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I'm a JAG in the Armed Services who's approaching the end of his service contract (a bit over a year left) and I've started thinking about exit options. In particular, I've been thinking about trying to find work in Asia (Singapore in particular, but maybe Malaysia) in Transactional law.

This would be a pretty big transition for me -- I have never done any transactional work at all -- but I do have some other variables that might make it more feasible. I graduated from a T6 law school in 2021 (Top 4 recently, lol, giving up the game here), graduated cum laude, and in the past 2.5 years I've taught myself Mandarin-Chinese (not quite fluent, but I recently tested well past the level required of DoD linguists, and I'm getting better every day -- I'll genuinely be more-or-less fluent by the time I'm done w/ the JAG Corps).

The "why Asia" thing is pretty straightforward: I'm super interested in Asian development economics and I want to live in a Chinese speaking environment. My wife is also Indian and loves Singapore, and would probably like KL too (tons of Indians in both places).

Anyway, basically all the Asia posts are pretty old and possibly out-of-date so I wanted to kick start a new thread.

A few questions:
(1) To those in the know, is the pace in Singapore really that insane?
(2) Do I have a decent chance of finding work at an American firm? I already accept I am not, like, lateralling in as a fourth year associate. Starting at a lower pay scale isn't a problem.
(3) Is the big law market really as brutal as I'm reading right now? I know interest rates are high and lots of M&A/PE activity has slowed down but unemployment is still like 3.7% so it seems unintuitive.
(4) Not sure if this forum can answer this question, but my sense is that trying to work in HK right now for a person with a DoD background is probably a dangerous game. Yes? No?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts. Also if people want to turn this into a generalized discussion of big law in SE Asia I'll take all the info I can get.

The Asian market is shrinking. Layoffs are happening everywhere (KE, Sidley, DPW...). At least five major firms closed their China offices this year. My advice is avoid Asia, especially China. Your experience as JAG might be a national security concern given the current tension between the two countries.

Anonymous User wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 30, 2024 4:53 am

The Asian market is shrinking. Layoffs are happening everywhere (KE, Sidley, DPW...). At least five major firms closed their China offices this year. My advice is avoid Asia, especially China. Your experience as JAG might be a national security concern given the current tension between the two countries.

Shanghai/HK offices, yes the mood is glum, but that's partly because a lot of work is moving to Singapore. The question IMO is whether growth in SG will translate to a healthy labor market (might get swamped by the refugees coming from HK with language fluency and biglaw résumés).

Anyway that's a medium-term phenomenon. In the short term the transactional market is pretty mediocre globally; U.S. unemployment rate is not a good barometer (indeed a very tight labor market implies inflationary pressures which are at best a mixed blessing for corporate dealmaking).

Would not expect good WLB in HK/Singapore. Culture/expectations are most comparable to NYC.

OP I think this is a long shot but you should start networking in these markets now and soon you'll have a better feel than any of us.