How to Cultivate First-class International Law

Abstract

First-class international law firm should have significant scale and revenue, as well as a certain proportion of cross-border business and foreign-related lawyers. Since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, Chinese law firms have made great progress in expanding scale and going global. However, there remains a large gap between first-class law firms in China and first-class law firms in the UK and the US. The gap can contribute to in large to numerous regulations in China that hinder the scaling and internationalization of Chinese law firms. Specifically, strict restrictions on organizational forms and the banning of sharing income between lawyers and non-lawyers deprive Chinese law firms of efficient governance structures and fundrais - ing channels. The lack of protection for attorney-client privilege gets in the way of competing for international business and hiring overseas talent. Strict concurrent conflict-of-interest rules force the firm to give up a big chunk of commercial business from international companies. To accelerate the process of cultivating first-class international law firm, China should seize the rare opportunity of revising the Lawyer Law, eliminate adverse institutional and policy obstacles, and create a favorable institutional environment for Chinese law firms to grow stronger and go global.