Founded in 2014, Ashok Dhingra Associates (ADA) is a professional services firm offering wide range of legal services across India. The firm’s objective is to enhance value for clients by focusing on innovative and practical solutions that can be implemented. Best Customs & Trade Tax Law Firm - India Empire East Land Holdings, Inc. APAC Legal Awards 2019 - www.apac-insider.com Best Personal Injury Law Firm - Western Australia Foyle Legal Supporting clients with work injury claims, car accident injury claims, and other negligence related injury claims, Foyle Legal is able to offer specialist, award-winning service that will ensure every client receives the settlement they deserve.
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3 APAC / 2019 Legal Awards Contents , 4. Empire East Land Holdings, Inc.: Best Customs & Trade Tax Law Firm - India 6. Foyle Legal: Best Personal Injury Law Firm - Western Australia 7. Peripheral Blue: Best In-House Legal Team Consultancy – Australia & Award for Distinction in Contract Management 2019 8. Grandall Law Firm: Best Full-Service Commercial Law Firm - China 9. Dentons: Most Feared IP Litigator 2019 - China 10. Australians win international arbitration writing competition co-sponsored by UH Law Center 11. Challenges Mount for Global HR Functions Contents Welcome to the 2019 Legal Awards As a leader of innovation in the global legal sector, the Asia Pacific region is home to some of the world’s leading law firms. The 2019 Legal Awards return to recognise the very best this competitive industry has to offer. The Asia Pacific region represents the world’s fastest growing legal market, and with a desire for innovative solutions to this competitive sector, the 2019 Legal Awards will showcase the very best talent that this sector can offer. K
4 APAC / 2019 Legal Awards Empire East Land Holdings, Inc. , Contact Details: Company: Ashok Dhingra Associates Contact: Ashok Dhingra Website: http://www.adalegal.com/ Aug19189 Best Customs & Trade Tax Law Firm - India Founded in 2014, Ashok Dhingra Associates (ADA) is a professional services firm offering wide range of legal services across India. The firm’s objective is to enhance value for clients by focusing on innovative and practical solutions that can be implemented. Delivering services through highly trained professionals, the team blend their expertise with the needs of clients whilst maintaining an uncompromising focus on quality and ethical practice. ADA follows no relative policy to attract best talent. As a winner in this year’s APAC Legal Awards, discover what makes this firm one of the best customs and trade tax law firms in India. The firm was founded by Ashok Dhingra, a highly-respected attorney who is an authority across India on GST, indirect taxes, customs and trade laws, export controls, and sanctions. ADA provides a full spectrum of litigation, advisory, and compliance support services in three major areas; the customs and trade group, the goods and services tax group, and the whitecollar crimes, investigations and regulatory group. With more than 43 years experiences, Ashok is wellequipped to deal with any and all cases that cross his desk. His experience includes working in Indian customs for more than twenty-two years and over twenty years with consulting firms such as Arthur Andersen, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and law firms Khaitan & Co. and J. Sagar Associates. Ashok is one of few professionals in the country who carries with him the experience of having worked on both sides of table, and with both accounting and law firms. As a result, ADA presents clients with the unique advantage of providing business solutions whilst keeping in mind possible responses of authorities on contentious issues. Constantly staying at the front of industry developments, Ashok and Sonia completed training on GST in Canada, which has been introduced in India on July 1, 2017. Ashok leads the white-collar crimes, investigations and regulatory group, which provides advisory services to clients in FCPA and ethical violation investigations, foreign exchange management issues, data security, privacy, retention, encryption and movement. The team at ADA assist clients in all manner of areas. Ashok and the team regularly advise clients in raid or investigations by tax, trade and regulatory authorities, briefing and debriefing employees, assisting in taking a position on key issues of those investigations. Using his extensive experience, Ashok also advises clients on export and import policies, and sanctions under the foreign trade policy, regularly appearing in high and supreme courts as an arguing council on tax and trade matters. Sonia Gupta, co-founder of ADA, is a chartered accountant and attorney who primarily focuses on customs and trade laws including export/import controls and sanctions, foreign trade policies, and regulatory laws, providing clients with advisory and litigation services. Her work ranges from being able to assist clients with determination of arms’ length price in case of transaction with associated enterprises, classification and country of origin rules, investigations for levy of anti-dumping/ countervailing/ safeguard duties before the Director General Trade Remedies, etc. and appeals and arguing at hearings before Tribunals, High Court and Supreme Court. Smita, co-founder of ADA, advises large multinational clients under GST on a wide range of services including liability to pay tax, eligibility to input tax credit, day to day compliances and reworking the supply chain for efficiency and compliance, and to drafting compliance manuals. Partners of ADA are writing many well-received articles of key indirect tax, GST, Export Controls, Dual Use Technologies, Ease of Doing Business, and other contemporary issues. Ultimately, the success of ADA is down the breadth of knowledge and expertise they offer across such a wide range of legal arenas. Taking their over seventy years’ combined experience and putting the client first, this legal firm are extremely proficient in working alongside clients to achieve the best results possible through their unrivalled knowledge of the law.
