It is not an ordinary year in 2006: modern Chinese lawyer system celebrated its 100th anniversary; the All China Lawyers Association had been founded for 20 years; it had been 10 years since the new China first Law of the People's Republic of China on Lawyers was enacted. All these witnessed and are witnessing the hardship of the past, the prosperity of the present and the perspectives of the future in Chinese legal services industry.

At present Chinese legal services market scale is about two billion USD, which is only one tenth of French one. On the other hand, Chinese legal services have been booming in the past three decades.

Now there are about 130,000 lawyers and 12,428 law offices in total. In the past two decades, Chinese lawyers have widely participated in criminal litigation, civil action, administrative proceedings, intellectual property litigation and maritime litigation. There are over 1.7 million cases accepted by lawyers every year, who contribute to realization of judicial fairness and justice.

Chinese lawyers deliver legal assistance according to laws and offer masses with difficulties and vulnerable groups legal services. It is reported that in 2006 there were in total 310,000 legal assistance cases handled by Chinese lawyers, and over three million free legal consulting cases. Besides, Chinese lawyers are active in participation in State Administration, helping legislation of State and local government. At present there are 430 lawyers assuming NPC memberships at various levels and 1,226 lawyers assuming CPPCC memberships at various levels. Lawyers' advices are being paid more and more attention when there are state or local legislation activities.

At present among 130,000 lawyers, there are over 117,000 professions, 8,000 part-time lawyers, 2,400 public lawyers, 1,200 company lawyers and 1,700 lawyers who serve in the military. However, compared with international market, lawyer ratio per every million people is 0.93% in China , whereas those in U.S. , U.K. , France and Japan are up to 31.7%, 15.4%, 6.2% and 6.2% respectively.

On the one hand, now many Chinese enterprises are going out, which are yet lack of the understanding of overseas legal market environment and related regulations. On the other hand, as it comes to the end of WTO transitory period, more and more multinational enterprises will enter Chinese domestic markets including financial market on a large scale. Those are obliged to offer professional, Tran regional and cross-sector and cross-border legal services, which are potential client needs for Chinese funded law offices.

It is indicated according to international investigation that there are five most important factors when international clients judge external legal counsel: professional skills, the ability to offer legal advices, judgment, and knowledge of laws and understanding of routines. The main factor that affects Chinese lawyers' international competence is the lack of professional skills. Unordered management is an obvious internal injury of domestic law offices.

As for the present organizing structure of domestic law offices, some experts are worried that, teamwork can't be fully exerted as a result of the structure similar with self-employed mode. Compared with international law offices, many Chinese funded ones are not truly cooperative ones. It is loose relationship between domestic partners and offices. Their own small teams are often led to handle cases. First Chinese funded law offices need management revolution, and specialization degree needs improving.

Referred to experiences gained by some countries that have mature markets, operation of scale and specialized services are what Chinese funded law offices will move toward in the future.

Most experts express that market conditions for large scale mergence of Chinese funded law offices are not prepared at present. However, mergence is the only way to survive and succeed when overseas law offices become competent after merging.

The best solution for the bottleneck of Chinese funded law offices development at present is the union mode which is to flexibly integrate resources and generates fewer risks. Under this background, the concept of China Legal Union Demonstration was given birth.

According to introduction by EnZhuang, advanced project manager, Lovells International Law Firm, China Legal Union Demonstration can be comprised of domestic law offices from various regions. Ten Chinese cities including Beijing , Shanghai and Guangzhou are selected in the initial period. There are two or three union members in each city. What is different from All China Lawyers Association is that union is a loose structured organization, whose main goal is to share resources. Members are independent, but there will be cooperation among members in some ways regularly or irregularly, such as jointly accomplishing complicated legal services projects, training, marketing or sharing experiences. On basis of improving members' professional skills and creating scale profits, brands of union and each member are founded.

It is reported that there are many successful cross regional and cross border law office unions abroad. Whether the union can succeed is still a question in China .