Five years is not a long way for a law firm, but it is enough for the initial aspirations to be tested in practice. The half-decade journey of HM&P Law Firm (“HM&P”) is not only a story of building a law practice organization, but also a process for a Vietnamese law firm to build a position with the professional capacity, reliability and different values of a new generation of lawyers.
Starting from a Choice
HM&P was established in November 2021, when Vietnam's economy was facing major challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not a good time to start a new business, especially in the legal services sector, where credibility and trust often take years to build.
The market at that time had the presence of many domestic and international law firms with significant advantages in terms of brand, experience and client network. For a newly established law firm, the challenge is not only to survive, but also to determine the reasons for clients to choose themselves among the many established practice organizations.
From the outset, HM&P chose not to compete solely by size or service fees. Instead, the law firm aims to build professional capacity, quality of advice and the ability to solve practical legal issues of businesses and investors.
That choice comes from an awareness: clients need a lawyer to help them solve legal problems in their business, not someone to explain legal documents to help them. What businesses really need is to understand how these regulations affect business activities, what risks need to be controlled, and what options can best protect their interests.
Therefore, HM&P defines the value of legal services not in the amount of work done, but in the quality of the solution and the efficiency that the client receives. That is the direction set from the beginning and continues to be the foundation of HM&P's development journey.
Differentiation by the capacity of the team itself
Over the past five years, along with the development of Vietnam's legal services market, HM&P has gradually expanded its activities in the fields of corporate and investment, M&A, finance – banking, governance and compliance, dispute resolution, and new areas such as personal data protection, technology and artificial intelligence. However, expanding the practice does not mean creating competitiveness. In a market where clients have more and more choices, differentiation cannot be expressed only in the service portfolio or quality claims.
For HM&P, the difference lies primarily in its approach and problem-solving.
In an M&A deal, the value of a lawyer is not only to detect the target business's violations of the law, but also to determine what risks may affect the transaction, which options need to be adjusted, and which mechanisms can protect the value that the client pursues.
Similarly, in dispute resolution, an effective legal strategy does not necessarily have to be geared towards pursuing litigation at all costs. Sometimes, helping clients reach a reasonable agreement, saving time, and preserving commercial relations brings greater value.
These situations illustrate the gap between providing legal information and actually acting as legal counsel. A valuable advice should not only answer the question of whether or not the law allows it, but must help the client know what to do and why. This is the standard that HM&P aims for in the process of professional development and practice development.
These efforts have gradually received recognition from international tracking and ranking organizations in the legal field. HM&P was honored by Asia Business Law Journal in the field of Compliance & Corporate Governance at the Vietnam Law Firm Awards for two consecutive years in 2025 and 2026, The Legal 500 recognized HM&P as an outstanding law firm in the field of personal data protection in 2025, Asia Law ranked HM&P as a prominent law firm in the field of Corporate and M&A in 2026. Managing Lawyer Nguyen Van Phuc was also recognized in The A-List: Vietnam's Top Lawyers 2025 – Top 100 Lawyers in Vietnam and other awards and recognitions.
For a young law firm, these recognitions are a source of encouragement to be cherished. However, for HM&P, awards are not the destination or goal of the practice. The recognition has more long-term significance in whether clients continue to trust and choose HM&P to solve increasingly complex legal issues. Because we understand very well that a brand can help a law firm become known, but only professional capacity, service quality, or more specifically, service efficiency can create a sustainable, long-term trust.
HM&P’s awards display corner
Human development is the biggest priority
After five years of operation, one of the key realizations for HM&P is that the law firm's growth cannot be measured by revenue, staff size or number of clients.
For a law practice organization, the most important asset is still the people. But the value of the team lies not simply in the number of lawyers or the experience of each individual, but in the ability to work together to create a consistent quality of service and maintain the common professional standards that HM&P has set in its early days.
A law firm can be formed from the aspirations and capabilities of the founder. However, if all client relationships, professional decisions and management activities depend on a few individuals, that development is unlikely to be sustainable. Therefore, HM&P identifies the training and development of the next generation of lawyers as one of the important tasks of the next stage.
Training is not only about imparting legal knowledge or case handling skills, but also the process of forming independent thinking, risk assessment ability, professional bravery and responsibility of each lawyer.
A mature lawyer must not only know how to complete the assigned work, but must also be able to proactively solve problems, work with clients and guide those who come after them. That requires law firms to create an environment that encourages learning, criticism, empowerment, and recognition of substantive contributions. HM&P understands that its growth and development lies not only in the good lawyers it has, but also in its ability to train lawyers who can take the organization further into the future. This is not only a human resources problem, but also a foundation for HM&P to gradually move from an organization based on individual competencies to a law firm with a distinct management system, culture and values.
The first half decade and the future
The legal services market in Vietnam and around the world is changing very quickly. Clients demand higher quality of advice, legal issues are becoming more complex, and technology is changing the way lawyers work. In this context, the advantages that helped a law firm develop in the early stages are unlikely to continue to create success in the future.
For HM&P, the next step is not only to expand its operations, but more importantly, to improve its professional depth, improve its governance capabilities, apply technology responsibly and build a team capable of meeting the increasing standards of the market.
Looking back on the journey from the first days to the present, what is worth appreciating is not only the results achieved, but also the values that have been formed through each case, each customer and each step of the team's growth.
The first half-decade is not a story of how big HM&P has become as a law firm, but rather the process of laying the foundations to become a law firm that is valuable and capable of developing and competitive for the long term. Because HM&P understands that the most important difference for a law firm is not to stand out from the crowd, but to create more and more value for its clients, for the people who build the organization and for the legal profession itself.
Lawyer Nguyen Van Phuc
HM&P Law Firm
