Ethan Michelson
The University of Chicago, Department of Sociology
August 2003
This dissertation observes contemporary Chinese lawyers at a watershed, a critical historical moment since their revival in 1979. During the time of my field research between 1999 and 2001, Chinese lawyers were at the final stage of "unhooking" from the state, a transition ongoing since the mid-1980s away from their official status as a public profession of "state legal workers" to an official status as a private profession of self-reliant, fiscally autonomous, entrepreneurial practitioners. Their transition from state-sector membership to private-sector membership mirrors a larger transition underway throughout Chinese society as a whole. I argue that the challenges and difficulties lawyers face in their everyday practice, their marginalization and overwhelming sense of insecurity, can only be understood in this larger context. The unclear and weakly protected status of lawyers is manifested in the same array of difficulties private business entrepreneurs have learned to negotiate, including routine administrative interference, official rent-seeking, and police harassment and intimidation. The inseparability of law from politics in the socialist context further exacerbates the vulnerability of lawyers, particularly criminal defense lawyers. Insofar as the plight of lawyers mirrors that of private business entrepreneurs, so too do their adaptive responses. Their dependence on key gatekeepers and decision-makers in government agencies, including judges, prosecutors, and police, has reinforced the importance of social connections and personal relationships as a basis for professional survival and success. In the process of making this argument I provide a history of the reemergence and development of lawyers in post-Mao China; a detailed descriptive overview of the organization of legal work, including the market for legal services and the structure of law firm organization (and variations thereto); a discussion of the uneasy relationship between lawyers and the state both in contemporary China and in historical perspective; and an analysis of the extent and bases of inequality. Evidence is marshaled from a survey I conducted in the summer of 2000 of 980 lawyers in 25 cities across China; from interviews with 67 lawyers, legal scholars, government officials, and journalists; and from observations of 48 lawyer-client consultation sessions observed at a single law firm in Beijing.
The dissertation can be viewed and downloaded chapter by chapter or in its entirety. The entire dissertation can be downloaded by each volume:
List of Figures...................................................................................................................... ix
List of Tables..................................................................................................................... xiii
Chapters
1 Introduction: The Scope of the Study and Theoretical Issues................................... 1
Lawyers in a Context of Rapid Change: Marginalization, Insecurity, Vulnerability, and a Poor Public Image............................................................................................... 3
Social Connections in the Legal System: The Guanxi Debate...................... 6
Post-Socialist Transitions............................................................................11
A Poor Public Image................................................................................... 16
Whose Tradition? Which Tradition?........................................................... 24
The Symbolic Significance of Lawyers....................................................... 26
Similarities and Differences........................................................................ 30
2 Research Methods and a Descriptive Overview of Chinese Lawyers...................... 32
Survey Data................................................................................................ 32
Assessing Representativeness.................................................................... 39
Lawyer Categories......................................................................................46
Geographical Distribution of Lawyers in Beijing........................................ 48
Methodological Strategies: The Surveys.................................................... 52
Qualitative Interview and Observational Data............................................ 53
Methodological Strategies: The Qualitative Research................................ 56
3 Tuogou: Law Firms and Their Unhooking from the State....................................... 59
Lawyers as "State Legal Workers": The State-Owned Law Office.............. 59
The Early Stages of "Emancipation"........................................................... 62
Unveiling the Partnership Firm................................................................... 64
Other Firm Categories and Ownership Forms............................................. 66
Establishing a Law Firm............................................................................. 68
Law Firm Names......................................................................................... 70
The Globalization of Law Firms and Legal Practice................................... 74
Explaining Variation in Firm Ownership..................................................... 75
The Significance of the Tuogou.................................................................. 81
Lawyers as a Political Threat..................................................................... 93
Lawyer Purges............................................................................................96
Change and Continuity............................................................................... 99
The Plight of the Criminal Defense Lawyer.............................................. 100
The Administration of Lawyers................................................................. 111
Professional and Unauthorized Competition.............................................117
Determinants of Lawyer Populations........................................................ 120
Lawyer Utilization..................................................................................... 121
Market Sizes............................................................................................. 123
Specialization........................................................................................... 127
Composition of Clients.............................................................................. 133
Status Hierarchy of Fields of Practice....................................................... 137
Markets of Lawyers by Firm Ownership and Local Level of Development 142
Summary.................................................................................................. 148
Native Place..............................................................................................150
Prior Jobs: Lawyering as a Reemployment Channel................................ 152
Prior Jobs: Former Government Employees............................................. 156
Survey Findings on Prior Career Backgrounds......................................... 158
Survey Findings on Educational Events.................................................... 170
Summary.................................................................................................. 187
The Solo Character of Legal Practice....................................................... 189
Lawyer-Client Matching Channels............................................................ 192
Billing Clients and Getting Paid................................................................ 199
Legal Aid.................................................................................................. 210
Criminal Defense and Other Trial Work.................................................... 213
Retracting Social Security........................................................................ 218
Extending Political Control....................................................................... 225
Law Firm Composition.............................................................................. 228
Summary.................................................................................................. 238
Firms Exits................................................................................................ 242
Lawyer Exits............................................................................................. 245
Lawyer Inter-Firm Lateral Moves.............................................................. 248
Discussion................................................................................................. 252
The Law on the Books: Anti-Guanxi Regulations...................................... 256
The Law in Action: The Lawyer-Judge Relationship.................................259
The Law in Action: The Perceptions and Experiences of Dangshiren....... 265
The Law in Action: The Fickle and Demanding Dangshiren...................... 268
Case Example 1........................................................................................ 272
Case Example 2........................................................................................ 279
Case Example 3........................................................................................284
Discussion................................................................................................. 285
The Private-Sector Handicap.................................................................... 288
The Criminal Defense Handicap............................................................... 288
The Small-City Handicap.......................................................................... 293
Case Example 4........................................................................................ 294
Case Example 5........................................................................................ 298
Case Example 6........................................................................................ 302
Survival Strategies and Aggravating Factors............................................ 306
Case Example 7........................................................................................ 309
The Elite Lawyer's Contempt for the Courts: Legal Avoidance................. 311
Survey Findings........................................................................................ 315
Explaining Work Satisfaction.................................................................... 329
Discussion................................................................................................. 332
Female Opportunities and Rewards..........................................................341
Summary.................................................................................................. 352
What Do Chinese Lawyers Want?............................................................. 357
What Do Chinese Lawyers Pursue?.......................................................... 361
They Talk the Talk, But Why Can't They Walk the Walk?......................... 366
Final Thoughts.......................................................................................... 371
Appendices
Appendix A Interview
and Field Site Observation Schedules...................................... 373
Appendix B Chinese
Characters for Terms, Proper Nouns, and Place Names.............. 379
Appendix D Definitions
of Selected Variables Used in Multivariate Analyses.............. 390
Appendix F Methods
for Estimating Outcomes from Multivariate Models..................... 397
Appendix G Imputing
Missing Lawyer Population for the City of Baoding................... 400
Appendix J Methods
of Career Event Classification and Analysis................................ 409
Appendix K Methods
of Educational Event Classification and Analysis........................ 433
Appendix M Official
Government Data on Lawyers and Courts.................................... 468
Appendix N Original
Survey Instrument Used in Beijing, with Variable Names...........478
Appendix O English
Translation of Survey Instrument Used in Beijing, with Variable Names 488