Perkins Coie Lawyer Pulls Off `Legal Coup' In Taiwan

He disliked Chinese language lessons, entered law school for lack of a better idea and nearly rejected a job offer in Taiwan.

Hardly an auspicious beginning for a Seattle lawyer who just pulled off what one competitor called "the legal coup of the year" in Taiwan.

Heng-Pin "Ping" Kiang, a partner in the Seattle-based Perkins Coie law firm, has managed the start-up of the firm's 3-month-old office in Taipei, the fast-growing capital of Taiwan. As the U.S. liaison to that office, American-born Kiang (pronounced "Jung") won't move overseas but has traveled there once a month this year to recruit Chinese lawyers, open the office and orient the new staff of 23.

The office is the first full-service Taiwan office opened by a Northwest firm, and it's among the three largest established by U.S. firms.

Lawyers in the office are working with clients from China, the U.S. and elsewhere, on deals involving businesses on both sides of the ocean. Typical jobs include reviewing real estate contracts and investment agreements, handling businesses' tax records and advising banks on various issues.

In the months before the Perkins office opened, Kiang, 43, managed to recruit some of Taipei's top lawyers away from other offices.

Kiang, his associates say, is the reason Perkins knows the Taipei market.

"He's gotten rainmakers to come together. It's . . . Ping's stature. I don't think Taiwan necessarily knew Perkins. I think the

people were attracted to Ping," said one client, international banker William Glassford of West One Bank, Washington.

For those wondering about Kiang's less-than-determined start up the career ladder, consider this: He did take those language lessons, did succeed in law school and did take that job in Taiwan, a three-year stint in the early 1980s. His indecision about some of the moves didn't stop him from excelling every step along the way.

Bob Giles, Perkins Coie's managing partner, said the firm probably wouldn't have expanded into Taiwan if not for Kiang. On the other hand, he said, Perkins provides the network and support staff - it has 320 lawyers in seven U.S. offices - to make Kiang's plan work.

Kiang said Perkins' progressive approach and willingness to take risks were the key reasons he joined the firm in 1984 after working in Taiwan for the international firm Baker & McKenzie. He knew then that he wanted to build an overseas market. The idea grew even more appealing after Taiwan's martial law and foreign-exchange controls were lifted in 1987, leading to the republic's economic boom.

Giles said the supply of lawyers in Taiwan has not kept up with demand since investment began flowing into and out of the republic. Perkins saw an opportunity there, he said. He didn't provide detailed revenue projections but said the firm's plan is to recover its investment in the office within two years.

"This is the biggest thing we're doing this year, obviously," he said.

Taiwan's plan to bolster its infrastructure, a $300 billion construction program, will alone provide significant work for Perkins, Giles said.

The firm, whose biggest client is Boeing, claims expertise in aviation, telecommunications, high technology, finance, environmental matters and natural resources.

Giles and Kiang hope that the firm's Taiwan and U.S. offices will refer clients to each other and that the Chinese lawyers will serve foreign clients better than Kiang has been able to do as a U.S. lawyer without the credentials to operate a full practice in Taiwan.

Client Michael Chan, a Hong Kong native who now lives in Bellevue and has business ties in the U.S. and Asia, said Kiang "breaks the barrier of East and West in the law practice."

Kiang knows the Taipei market and the legal and corporate culture there after working there for an international firm, Chan said.

For example, he said, U.S. lawyers have a reputation overseas of billing clients for every minute - even at introductory meetings - and of refusing to give casual advice or accept social invitations for fear of malpractice lawsuits. Kiang doesn't nickel-and-dime clients and is willing to invest time building relationships, Chan said.

As liaison to the Taipei staff, Kiang is finding new cultural challenges, such as introducing the partnership structure to lawyers who are used to small Chinese offices with one person clearly in charge.

He's also adjusting to employees who are reluctant to speak up at staff meetings or in discussions with managers - to the extent that they'll say they understand instructions when they really don't.

Although Kiang describes himself as more American than Chinese, he has been exposed to Chinese culture throughout his life. In fact, it was a fluke that Kiang was raised in the United States.

His father, a lawyer working for the Chinese government, was a United Nations delegate in New York in 1949, the year Kiang was born. That also was the year the Communist government took control of China, leaving Kiang's father without a government to represent nor any political protection if he returned home.

He and Kiang's mother, a nutritionist "ahead of her time," decided to stay in the U.S.

They spoke Chinese at home (even though they knew English) and forced Kiang to take Chinese language lessons every Saturday from age 4 to 13. They sent him to boarding school when he was a teenager, in part to improve his writing. They steered him toward a degree in chemical engineering because they thought, as a "foreigner," he would have better chances of finding work with a technical degree.

Kiang obediently graduated from Princeton but hated chemical engineering and decided to pursue law as a graduate student.

Kiang speaks matter-of-factly about the parental and cultural influences in his life - and even laughs at himself now because he insists his two boys, 10 and 13, study Chinese.

"In retrospect, my parents knew better," he said.

The language skills first came in handy when Kiang spent a year playing basketball on an exhibition team in China.

A former Princeton player - not a starter, he's quick to say - Kiang is 6-foot-7, uncommonly tall even among his teammates. Kiang describes the expense-paid experience in China as heady. It was 1970, post-Cultural Revolution, and the public was starved for entertainment.

"We were televised. We were stars. We had women writing to us and everything," Kiang said, smiling.

When Kiang returned to the United States, he wasn't sure what to do. He had barely missed the Vietnam draft; a mismeasurement during his physical placed him over the 6-foot-8-inch height limit.

He decided rather randomly to enter law school, figuring as a lawyer he could work with people, an idea he liked.

Kiang visited Seattle with his law-school roommate, whose family lived here, and fell in love - with the city and with Shirley Eicher, who would become his wife.

Kiang's Taipei connection began at Seattle's Davis Wright firm, where Kiang took his first summer internship, got his first job and "grew up" as a lawyer.

A trip to Taipei for Davis Wright in 1981 brought Kiang in contact with Baker & McKenzie. Recruited by the firm, Kiang and his wife moved to Taiwan with one child and one on the way.

Now Kiang's the one doing the recruiting. In fact, competitors say, some of the lawyers he hired came from the very firm that snatched him up.

Profile appears occasionally in the Business Monday section of The Seattle Times.