May Tai

Title: Partner
Division: Dispute resolution
Location: Shanghai

After studying Jurisprudence and attending Law School at Oxford, I was ready to hit the bright lights and big city. I looked for a City firm with strength in litigation and arbitration, and decided on Herbert Smith, which I joined as a trainee in March 2001.  The firm’s network of Asian offices was a big selling point since I come from Malaysia and I moved to our Shanghai office on being promoted to partner.

Eight years on and some of the highlights of my career include spending time in Asia; I spent six months in Tokyo as a trainee and two years in Singapore as an associate. Another experience I shall never forget is when I cross-examined a legal expert on foreign law in an arbitration hearing at the Peace Palace in The Hague when I was only one year qualified. It was a fairly daunting experience but an exciting challenge and not an opportunity I would have necessarily been given in another firm. 

Besides my secondments, I have had a lot of exposure to international work. In my group, the international arbitration group, almost every dispute we advise on has an international flavour to it – whether this is your client, the counterparty, the seat of arbitration or the governing law.  Aside from the occasional 7am conference call, it can be very rewarding.  Amongst others, I have travelled to Barbados, Indonesia and Kazakhstan as part of my work. 

Herbert Smith has a good working environment and is relaxed but serious and proud about what it does and who it is. It is a firm that seeks to invest as heavily in the individual employees as the employees seek to invest in the firm. It is also one with a genuine collegiate atmosphere, where I have made real friends.