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6 Mod. L. Rsch. 1 (2025)

handle is hein.journals/mdnlwrsch6 and id is 1 raw text is: Modern Law Research vol.6 Iss.1 2025 https: //doi.org/ 0.37420/j.mlr.2025.001 How to Cultivate First-class International Law Firms in China? - Sizing the Opportunity of Re- vision of the Lawyer Law Peng Xiong student pursuing a PhD degree in Legal ethnic faculty, Law school, Chinese University of Political Science and Law *Corresponding author, E-mail:xiongpeng188@outlook.com Abstract First-class international law firm should have signifcant scale and revenue, as well as a certain proportion of cross-border business and foreign-related lawyers. Since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, Chinese law firms have made great progress in expanding scale and going global. However, there remains a large gap between first-class law firms in China and first-class law firms in the UK and the US. The gap can contribute to in large to numerous regulations in China that hinder the scaling and internationalization of Chinese law firms. Specfically, strict restrictions on organizational forms and the banning of sharing income between lawyers and non-lawyers deprive Chinese law firms of efficient governance structures and fundrais- ing channels. The lack ofprotection for attorney-client privilege gets in the way of competing for international business and hiring overseas talent. Strict concurrent conflict-of-interest rules force the firm to give up a big chunk of commercial business from international companies. To accelerate the process of cultivating first-class international law firm, China should seize the rare opportunity of revising the Lawyer Law, eliminate adverse institutional and policy obstacles, and create a favorable institutional environment for Chinese law firms to grow stronger and go global. Keywords Law firms, internationalization, scaling, regulatory barriers, China Lawyer Law revision 1.What Constitute First-class international law firm What kind of law firm qualifies as an international first-class law firm? Although there is no unified standard, based on current research, I believe that it should show at least the two following characteristics: significant scale and revenue, cross-border business and foreign-related lawyers. 1.1.Scale and Revenue Because legal services tend to be credence goods, the inherent information asymmetry between clients and lawyers arise in the legal services market, clients often cannot judge the quality of legal services provided, nei- ther before consumption nor after consumption. When selecting legal service provider, clients often use scale and revenue as criteria for assessing the firm's strength and quality of its service. On one hand, these indicators cc 2025 by the author(s); licensee Mason Publish Group, this work for open access publication is under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) 1

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