GUIDE TO LIVING AND WORKING IN HONG KONG
Introduction
Most overseas lawyers will know all about Hong Kong's fast pace of life, about its skyscrapers and its standing as one of the world's leading business centres. But in the following few paragraphs we will try to spell out what the self proclaimed "City of Life" has in store for a legal professional re-locating here; what it is like to live and work in the HKSAR.
The vast majority of the top City firms are here in strength and, together with a selection of the top North American outfits, whose offices tend to be far smaller, and a number of commercially oriented "local" practices, they represent the most likely employers of an overseas lawyer coming to Hong Kong. There is good quality work on offer, with an ever increasing influence from the PRC, and opportunities to work on Asia wide matters often in conjunction with colleagues from other Asian offices, which any such firm may have in Tokyo, Singapore, Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok or even Ho Chi Minh.
Excellent salaries are just one of the many attractions about coming to live and work in Hong Kong. Basic packages are typically significantly higher than for equivalent lawyers in London, and very substantially higher than for contemporaries in, say, Australia and Singapore. When the exceedingly generous tax rate is taken into consideration, most lawyers (with the possible exception of those coming from New York) will find that they are very significantly better off than they were before.
However, life is not all about work and money, and perhaps the thing that surprises newcomers the most is the quality of life they can enjoy here.
Two particular myths often attributed to Hong Kong are, one, that accommodation is horrifically expensive and, two, that one is expected to work very long hours. In truth, our experience suggests that, while any lawyer in a leading commercial firm must expect to work hard, and late nights in the office should not come as a surprise, there is nothing in Hong Kong that one wouldn't find, by way of example, in a top Sydney practice. It is fair to say that hours can be somewhat longer in some of the US firms, but that is the same the world over and if you choose to work in such a practice then your package is likely to reflect the extra time you spend in the office.
So far as accommodation is concerned, rents have dropped enormously over the past few years while they have skyrocketed in many other major cities around the World and, while most people live in apartments rather than houses, even a young lawyer will easily be able to afford a perfectly nice place (probably with a swimming pool and a gym) for a very reasonable proportion of their salary.
The City based firms, in particular, will typically offer very good holiday entitlements, usually between 22 and 28 days per annum, and, in addition, Hong Kong has 17 days public holidays annually. As a result, there are plenty of opportunities to get away and of course no shortage of fantastically exotic locations within easy reach of the hugely convenient Chep Lap Kok Airport. Weekends to Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam, to name but a few of the common destinations, are pretty run of the mill amongst the ex-pat community.
