Comparison Between American Law Firm and Chinese law firm
刘春
【关键词】comparative law lawyering law firm lawyer
【全文】
Beijing Fangyuan Law FirmLiu Chun
The lawyering originated from ancient Europe, but has great development in America. No matter as a phenomena or a science, the American lawyering is worthy to be studied. China is one of the several countries that just began to develop lawyering. It is necessary to compare American law firms with Chinese law firms. First, we can learn a lot from American colleagues. After hundreds of years, American law firms have accumulated many valuable and successful experiences. If we use for reference, we can avoid going by a roundabout way. Second, it is helpful to enhance the competency of Chinese law firm to compete with foreign law firms. With China’s admission into the WTO, the legal market of China will be open to the foreign law firms. We have to face the challenge of foreign law firms. There is a dictum in ancient China, which said that you will never loss if you know yourself as well as your opponent. Third, we can predict the growth trend of Chinese law firms. American law firms are fully developed, while our Chinese law firms are at the stage of learning to fly. So we can predict what the Chinese law firms would be from what the American law firms are.
There are many differences between Chinese law firms and American law firms, such as the history, the organization form, the management, the size, the way they fetch the client, etc. For the reasons above, I will address them one by one.
I. The History.
There were 41000 lawyers in the United States in 1870, while the population of United States at that time was 4000,00,00.That is to say almost every 970 persons had one lawyer. The American Bar Association set up on may 4th, 1878, indicated the beginning of formal regulation on lawyering. At that time, China was at feudal society, and there was no person acted as an agent in litigation, not alone legal profession. It was not until 1912 did China introduce into the western concept of lawyer. The Northern Warlords government published the Temporary Rule on Lawyers in 1912, and they developed 3000 lawyers before 1928.
