Pro Bono vs Commercialization: Defense in China

Lawyers, as providers of legal aid services and direct participants. play a decisive factor in the quality of legal and it is almost impossible for us to go beyond lawyers to discuss the quality of the cases. We consent most is the effectiveness of the defense. It is only when defendants access effective defense will they be protected. That is the value of legal aid most stand on. Without increasing the national input to legal aid system. improving the average quality and reducing the defective rate are ways to maximum social efficiency.

Since there are not any regulations on the distribution of legal aid cases, and the staffing of legal aid authority is vague we are going to start from this dimension to explore the underlying causes of low—quality legal services we will focus on the identity of a lawyer to explore what causes the uneven quality of cases, and what invisible factors results in this disparity.

Given the practical situations and present research I anticipate that legal aid lawyers perform better than social lawyers also I expect that the compensation partially accounts for incentives for legal aid lawyers.

The most crucial reason for their better performance should be their strong sense of identity. As salaried lawyers from the legal aid authority are treated as civil servants this identity will give them higher professional ethics which makes them more responsive to their work. For social lawyers. they may pay more attention to their benefits even though legal aid is their obligation.

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In addition, I expect that young lawyers are no worse than experienced lawyers in certain cases they value more the win rate to help them accumulate a reputation. What’s more, this is also a process of finding potential clients for their future careers. Due to the regional differences in the distribution of legal aid cases research samples will focus on a specific region, and then analyze the differences between the two types of lawyers I will collect data through fieldwork.

As most criminal trials are public, we can do fieldwork, for example, listening to the court, to obtain basic information about the defendant. including gender age education level whether there is a criminal history, detailed information about the case, types of crimes, sentencing, types of lawyers, and defense opinions, by which we could get the first- hand information and also observe the defense skills lawyers use. Then we focus on these cases documents and find the information we use to analyze. As article 26 of the Chinese People’s Legal Aid Law stipulates that for persons who may be sentenced to life imprisonment or death sentence a lawyer with more than three years of relevant practice experience shall be appointed as their defender we should choose cases of these sentences and find out whether the experience of lawyers would impact the outcomes.

By analyzing the data collected by documents of adjudication decisions we will have the result of who‘s better when handling criminal cases from quantitative analysis. I anticipate that legal aid lawyers perform better than social lawyers. For policymakers, they could scale up the salaried lawyers to provide legal aid services. Also, I expect that the compensation partially accounts for incentives for legal aid lawyers. The most crucial reason for their better performance should be their strong sense of identity. As salaried lawyers from the legal aid authority are treated as civil servants, this identity will give them higher professional ethics which makes them more responsible for their work. For social lawyers. they may pay more attention to their benefits even though legal aid is their obligation legal aid services as a lawyer‘s obligation reflect the ideology of socialist China.

The embryonic spirit of pro bono has diminished in the official system. However the commercialization of legal aid in China runs counter to the values we are pursuing. increasing financial incentives may encourage lawyers to provide better legal aid services but it will also exacerbate the ideological basis of legal aid. Our ultimate goal is not pursuing a formalistic legal aid system but judicial equality of rights for the indigent in other words. we expect that legal aid services provide the defendant with an effective defense. This is not only the conundrum of legal aid but of the whole criminal defense in China. The status of lawyers is extremely low in criminal proceedings. The attitudes of judges and prosecutors largely contribute to the outcomes and those are exactly what forms 5 in our regression model.

By listening to the courts. doing public surveys and interviewing the stakeholders we will have more information that could supplement our regression analysis to verify whether the quantitative analysis is in line with reality. Forcibly assigning legal aid cases to social lawyers, or spending money to purchase their legal services. will greatly commercialize this public welfare and violate the nature of legal aid. On the one hand, pecuniary incentives are certainly important for lawyers to provide better services. On the other hand, economic incentives will inevitably cause the state to invest excessive amounts of money. We hope that legal aid lawyers will uphold higher professional ethics and social responsibility to provide effective defense or the poor. This is also conducive {or building a legal aid system in socialist China and changing the public’s stereotypes of lawyers.