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This is probably the wrong place to be asking this, but does anyone know what the outlook seems to be for Big Law in Asia? I'd be okay with going into corporate law, and I can speak and understand Mandarin. Reading and writing is rusty, I could get it back to a moderate level, but I don't know if I could ever read dense texts in chinese and fully understand it in an efficient manner.

I assume that the Shanghai, Tokyo, and HK offices don't fly all the way out to schools in the US to interview students, so does anyone with any secondhand experience know how people obtain summer jobs in Asia? I know of people who have summered abroad, and from the few news reports I've read, the Asia biglaw offices are doing considerably better than the ones back in the US.

Some firms will interview for their Asia offices at OCI, just like any other office. Don't know what they do about callbacks--perhaps conference call? I do know that for some firms, you have to reach out to and express interest in their Asia office, and then they might arrange a conference call with the Asia office. This call might be purely an informational interview, or it could be a "callback" type interview so that if you make it through the regular recruiting process (OCI and callback, for example) for the firm's US office, you'll be more likely to have the chance to summer abroad.

I'm pretty sure it varies from firm to firm, though, so just seek out those with decently large offices in Asia (and make sure they have a US practice group there). I doubt that many firms would be willing to pay for their summers to fly halfway around the world for a few short weeks ITE, but you never know.