5 APAC / 2019 Legal Awards gEmpire East Land Holdings, Inc.
6 APAC / 2019 Legal Awards , Foyle Legal , Contact Details: Company: Foyle Legal Contact: Christian Foyle Website: https://foylelegal.com/ May19258 Best Personal Injury Law Firm - Western Australia Supporting clients with work injury claims, car accident injury claims, and other negligence related injury claims, Foyle Legal is able to offer specialist, award-winning service that will ensure every client receives the settlement they deserve. As we showcase some of this year’s APAC Legal Awards winners we offer an overview of the firm and the services it has to offer. Established in 2012 by Christian Foyle, Foyle Legal has since grown into a wellrecognised brand by industry peers and appreciated by its discerning clients. Today, the firm offers a No Win No Fee legal solution for personal injury claims and TPD claims, and fixed fee legal service for service wills. This innovative No Win No Fee solution means clients do not need to pay upfront legal fees. Most of the firm’s legal fees will be paid by the insurance company once a claim is successfully made. There will be no contingency fees, no percentage fees and the firm’s team try their best to recover most of their legal fees and costs from the insurer to ensure that clients enjoy a quality experience for as little up-front cost as possible. Such a focus on supporting claimants is what sets Foyle Legal apart from its competitors and has made the firm the epitome of quality personal injury law. The firm now has a has proven track record for getting its clients a better compensation pay-out amount in full range of injury compensation claims. Over the years, Foyle Legal has helped hundreds of clients to recover millions in injury compensation pay-outs. Throughout the years to come the firm will remain dedicated to supporting even more claimants and helping them to enjoy the same exceptional service that its clients have come to rely on.
7 APAC / 2019 Legal Awards , Aug19213 Best In-House Legal Team Consultancy – Australia & Award for Distinction in Contract Management 2019 After nearly twenty years in the legal industry, Mellissa Larkin knew that the traditional legal model was broken and there had to be a way. In 2016 she founded Peripheral Blue with the aim of disrupting the legal and professional services industries by giving clients access to top tier, responsive legal and advisory services in a flexible and affordable way. It has since been named as the Best In-House Legal Team Consultancy for Australia, and has garnered the Award for Distinction in Contract Management for 2019 in APAC Insider. We dive deep into the firm’s workings and successes to discover how they became one of Australia’s top independent legal firms. Peripheral Blue is an award-winning legal and consulting firm based in Adelaide, South Australia. Founded by Mellissa Larkin, a lawyer with two decades’ experience in top tier firms across two continents, the vision for Peripheral Blue was clear – a disruptive new style of legal and consulting practice, engaging top tier talent and employing the latest technology to champion the needs of the client. Understanding that businesses often need more than just legal advice, the firm also offers commercial advisory support to help clients effectively run their business. Since its launch, Peripheral Blue has developed a reputation as a company providing top-tier & highly responsive services, and committed to forging and nurturing authentic, trusted thought partnerships with its client base, which includes ASX200 companies, large organisations and rapidly growing SME’s across a broad range of industries. Understanding that businesses have to remain flexible, dynamic and open-minded, Peripheral Blue has tailored its own service solutions to ensure that clients don’t have to choose between experience, cost-efficiency and personal relationships. For its SME clients, Peripheral Blue has created its ‘Counsel on Call’ service, effectively giving them access to their own responsive, in-house legal team – without the top-tier pricing. It is ideal for companies which don’t yet have an in-house lawyer or which have a small in-house legal team and guarantees a level of quality and consistency not seen in other outsourced legal solutions. For larger businesses with existing in-house teams, Peripheral Blue developed its ‘Talent Partnership TM’ solution, through which PBLawyers are able to provide insourcing and outsourcing services. This is ideal for companies during times of increased volume, staff leave, or where there is a need to outsource specialist, specific, legal or policy advice, such as in response to changes to regulatory compliance obligations. As the Peripheral Blue team has had experience working in both law firms and in-house, they understand the importance of finding the ‘right’ fit to hit the ground running with their client’s existing team. PBLawyers not only work collaboratively with one another to share knowledge but also make sure that any lessons learned during a project/transaction (especially where the in-house team has played a reduced role), are not lost. Integral to the success of Peripheral Blue’s innovative new model is the employment of the latest digital technology and communication strategies, which has enabled processes and workflows to be streamlined