[originaltext]Z: As China is going to join the WTO, the legal profession is fac

Z: As China is going to join the WTO, the legal profession is facing a real challenge. A more global-minded type of lawyer has emerged and will grow in number. Here in the studio we have Phil Thomas with us. He’ll talk about the legal profession in the context of globalization. Welcome to the studio. People talk about economic globalization a lot but what challenges does this process present to the legal profession?
P: Within the UK, it has offered a huge challenge and opportunity for existing and forthcoming lawyers. Traditionally, lawyers have spent their time in court, dealing with efficacy matters or that they have dealt with individuals in terms of properties or houses, that sort of work. But suddenly, this huge international corporations come along and become your clients, and the legal service they demand from you involves, say, the law in China rather than the law in England. That means we have to rethink what we do in legal practice in order to serve effectively and efficiently these global investors.
Z: China and Britain have rather different legal systems. Phil, maybe you could explain a bit more on that.
P: The British legal system is based entirely on what we call Common Law, which was originally case development out of the judges. So a case occurs and principle emerges from that. We now have more legislation. But nevertheless, it is a process whereby cases come to court and then the lawyers develop out of the judicial decisions thereby. The major difference is that our law is and has been entirely based upon principles of capitalism and that produces very different sets of tenants. For example, the individual becomes the principal person in terms of how the law perceives a relationship and the state has a different sort of role from the position in Chino. But Chinese start lawmaking activities by the legislatures, and judges tend to follow the interpretation of the lawmaking body, either the National People’s Congress or a particular government minis try. The other aspect of our law, which is different from either British law or Common Law, is that we are gradually developing the system of law based on the concept of socialist market economy.
Z: What particular skills should a global lawyer have?
P: Being clever in difficult situations, and thinking fast on your feet. Being able to negotiate, able to work long hours. Basically being clever; but not necessarily knowing lots and lots of law. You need to have advocacy skills, persuasive skills; you need to have the ability to advise your client during a very short period of time. But what is important to be a lawyer who can assist client across national boarders is that you must be able to communicate concepts and ideas very well and help to facilitate such communication between the clients directly.
Z: And they need to be bilingual or trilingual?
P: Absolutely. Now we see more and more multilingual students operating in the UK, sons and daughters of immigrants who speak Italian or Chinese at home. Talking about Chinese lawyers, I would say there are two skills they would need to have. One is that they need to be fluent in English. Another thing is that they need to be culturally comfortable with people from the West because many of their clients are likely to come from North America or from Europe. This cultural awareness is very important and one of the very best ways of achieving it is to go over and spend time in that culture so that you become immersed in it and learn to appreciate the values of that other culture.
Z: While economic globalization is happening, do you think the legal practice will ever become internationalized?
P: Well, as global investment is going to continue the pace, more and more money is going to be seen to be travelling around the world. That would suggest to me that the demand for lawyers is going to grow in the global market. At the same time, the demand for lawyers in the domestic market is also likely to grow. One shouldn’t become over-enthusiastic about the global lawyers because there are many other sorts of practices, which existed and continue to exist. People continue to get married, people continue to get divorced. People buy property, sell property. So lawyers who deal with that sort of things will continue to be needed by the society.
Z: Chinese law firms are usually small or medium size. How are they able to compete with their Western counterparts, which are bigger and financially stronger?
P: We find it’s very hard to compete with foreign law firms with a better infrastructure, like a huge translation department, like the various expertise you can hope for from every comer of the world. They produce documents in ways faster than we do because they have better support and they have more money. If one Chinese lawyer is to compete with one foreign lawyer, I’m sure there will be a tough competition. But when a whole team of Chinese lawyers compete with a whole team of international lawyers, we lack the type of skills like coordination, like support, like the way to produce documents. We simply lack the management skills to be able to compete with international law firms.
Z: So we don’t lack individual talents. But to tackle this problem you’ve mentioned, what do we need? More practical training or more academic training?
P: Talented lawyers are generally produced by work experiences here in China That is something different from systemic professional training by either law schools or the lawyer association. For one thing, Chinese law students do not have prior work-related experiences and for another they do not have someone to guide them for lawyer skills. That is one thing perhaps the law society and law schools should work together on. China needs people who have hands on experience, who have the ability to communicate with clients, who have the confidence in themselves because of their professional training.