RHTLaw Taylor Wessing management board members, (L-to- R) Nandakumar Renganathan, Azman Jaafar, Tan Chong Huat, Erwan Barre, Ch'ng Li-Ling, Yang Eu Jin

Taylor Wessing's member firm in Singapore has appointed a new managing partner to lead its next phase of growth, which will heavily emphasise non-legal offerings at a time when the legal market in Asia is changing.

Partner Azman Jaafar succeeded Tan Chong Huat as managing partner of RHTLaw Taylor Wessing on July 1. Jaafar has been Tan's deputy for four years, and co-founded RHTLaw with Tan in 2011 as part of a 13-partner group that broke away from Singaporean firm KhattarWong. The firm became RHTLaw Taylor Wessing in 2012.

Tan, who has led the firm since 2011, is remaining at the firm as chair of its management board and supervisory council.

In a statement describing his plans for the firm, Jaafar said it is now "entering into a very exciting and challenging phase of growth". And most of that excitement and challenge, he said, will come from the firm's non-legal services.

RHTLaw Taylor Wessing already advises clients on non-legal matters through its broader RHT group of companies, such as RHT Consultancy Holdings, which does consulting and advisory work and was set up in May of this year; Carrington RHT Wealth, which handles wealth management and asset management and was formed in 2017; and RHT Holdings, which deals with fintech and financial services and was established in 2014.

In total, the RHT network has more than 40 separate entities, offering a variety of non-legal services, including blockchain, compliance, intellectual property asset management, investor relations and training.

"The part that's unusual about us is that several years ago we started a separate ecosystem of professional services that are non-legal in nature, to take advantage of the blank spaces," Jaafar said. "Clients want you to do it, but we couldn't do it because we're just lawyers."

This expansion outside of legal services comes at a time when the Singaporean legal market and the practise of law is evolving, Jaafar said. The Big Four accounting firms have made an aggressive push into legal markets in the Asia-Pacific region, including in Singapore. In the past 12 months, EY and PricewaterhouseCoopers both launched a new Singaporean law practice, and Deloitte launched local and foreign law practices.

Jaafar points to the Big Four's recent expansion beyond its traditional offerings in auditing, tax and consulting as a testament to the need for law firms to branch out of legal.

"This is where it gets challenging [because] law firms are, by definition and training, quite conservative," Jaafar noted. But early on, RHTLaw Taylor Wessing saw this trend as a "holistic approach to problem-solving", he said.

The push into non-legal services also comes at a time when the firm has suffered a string of partner departures. Since 2013, RHTLaw has lost at least 24 partners; the firm now has 23 partners, down from 31 in 2011.

Among those who have recently left are former financial services head Nizam Ismail, former deputy corporate head Seh Ping Kong, banking and finance lawyer Gerard Ng, disputes lawyer Eugene Quah and family law specialist Michelle Woodworth. Most joined lesser-known local firms.

Jaafar said the partners left for a variety of reasons and the departures are not the reason why the firm is pursuing more non-legal offerings.

RHTLaw Taylor Wessing has made some lateral hires. Zachary Scully joined the firm as a corporate partner last month from Melbourne-based boutique JK Lawyers & Co., where he was a solicitor. And in January, the firm also promoted Jeremiah Huang and Ng Yi Wayn to partner. Both focus on capital markets and mergers and acquisitions.

In addition to non-legal, RHTLaw Taylor Wessing will continue to expand its five-year-old southeast Asia-focused legal network, ASEAN Plus Group. The network currently has 11 members, including Azmi & Associates in Malaysia, SSEK Legal Consultants in Indonesia, Siam City Law Offices in Thailand, V&A Law in the Philippines and VDB Loi in Cambodia. In 2016, RHTLaw combined with the 25-lawyer Vietnamese firm PBC Partners and created RHTLaw Taylor Wessing Vietnam.

In Indonesia, RHTLaw Taylor Wessing used to have an association with Hanafiah Ponggawa & Partners, one of the largest firms in the country. But the alliance ended and the Jakarta-based firm joined the global giant Dentons last year.

"We are looking into developing more intensely our capabilities in investment destinations of Chinese companies," said Jaafar, who manages ASEAN Plus Group. "We will beef up some of the capabilities in our more traditional markets, like Malaysia and Indonesia."

"There's some unease about the [U.S.-China] trade war, but we're not waiting for the war to end," he added. "It's more important to take the bull by the horns."

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