to assist staff and enrich the client’s experience. Mellissa’s commitment to providing a truly flexible working environment – a major turnaround from the ‘2,000+ hours per year’ model championed in the past – also reflects the value placed on providing an enriched experience for lawyers and clients alike. In founding the firm, the one non-negotiable was sourcing exceptional talent. PBConsultants and PBLawyers are alumni of premier law firms, ASX200 companies and state and federal government agencies – passionate about what they do, and the driving force behind Peripheral Blue’s disruptive reimagining of the legal industry. As a ‘New Law’ firm, unencumbered by the traditional restraints of BigLaw, Peripheral Blue has stepped away from the traditional legal methods to offer something new, and has the ultimate freedom to adapt its approach as it grows. Working to reduce risk, streamline processes, and move forward with confidence, this independent firm is changing the face of Australian law. Company: Peripheral Blue Contact: Mellissa Larkin Website: www.peripheralblue.com.au
8 APAC / 2019 Legal Awards , Grandall Law Firm Best Full-Service Commercial Law Firm - China Sep19124 Widely regarded as one of the largest and best transnational partnership law firms in China, Grandall Law Firm is the country’s leading, full-service corporate and commercial law firm. As part of APAC’s Legal Awards, we examine the firm to understand more about their corporate and commercial work. Operating with offices strategically located across China, as well as representative international offices in Hong Kong SAR, Paris, Madrid, Silicon Valley, Stockholm and New York, Grandall Law Firm is one of China’s leading transnational partnership law firms. Employing more than three thousand individuals, the firm’s workforce includes licensed attorneys, foreign counsels, paralegals, secretaries, administrative and supporting staff. Grandall, founded more than twenty years ago, has been consistently ranked amongst the top law firms across the Asia-Pacific region by leading legal publications such as Chambers Asia Pacific, Asia Pacific Legal 500, China Business Law Journal and many others. Many of the firm’s legal experts and professionals are highly-recognised as top practitioners in their chosen fields of specialisation, with a large number of foreign counsels who bridge the gap between the East and West societies. Making full use of the firm’s specialised workforce, Grandall operates across a wide legal practice area that covers many different legal arenas. Those areas include finance, securities, corporate matters, M&A, reorganization, cross-border investment, international trade, intellectual property, wealth management, dispute resolution and many others. Within some areas, such as investment and capital markets, the firm has taken a leading position and topped relevant rankings for years. By offering such a wide variety of corporate and commercial areas of legal practice, Grandall have firmly established themselves as a leader in full-service provision. Committed to protecting the legal rights and interests of its client, the firm maintains social fairness and justice, delivering on its social responsibilities as a legal practice. With honesty and brilliant intelligence, lawyers at Grandall offer professional advice that develop the legal, economic ad industrial businesses of China, actively partaking in the discussion and formulation of policies and legislation. The firm’s development in recent years has relied upon staff consistently delivering on key principles of the company. Compliance, loyalty, diligence, fulfilling commitments, pursuing perfection, excellence, prudence, independence, efficiency, decisiveness, and dedication to work are just some of the reasons that Grandall has experienced such high levels of continued success for more than two decades. Having established itself as one of China’s leading legal firms, Grandall has also been instrumental in the implementation of the country’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which aims to connect Asia with Africa and Europe via land and maritime networks. Dedicated to improving regional integration, increasing trade and stimulating economic growth, the BRI has seen Grandall participate in large numbers of major investment and M&A projects across several countries. Drawing on their extensive experience in outbound legal services, Grandall have been actively engaged in providing legal services related to the BRI, further strengthening relationships and communication with other countries and their legal entities. Providing strong support for the initiative, a large number of the firm’s lawyers have become specialists on the BRI having written books and worked extensively on it. Successfully being a leader in full-service corporate and commercial law for more than twenty years, the achievements of Grandall are nothing short of remarkable. With the BRI providing more opportunities for excellence than ever before, this law firm are proving invaluable in Asia’ expansion of trade and global collaboration. Company: Grandall Law Firm Contact: Lisa Wu Website: http://www.grandall.com.cn/ “Providing strong support for the initiative, a large number of the firm’s lawyers have become specialists on the BRI having written books and worked extensively on it.”
