SHENZHEN had 362 law firms with 6,347 lawyers at the end of last month, but few could compete with big law firms in Beijing and Shanghai, Shenzhen Economic Daily reported yesterday.
Most law firms in Shenzhen were small or medium, and the majority had existed for only a short time, the paper said. About 33 percent of local law firms were founded between five and 10 years ago.
In addition, local business accounted for about 70 percent of the total work for Shenzhen law firms, but law firms in Beijing and Shanghai were playing an increasingly greater role in providing legal services for frontier businesses such as Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), the paper said.
The local legal profession reported over 2.6 billion yuan (US$396 million) in revenue last year, only one quarter of Beijing revenue and half that in Shanghai.
More than 90 percent of local law firms had less than 10 partners.
Local lawyers are facing fierce competition from law firms in Guangzhou and Hong Kong.
Guangzhou has a natural geopolitical advantage over Shenzhen while the legal profession in Hong Kong has been developing for more than 100 years and is the legal service center for the Asia-Pacific region.
The paper quoted an unidentified experienced lawyer as saying the small size of local law firms meant that most were inadequately prepared to represent businesses.
In addition, Shenzhen has not developed a mature training or introduction mechanism for legal professionals.
In response, the 7th congress of local lawyers Sunday adopted a development plan for the legal profession over the next five years. This would limit the number of lawyers to 10,000 by the end of 2015. (Li Hao)
