freshfields for 17 years before leaving its Hong Kong office this year – says plainly: "Eric is me." He refers to a 2007 blog post in which Daisy describes a flight to China's Hainan Island: "Everyone was either reading The Financial Times or the Asian Wall Street Journal, but Eric was fully engrossed in his handheld games console, gritting his teeth while playing his video game. It was embarrassing. I was trying to hold up the newspaper to cover my face."

"A colleague showed it to me when the passage first got published, and I knew she was writing about me," Wong says. "I remember that business trip and my [PlayStation Portable], and she talked about me falling asleep in the cab." Laughing, he adds: "It doesn't really bother me – it's just a blog." Though Wong is now at Simpson Thacher, the character of Eric lives on in Daisy Wong's blog, leading some readers to guess that he's a composite of different lawyers.

Another prominent character in the blog is "The Queen", described as a powerful and sometimes overbearing leader who became an equity partner in her early 30s. The Queen is often introduced into an entry by a description of her stylish clothes and jewellery – "always wearing a diamond ring with a rock the size of a quail egg", for example. Six lawyers familiar with the blog say that the The Queen sounds somewhat like Teresa Ko, who chairs Freshfields' China practice.

Part of the appeal of Daisy's blog has been the mystery. "I think everyone sort of knew which firm Daisy Wong is trying to get at or who she's talking about, but no-one really wanted to come out and say it, so that made it interesting," says a partner in the Hong Kong office of a New York-based firm, who declined to be named. If the identity of the characters is less of a mystery now, the question for Daisy Wong is whether she can keep her readers' attention.

This article first appeared in The Asian Lawyer, an affiliate title of Legal Week.