9 APAC / 2019 Legal Awards , Sep19265 Dentons Most Feared IP Litigator 2019 - China With more than 10,000 lawyers in 175 offices operating in 78 countries, Dentons is the largest law firm in the world currently. We profile the firm and its award-winning Chinese office to find out more. Drawing on its immense legal market experience, Dentons is a global law firm driven to provide clients with the competitive edge in an increasingly complex and interconnected marketplace. Dedicated to supporting a wide range of clients, Dentons can build agile and tailored solutions for all clients, no matter they are local, national or global, private or public. The firm’s Chinese branch consists of 45 offices, spanning all of the nations’ provinces and autonomous territories. These offices can provide global support and ensure that clients receive the assistance they need to succeed. Staff at Dentons’ Chinese offices can provide a full range of intellectual property, dispute resolution, and perennial legal counsel for these companies. For example, the firm is able to provide intellectual property services in China for many well-known multinational companies, and offer foreign-related intellectual property services for Chinese companies, including technology transfer in projects such as cross-border mergers and acquisitions. When judging the APAC Legal Awards, APAC Insider Magazine’s judges were particularly impressed by expert IP Litigator Mingyue Dun, who draws on immense market experience to provide clients with specialist support. For more than 20 years, she has been involved in intellectual property infringement litigation, intellectual property administrative protection, and the protection of trademark, copyright and patent rights, including trademark applications, patent applications, copyright registration, domain name protection, customs protection, and due diligence in management and technology transfer and accumulated rich experience in various intellectual property protection. Over the past two decades, Mingyue has aggressively pursued IP counterfeiters by utilizing raid actions in over a hundred cases to promptly stop infringement. To cope with the emerging threat of online counterfeits, she has developed several courses of action for clients to protect their IPR, including online complaints, investigation, administrative action, criminal action, and civil actions. This comprehensive approach has had great success in restraining online counterfeits. By representing large companies in various countries around the world, Mingyue has developed an international perspective and become a talented lawyer with global intellectual property protection experience. Today she is able to work closely with her clients and the team at Dentons to ensure that clients are constantly protected in the ever-evolving IP market. In recent years, as the legal landscape began to shift to favour the client-side a decade ago, Dentons saw the need to adapt to the accelerating pace of the industry’s permanent restructuring. Seeking to enhance its service offering, over the coming years the firm will be pursuing three core strategic combinations; focusing on client-collaborative solutions, and embracing inclusion and diversity (I&D). Dentons intends to continue to scale, innovate, and ultimately build a very different law firm that is always the law firm of the future. For Mingyue and her team, they will build more close connections within the global network of Dentons, in order to better utilize the D2Channel that helps connecting all the lawyers of Dentons globally. As a result of this focus, the team hopes to be able to provide better oversea services for Chinese enterprises and offer counselling for foreign companies over the years to come. Name: Mingyue Dun Address: 7/F, Building D, Parkview Green FangCaoDi, No.9, Dongdaqiao Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China Telephone Number: +86 10 58137705 Web Address: https://www.dentons.com/
10 APAC / 2019 Legal Awards , Australians win international arbitration writing competition co-sponsored by UH Law Center Law school teams from five countries participated in the second annual “Write the Award” commercial arbitration writing competition co-sponsored by the University of Houston Law Center’s Blakely Advocacy Institute with students from Australia taking first place. The winning entry from Bond University Faculty of Law in Robina, Queensland, Australia, was awarded $5,000 by the competition’s co-sponsor, the North American Branch of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators. The second place award of $2,000 went to the Chinese University of Hong Kong with John Marshall Law School of Chicago placing third, earning a $1,000 award. Students from India and Iran also participated in the competition. Judges were Chartered Institute of Arbitrators Fellows from the U.S., Canada, Mexico and England. The competition gives students a chance to complete the final step in the international commercial arbitration process – writing an enforceable award. The competition design builds on the students’ recent experience in the Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot by using the same problem as the Vis. Competitors