GUIDE TO LIVING AND WORKING IN BANGKOK

Making the move

Given the small size of the market for overseas qualified lawyers, getting to Bangkok is very much a question of waiting for the right opportunity to arise. One of the best ways to do that is to register your interest with Law Alliance and we will let you know as soon as a suitable opportunity presents itself. We maintain close connections with the international firms in Bangkok and place several lawyers there from overseas each year.

When recruiting from overseas, the international firms, the majority of which are City based, tend to look at those qualified in England & Wales, Australia and to a lesser extent the US. Over and above that, personality tends to be quite important. Being a lawyer in a small office can sometimes require a few slightly different skills to working as part of a big team in a much larger office. For example, the ability to play a key role, even when quite junior, in marketing initiatives, to be flexible in undertaking work that may not be quite what you are used to and to have a relatively high level of client contact from an early stage.

Areas of Practice

Another consequence of the small offices is that they are not full service and therefore do not look for lawyers from all areas of the law. Many of the international firms that moved into Thailand did so on the back of a wealth of restructuring work that arose after the Asian economic crisis in 1997/98. However, that work has now died down somewhat, not least due to a change in the law and there has been somewhat of a change of emphasis in the various firms' practices. The areas of practice best suited to a move to Thailand at the moment are as follows:

		Corporate / Commercial
		Banking & Finance (ideally to include some restructuring experience)
		Dispute resolution (especially construction and arbitration specialists)
		Capital Markets