Client Alerts
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09 01 2020
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This month saw a handful of new regulations that affect business in Vietnam. We’ve briefed them and outlined the most important changes from each new regulation. They cover numerous topics from incentives and reduction processes for SMEs, business registration fees, and certain social insurance payments as well as examining some new export/import/transshipment restrictions to new guidelines for organizations promoting Vietnamese guest workers in foreign countries and administrative fines for violations of the laws regarding exploitation of water and mineral resources.
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Core Principles
Expectation of Excellence
Our partners are experienced legal practitioners who have spent years providing legal advice and counsel to a wide variety of clients. They maintain a high quality of work and hold themselves to an expectation of excellence. As the founders and leaders of Indochine Counsel, they help their teams and the younger lawyers of the firm to strive towards that expectation. Every memo, every opinion, every contract review and every letter is subject to this expectation. Our clients are some of the greatest companies in the world and they deserve excellence in every aspect of their experience with Indochine Counsel.
Professionalism
Professionalism is hard to define. It can encompass so many aspects of performance that its definition is subject to the ideas of the definer. Indochine Counsel considers professionalism to be the performance of our brief in a manner that reflects quality, timeliness, respect and consistency. We work hard to maintain the highest levels of professionalism in all of our lawyers and in our work product. It is important enough to us that we hold it as one of our three core principles.
Ethical Lawyering
At Indochine Counsel we encourage our lawyers to not only fulfill their duties to their clients with zeal, but to maintain a highly ethical practice in all aspects of their work. From confidentiality to conflicts of interest to billing we strive to hold ourselves to a standard as high as any developed country.
Firm History
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October 2006 – Firm Established
Indochine Counsel opened its doors on 18 October 2006 as the brainchild of four lawyers: Dang The Duc, To Xuan Tinh, Le Nguyen Huy Thuy and Phan Anh Vu. They started small, with only a few lawyers, but quickly ramped up to speed. Less than a year after Indochine Counsel’s founding, an Intellectual Property and Technology Practice Group was formed under the direction of Nguyen Thi Hong Anh, an experienced IP lawyer and then Senior Associate of the firm.
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January 2009 – Open an office in Hanoi.
With meager resources and a focus on business, the partners decided to wait to open an office in Hanoi. They worked with another firm, Leadco Legal Counsel – a Hanoi-based law firm – and coordinated work between the two cities through a strategic alliance. This strategic alliance lasted until shortly before Indochine Counsel opened its own office in Hanoi, in September 2012.
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April 2010 – New Partner Promoted
The firm continued apace, adding lawyers, sometimes losing them, but always striving towards the excellence in service that had been such an integral part of the founders’ vision. This vision was expanded when, in April 2010, they promoted Nguyen Thi Hong Anh to a full partner. She was the first female partner in the firm, a telling symbol of the growing role of women in professional society in Vietnam.
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November 2011 – Opened a Korea Desk
At the end of 2011 Indochine Counsel tried a bold experiment. They joined forces with a leading Korean law firm, Apex Law LLC, and opened a Korea desk. Unfortunately, the experiment did not prove as fruitful as they hoped and the Korea desk folded within a year of opening. The road to success is paved with many obstacles.
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September 2012 – Branch office in Hanoi Established
The firm kept its chin up, however, and refocused its work on Vietnam. In September 2012, Indochine Counsel established its own branch office in Hanoi, which is in line with the firm’s commitment to further enhance our practice and expand our network to deliver services more efficiently to our clients
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December 2013 – Being a member of The Law Firm Network
Indochine Counsel was admitted as a member of The Law Firm Network (LFN), a strong non-exclusive association of independent law firms in over 50 countries. The Law Firm Network was founded in 1989. The membership allows the firm to have an extended global network with quality law firms in various jurisdictions around the world.
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November 2014 – Co-Founder of the ASEAN Legal Alliance
Indochine Counsel became a founding member of the ASEAN Legal Alliance (ALA). The ALA was formed in 2014 to bring together law firms from each of the 10 member states of ASEAN to provide a truly ASEAN wide legal network. Each of the member law firms work in close cooperation to provide seamless legal services across the whole of ASEAN. It is a legal network that is ASEAN focused and present in all 10 ASEAN countries. There four core practice areas of the ALA are Cross Border Investments and International Trade, Intellectual Property, Arbitration and Dispute Resolution, Private Client and International Real Estate. The ALA has more than 100 lawyers practicing in more than 16 offices across 10 countries.
