This morning we noticed a post on China Law List from a law student at the UCLA School of Law who is working on Chinese legal ethics, professional conduct, and the lawyerly profession in China as a whole. And posted a number of questions at the ?listserv
Sida Liu Assistant Professor of Sociology and Law University of Wisconsin-Madison and Research Fellow at Shanghai Jiao Tong University KoGuan Law School sent some responses ( italics) and we thought they might make interesting reading.
Liu also adds. I am not an expert on legal ethics, but you may contact Professor Li Xueyao at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, who is visiting at Yale China Law Center this year. He is one of the most knowledgeable Chinese scholars on legal ethics. Another top expert in this area is Professor Wang Jinxi at China
University of Political Science and Law.
QUESTIONS
To what extent has the promulgation of ethical standards through the Lawyers? Law and the Lawyers? Associations, and the enforcement mechanisms created by the associations, substantively affected the ethical standards of Chinese practitioners; i.e., to what extent can rising professionalism in the field be ascribed to these factors?
On Article 13 of the 2008 Lawyers Law, it actually makes the legal representation by unauthorized practitioners more legitimate than before. If you compare this article with Article 14 of the 1997 Lawyers Law, you will see that the previous law forbids anyone without a lawyer license to do litigation for profit. Now the “for profit” part is dropped, and given that the Civil Procedure Law in China permits “citizen representation”, it is totally legitimate for an unauthorized practitioner to charge for money when they do litigation.
Can the educational requirement for taking the judicial examination still be met through: study at a technical college, self-study, night courses, correspondence courses, or adult education programs? Is there a recent, on point regulation from the Ministry of Justice?
On the judicial exam, I believe now a college degree is required to take it, not including junior college (??) degree but including any form of part-time study, as long as the final degree is a college degree (????).
Are firms with three or more Party members still required to form Party cells, and those with less required to form cells in conjunction with other firms?
Law firms with more than 3 Party members are still required to have Party cells, and the largest Chinese law firm, Dacheng Law Offices, already has a
Party committee (???). But I do not think the Party organ makes any significant difference in the actual work of law firms.
How have one-person firms been received by the Chinese public and authorities?
Individual law firms are permitted in China now, but most individual law firms are not one-person firms, because the director of the firm can still
hire associates. It only means that, in terms of ownership, the form is neither a partnership nor state-owned.
