Written by Wang Houlong, a lawyer at Shandong Chishan Law Firm, on July 1, 2024
I feel that since the beginning of the pandemic, the situation of my lawyer business has changed. Nearly five years since 2020, my business landscape has changed radically.
Prior to 2019, I was mainly engaged in civil and maritime cases. At the beginning, the proportion of my maritime cases was between 50 and 85 percent. My business peaked in 2019. My business during 2020 was down 38 percent compared to the previous year. In the middle of 2020, I began to think deeply about the direction of lawyers' business, and decided to develop from the absolute proportion of maritime cases to other civil cases, and gradually extend it to criminal cases and administrative cases, and continue to learn the legal provisions related to administrative business, fill in the legal knowledge of administrative business, and constantly review the business knowledge of criminal cases. To this end, I have also done some legal aid cases in criminal cases. The purpose is not to make money, but to prevent the forgetting of criminal legal knowledge.
I have also thought deeply about the way law firms are managed, and I have been publishing relevant articles.
I am very passionate about my work as a lawyer and pursue my work as a lawyer. I think about matters as a lawyer on a daily basis, and I am very willing to share my thoughts and opinions with my fellow lawyers.
At present, the competition in the legal industry is very fierce! This is due to many factors, the number of lawyers is increasing year by year, the implementation of the Legal Aid Law has stripped away many traditional lawyers' businesses, and the emergence of legal service companies has also divided the lawyers' business. Many lawyers have felt that they can't survive, so they can only hand in their lawyer's card and leave their beloved lawyer's profession.
My point of view is that these people who leave the legal profession should be, this is a normal survival of the fittest behavior, and he has effectively promoted the development of the legal profession. Not all persons who have obtained legal qualifications are suitable to practise as lawyers. In terms of gender, men are more suitable for lawyers, while women are less suitable for lawyers. In terms of personality, those who are strong-willed are suitable for lawyers, while those who are weak are not suitable for lawyers.
Judges, prosecutors, and public security organs who are not lawyers are all suitable to work as lawyers. Although they are experts in their profession, if they work as lawyers, they may be nothing! If they lose the right of the state to back them up, then they are nothing, and they need to rely on their own skills to eat.
Each of us is like a handful of dirt. Unprocessed soil will become a field for people to trample on in the field; If it is processed into a Buddha statue, it will become an idol of people's Mobai. A public official is a statue of the Buddha that has been chemically processed. If the temple collapses and the Buddha statues turn into dirt, they will also become fields where people trample on oxen. This requires you to rely on your own skills to eat. If the content is gold, it is worth a lot, and if it is silica, then it will not be ignored by others.
I believe that in order to be a good lawyer, you need four conditions: first, you need to have the right ideology; Second, it is necessary to correctly plan the direction of lawyers' business development; The third is to take action and keep correcting mistakes. Fourth, we must only grasp the core competitiveness of lawyers' business.
1. Ideology includes political consciousness and ideology of the characteristics of lawyers' business.
Upholding the core values of socialism is the greatest political consciousness. Only under the guidance of correct political ideology can we be able to carry out lawyer's work with ease. Lawyers need to combine political awareness with lawyers' business in combination with the characteristics of lawyers' business to practice political awareness. Serving the people wholeheartedly is the highest purpose of lawyers.
The first thing a lawyer does is to handle legal affairs for his clients, not just to make money. It is the proper duty for lawyers and clients to obtain remuneration for labor according to the principle of equal compensation. Survival of the fittest, high quality and high price in the lawyer business are the proper meaning of the socialist legal service market. Some people have always wanted to use the power in their hands, and want to use lawyers as a tool to provide free legal services to others, why? Lawyers need to prevent excessive politicization, and lawyers themselves need to work to earn money to support themselves and their families. Lawyers are also members of the nation, and they have the right to pursue a better life step by step. This is also one of the purposes of the Communist Party.
Some privileged people want to be able to live a good life for themselves, and they don't want other people to be able to live a good life, especially they don't want to see lawyers live a good life like them. Their feudal legacy is extremely deep!
Second, lawyers must plan the direction of their business development.
Human energy is limited, human ability is limited. Therefore, lawyers need to use their limited energy and ability to focus on a certain type of legal business in order to gain a competitive advantage in the legal service market.
If the lawyer is all right, everything is loose. Then, it will lose its competitiveness in the legal services market. In other words, lawyers need to take the path of specialization. The path of specialization of lawyers, which is relative specialization, is to be able to achieve the level of specialization and refinement in several categories of legal service business under the premise that all walks of life are equal.
3. Lawyers need to put their business plans into practice.
Some people plan their business very well, but they are always the head of the snake, fishing for three days and drying nets for two days. It's not going to work. Must have a strong will and persevere.
On the premise of adhering to the existing development direction, we will continue to improve and revise according to the changes in the situation.
Fourth, the core competitiveness of lawyers is that they have rich legal knowledge and practice experience.
These are two aspects, legal knowledge belongs to the theoretical aspect, and the lawyer's practice experience is the lawyer's skill to combine the specific situation of the case with the legal theory, which is the practice experience.
The above four aspects are the internal factors of lawyers. Factors such as the increasing number of lawyers are external factors. The aspect that dominates the lawyer's business is the internal factor. External factors cannot be decided by the lawyer himself. If you want to do a good job in the lawyer's business, you can't complain about how bad the external factors are, and you can only be competitive by improving the quality of the internal factors.
In any country and in any era, not all lawyers will be successful, only those lawyers who are better and competitive in terms of internal factors will stand out.
Lawyers must have a sense of danger, make a good plan, and constantly practice their own plans in order to achieve good results.
Those who are weak in character are determined that they cannot become successful people; Those who are not enterprising and have a lazy and cowardly worldview will not become successful lawyers either. These two types of people determine the group of people who will be eliminated from the legal services market.
In order to improve the core competitiveness of lawyers, they need to do a good job in two aspects, the first is to always continue to learn legal knowledge, and the second is to use their brains to continuously study the lawyer's practice experience.
By establishing the correct ideology, setting the right goals, constantly practicing the goals set, and constantly revising the direction according to the development of the social form, I will improve my core competitiveness. I have been able to develop in a balanced manner in all aspects of my lawyer's business. Able to achieve a relatively balanced balance of each month of the lawyer's business.
Due to the change in the direction of my business, the business that was very concentrated in the first four or five months of the year has changed to a form that is less concentrated, but there are fewer cases in the first half of the year, and the business in the second half of the year can continue to increase.
An excellent brand of lawyers, with huge social influence!
The so-called "net push office" will not go far at all, and there is a cliff in front of it.
The characteristics of the lawyer's business should be the spirit of craftsmanship in order to be long-term. The idea of trying to factory the work of lawyers will not work.
Should the restrictions imposed on individuals be lifted so that lawyers' work can return to the original face of lawyers? Attempts to politicize the work of lawyers are futile.