have submitted written memoranda for the Vis and they have made oral arguments. “Write the Award” competition asks the competitors to take off their advocate “hat” and put on their arbitrator “hat” and decide the outcome of the Vis case. “This international competition is an invaluable experience because it gives students a rare “It’s a unique experience because competitors get to utilize research and knowledge they already have...” opportunity to sit “in the arbitrator’s chair,” said Jim Lawrence, executive director of the Law Center’s Blakely Advocacy Center, which established, and co-sponsors, the event. “It’s a unique experience because competitors get to utilize research and knowledge they already have,” he added. The Blakely Advocacy Institute gives Law Center students the opportunity to integrate substantive knowledge with practical skill. In addition to sending student teams to competitions across the country and abroad, the institute hosts the annual Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP Moot Court National Championship and the National Mediator Competition. The North American Branch of the CIArb provides education and training for arbitrators, mediators and adjudicators and serves as an center for practitioners, policy makers, academics, and those in business concerned with the cost-effective and early settlement of disputes. The Vis Moot competition is designed to foster the study of international commercial law and arbitration and train law leaders of tomorrow in methods of alternative dispute resolution to resolve international disputes. The competition, held in Vienna each year, draws more than 325 teams from around the world. The Vis (East), held each year in Hong Kong, had 127 teams this year.
11 APAC / 2019 Legal Awards , Challenges Mount for Global HR Functions It is becoming increasingly complex for multinational firms to employ staff, at every stage of the employee lifecycle – according to a new report by TMF Group, a leading global provider of administrative support services. ‘Building a Workforce’, part of the 2019 Global Business Complexity Index which analysed 76 different jurisdictions worldwide in terms of ease of doing business, revealed that half (50%) of countries’ labour laws are difficult to understand. Key findings include: • Multinational firms face a number of challenges when it comes to recruitment. Hiring staff before having formally established a local legal entity is especially tricky – particularly in the EMEA region where it is seen as either ‘complex’ or ‘extremely complex’ in the majority of jurisdictions. Once established, hiring workers from abroad remains difficult globally, in fact almost twice as hard as employing someone from within your home jurisdiction, with a complexity rating of 6.4 as opposed to 3.6 within the research. • There has been a degree of convergence in their field of employee payments. 89% of jurisdictions surveyed now have a minimum wage; 87% offer paid maternity leave; 84% offer paid time off. But some elements of employee compensation have marked regional differences. For example, shared parental leave is required in 63% of jurisdictions across the Americas, but just 33% in APAC. Meanwhile, APAC leads the way in pension provision: a fund must be offered in 79% of its jurisdictions, compared to 63% in the Americas and 50% in EMEA. • Almost half (45%) of jurisdictions surveyed reported that payroll legislation is subject to frequent change. The problem is particularly acute in EMEA (frequent changes occur in 55% of jurisdictions) – although relatively stable in APAC (36%). 76% of jurisdictions globally require companies to submit employees’ payroll data to the government at least once a month. • There is a huge disparity in the speed at which employers can fire underperforming staff. In the Americas, 52% of jurisdictions allow businesses to terminate employment contracts in less than a day. In APAC this figure is just 8% and in EMEA 6%. Anne Clifford, TMF Group’s global head of HR & Payroll said: “Regulations and statutory reporting that concern the ethical treatment of workers and their data are increasing. However, even within regulatory frameworks, interpretation varies across locations, and processes change. The result of all this is complexity. And to counter that complexity, companies need the flexibility and agility to accommodate rapidly changing employment legislation for every territory they operate in - whether they employ thousands of workers or just one. “We are entering an era of ‘social compliance’ as regulators become more powerful on the local and global scale. We see a clear trend towards businesses being compelled to report more granular employee data, more frequently. While such technological changes may boost reporting efficiency in the long term, there is likely to be a short-term upswing in complexity while these processes are implemented. Furthermore, it is questionable as to whether technology will be able to keep pace with frequently changing legislation. “As businesses expand and build workforces in new jurisdictions, they must be fully primed for the challenges and complexities they will encounter. “
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