Client Service
Indochine Counsel is devoted to providing clients a friendly service experience. Too many law firms are focused on billable hours and trying to get the most money out of their clients. Indochine Counsel is interested in maintaining client relationships for the long term. As a result we focus on helping the client understand all the implications of their legal decisions and assist them to navigate the various legal obstacles that are faced by businesses and investors in Vietnam.
To help provide the best service possible, Indochine Counsel has over 25 lawyers in two offices. We have lawyers who have studied in Australia, the United States, Japan, Korea, and Russia. These lawyers are familiar with the international standard expected of foreign investors and strive to reach that standard with every assignment and project.
In addition to providing an exceptional experience for clients, Indochine Counsel provides regular legal updates and news to clients. We are open to feedback and constructive criticism as we are constantly working to improve our service. For Indochine Counsel the client comes first and we want to ensure that your experience reflects that.
If you have had a bad experience or want to make a suggestion for improving our service, please contact our partners. We take your opinions and concerns seriously and will do our best to address any concerns or implement any suggestions you offer.
Dang The Duc
Duc has extensive expertise advising foreign clients in international and cross-border transactions in such areas of practice as inward investment, corporate & commercial transactions, private equity, M&A, securities & capital market transactions, corporate restructurings, and project financing. Over the past several years, he has been involved in a number of major transactions for leading financial institutions, investment funds and multinational companies. In addition, he has substantial experience in advisory & transactional work for IPR, IT and technology related matters.
Duc has been recognized as a leading lawyer in Vietnam by various international publications such as IFLR1000, Asian Legal Business, Chambers Global, Legal 500 Asia Pacific, Asialaw Profiles, The International Who’s Who Legal, The Expert Guide – The World’s Leading Lawyers, and Managing Intellectual Property.
He is an active speaker for conferences and seminars both in Vietnam and abroad for such legal business topics as M&A, private equity, corporate transactions, securities and capital markets.
Client Service
Indochine Counsel is devoted to providing clients a friendly service experience. Too many law firms are focused on billable hours and trying to get the most money out of their clients. Indochine Counsel is interested in maintaining client relationships for the long term. As a result we focus on helping the client understand all the implications of their legal decisions and assist them to navigate the various legal obstacles that are faced by businesses and investors in Vietnam.
To help provide the best service possible, Indochine Counsel has over 25 lawyers in two offices. We have lawyers who have studied in Australia, the United States, Japan, Korea, and Russia. These lawyers are familiar with the international standard expected of foreign investors and strive to reach that standard with every assignment and project.
In addition to providing an exceptional experience for clients, Indochine Counsel provides regular legal updates and news to clients. We are open to feedback and constructive criticism as we are constantly working to improve our service. For Indochine Counsel the client comes first and we want to ensure that your experience reflects that.
If you have had a bad experience or want to make a suggestion for improving our service, please contact our partners. We take your opinions and concerns seriously and will do our best to address any concerns or implement any suggestions you offer.
Steven Jacob
Steven Jacob is a California certified attorney who has spent a decade working in the Indochina region. He attended Santa Clara University School of Law where he received a J.D., and subsequently certified with the California Bar Association. After graduating he worked with Indochine Counsel as a Legal Consultant where he acted in several cases ranging from international trade to corporate law and from M&A to intellectual property.
He has worked in Cambodia, for the prestigious law firm Bun & Associates and for several years as in-house counsel for Sanum Investments, an investment fund based on Laos PDR.
For several years he worked as a freelancer in the region including work for Indochine Counsel and others. He returned to Indochine Counsel full time at the beginning of 2021.
While he has substantial experience with corporate and commercial law, he is currently acting in the technology, media, and telecoms sector. He writes weekly columns for the firm’s blog and has authored several articles on the region. Most recently he published “Selecting a Dispute Resolution Venue in Laos” in the IPBA journal, and co-authored the “Vietnam Chapter: International Insolvency and Restructuring Guide” for a Law Firm Network publication, and “Corporate Governance and Directors’ Duties: Vietnam”, PLC Cross-border Corporate Governance and Directors’ Duties Handbook 2010 published by Practical Law Company. In 2010, Steven was included in Asian Legal Business’s Hot 100 Lawyers.
