After a prolonged time of negotiation, Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP) was officially signed in Auckland (New Zealand) on 4th February 2016 and is expected to take effect in 2018 after being formally approved by 12 country members.
Along with the comprehensive and profound impact with respect to economic – social life, TPP is also expected to bring many opportunities and challenges for the legal services market as well as Vietnamese lawyer team. According to Mr. Tran Minh Son (a master of law work for Ministry of Justice), joining TPP is considered as a "nudge" for Vietnam to continue perfecting the market economy institution, reform the growth model and restructure the economy, making business investment environment becomes open and transparent, thereby promoting investment and growth. In particular, the range of the TPP is very large which covering many fields such as trade, investment, textile, finance, telecommunications, environment, intellectual property, trading dispute resolution, etc... Hence, the effective of TPP will speed up the demand in term of legal services increased strongly in those areas.
Besides aforementioned opportunities, TPP also poses some significant challenges for legal consulting market and lawyer team of Vietnam. The biggest challenge is competition, especially competition with legal service organizations in the region and the world. TPP is considered the most complex and the most comprehensive until now. It sets a system of legal standard, trade and governance at a very high level applied to the Member States. Therefore, when TPP takes effect, it also requires that quality of legal services in Vietnam must be raised in accordance with the relevant standards of international level. Meanwhile advisory capacity of law firms and lawyers in our country in general is limited. The majority of lawyers is limited to knowledge of international law, foreign languages and even immaturity of experience in consulting on international investment and global trade disputes. In this context, if there is no thoughtful preparation for the long-term vision, the legal services organization and Vietnamese lawyer team can "lose" at home.
Aware of above opportunities and challenges, Vietthink Law Firm has prepared methodically in all aspects in order to constantly improve consultation capacity and proactively seize opportunities and cope with challenges. With unremitting efforts over last years, Vietthink has gradually asserted its strength in several areas such as enterprise consulting, investment consulting and finance consulting. At present, Vietthink has been focusing on complete and enhance the capacity of advisory in order to meet requirement of TPP, particularly in intellectual property and environmental protection law. Besides, Vietthink relentlessly focus on improving the quality of services to meet better the demands of clients, especially corporations, Multi-national Corporation. With its existing advantages, Vietthink has pioneered the approach and connect networking clients who are foreign investors in Vietnam, of which has a lot of investors coming from TPP countries members such as the USA, Japan, Australia ... This is a very important premise for Vietthink to approach and become familiar with the standards of the TPP.
To improve the capacity of competitiveness and integration in the context of TPP was adopted, Vietthink determines that human factor is the key. The company has been continuously pay attention on increasing the number of lawyer team and improving the quality of lawyer team and consultant team. Besides the experienced lawyers, Vietthink is very interested in attracting young lawyer who was trained, with international legal knowledge, fluent in foreign languages, dynamic and easily adapt to integration. The law firm also has policies to encourage and creates favorable conditions for lawyers to keep learning, advanced training expertise, occupation, professional skills and practical experience, especially raising foreign language skills and knowledge of international law. Along with the improvement of professional capacity, Vietthink also invests in building a professional and methodical brand. Strategy of building brand was adopted with the aim of putting Vietthink into the top 10 law firms in Vietnam and gradually reach out to the region and the world. Otherwise, Vietthink also enhances connectivity and cooperation with the organizations, the specialized consultants and a lot of social - professional organizations to support consulting activities and provide to Vietthink’s clients the most perfect consulting service. "With above methodical and steady steps, Vietthink is confident to have enough qualify to fair competition with law firms at home and abroad in order to take advantage of the opportunities brought by TPP" - Mrs. Nguyen Thanh Ha, Deputy Director of Vietthink Law Firm said.
Vietthink News