中国法律职业状况调查报告.doc

双城记 中国法律职业状况报告 A tale of two cities? ?The legal profession in China 发布人：国际律师协会，伦敦 By? IBA 研究作者： By Marco Marazzi? and Chen Youxi? ?[国际律协意大利律师]Marco Marazzi??[中国律师]陈有西 ? [研究助理]：中国人民大学律师学院法律硕士研究生? 刘芸 ? [英文正式发布文件,PDF转换] INTERNATIONAL BAR ASSOCIATION’S HUMAN RIGHTS INSTITUTE (IBAHRI) THEMATIC PAPERS No 2 A Tale of Two Cities – the Legal Professionin China Marco Marazzi and Chen Youxi Material contained in this report may be freely quoted or reprinted, provided credit is given to the International Bar Association. A Tale of Two Cities ?– the Legal Profession in China DECEMBER 2012 This paper will analyse the current situation of the legal profession in China, the difficulties faced by? lawyers, and the prospects for improvement. It will argue that, while the legal profession in China is acquiring increasing importance and strength– with the number of lawyers now exceeding 230,000 (as opposed to only over 2,000 less than 30 years ago) – the independence of lawyers remains an aspiration more than a reality; depending on their area of practice, lawyers can suffer great constraints in what they can realistically achieve and in the exercise of their rights. This is gradually leading to a bifurcation within the system: between lawyers dealing mostly with civil and commercial matters who benefit from both an increasing ability to exercise their rights and from growing financial rewards; and lawyers who deal with more sensitive administrative and criminal cases, who face often insurmountable challenges, and as a consequence, tend to be much less successful financially and enjoy a much lower status within the legal profession as a whole. In other words, while legal practitioners may be part of the same bar association and work within the same city, they are actually living and working in two separate and different worlds, depending on the nature of their practice. The outcome is that the brightest and more capable lawyers often tend to refrain from handling prec