Weil Gotshal & Manges has added a partner to its M&A practice in Beijing with the recruitment of corporate lawyer Li Li from Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton's local office.

Li, who focuses on large transactions involving China-based corporates, joined Cleary in February 2011 from rival US firm Debevoise & Plimpton, where she played a key role in setting up the firm's Shanghai office. At Cleary she served as Beijing office director, while at Debevoise she was a partner.

Li has more than 20 years' experience working with international law firms in New York and Asia. At Weil she will work closely with Steven Xiang, head of Weil's China practice, and the rest of the China-based M&A team.

Weil Asia managing partner Akiko Mikumo said: "Li Li will play a key role in our outbound China M&A practice. Chinese outbound M&A transactions have grown from $30bn in 2007 to nearly $80bn in 2011 and we expect our China M&A practice to be engaged by an increasing number of Chinese companies doing deals outside of China."

Weil opened in Beijing in 2008, following launches in Hong Kong in 2007 and Shanghai in 2005. Over the last year the firm has worked on Asian deals including the Wanda-AMC Entertainment deal, the Yahoo sale back to Alibaba and Bright Food's acquisition of Weetabix.

Li's hire in Asia follows a spate of lateral partner hiring by Weil in London. In December the firm hired Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer high-yield partner Gil Strauss, while in July it hired restructuring partner Alexander Wood from Hogan Lovells.