A US law firm has joined hands with its British counterpart to capitalize on foreign investors' growing demand for legal consultancy in China.

The US-based CMS Cameron McKenna's Hong Kong team has just merged with UK-based DLA to bring the total number of partners to 19, and DLA said on March 18 that it is expected to establish a Beijing office within two to three years, in addition to its existing Shanghai office.

In a press release, DLA said the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Asia are significant markets for DLA. Despite the prospect of continued economic difficulties, the firm believes that the Asian region holds great potential for very strong growth in future and see it as an ideal opportunity to position itself to be a lawyer of choice for businesses investing into Asia and for Asian businesses investing into Europe.

Mabel Lui, a partner of DLA, said that they are going to increase the number of their lawyers in the Asian region to 100 by 2005, compared to only 70 at the moment.

Dora Chow, a China-appointed attesting officer of DLA, said in an interview on March 18, "A lot of our clients are very interested in looking forward to investing in China, and a lot of our clients are mostly Hong Kong clients and overseas clients are very interested in this, too."

"In anything, everyone is interested in going into China, in terms of investment or in terms of their sourcing of their own products for export. So we see much more diversified activities, much more nationalities. That's why we have set up a China office," she said.

Lui stressed that as China continues to open up and certain mainland enterprises contemplating "going out" to overseas countries in the wake of the blueprint laid down during the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the firm hopes to work for such enterprises to reach out to foreign markets.

"We are fairly keen to focus on Chinese enterprises and we would like to work for Chinese enterprises, whether they are State-owned or privately owned, individually owned or whatever. We would like to develop that as our clients, particularly when they do 'go out' and develop outside of China." she said, adding that DLA is working with local law firms on the mainland on a range of areas such as insurance, financial services, consumer.

Lui also praised the ongoing legal reforms in China, saying the reforms have helped improve the legal environment to a large extent.