In May this year, when Zhang Xiaoyu went to the outpatient clinic for medical treatment, she was wrongly extracted, and she and the hospital have not been able to reach a consensus on the amount of compensation.
She consulted with the local health bureau, and the staff advised her to go to court to file a lawsuit herself, saying that there was no need to hire a lawyer for a simple civil dispute.
She is usually busy with work and has never been exposed to legal matters.
Four days later, she was watching a short video when she suddenly saw an advertisement for a legal consulting firm. She remembers that the company has a professional lawyer.
The company's account has more than 2 million followers. This must be a big law firm, she thought to herself. So she sent a private message to the other party and left her contact information.
Unexpectedly, another dispute awaited her.
In recent years, some legal consulting firms have used social media platforms to promote their business and sign contracts online. The problem that arises is that the parties may be thousands of miles away from such companies, resulting in high costs and difficulties in protecting rights.
Many people in need of legal services are unable to distinguish the difference between law firms, grassroots legal service offices, and legal consulting companies, and legal consulting companies dare to promise results, "resulting in many people falling into the trap of legal consulting companies that illegally engage in business." Wang Ke of Beijing Dongwei (Guiyang) Law Firm said.
In fact, domestic legal consulting services have been developed for 40 years, and to some extent, they have also met the needs of the market, allowing a wider range of grassroots to obtain legal service support. Tong Mengjun, a doctor of legal theory at Chinese University, told The Paper that after 2004, the Ministry of Justice no longer managed such companies, and legal consulting firms gradually became "regulatory depressions", resulting in uneven phenomena in the industry, "even crossing the bottom line of the law."
True and false lawyers
Soon, someone from a legal consulting firm who claimed to be a "lawyer" contacted Zhang Xiaoyu and pulled her into a five-person WeChat group, with each staff member's WeChat name suffix "Legal Director".
She told about the dispute with the hospital in the group. Unexpectedly, the other party was even more indignant than her. A staff member who claimed to be a "legal director" kept telling her, "You must fight a lawsuit, and you must protect your rights and interests." ”
This made Zhang Xiaoyu, who was "extremely vulnerable" emotionally at the time, feel that this professional "legal team" was on her side.
On May 10, she drove more than an hour from a town in Dongguan to the consulting firm. As soon as she walked into the office building, she felt that something was wrong, and although the company had office space, the layout looked "like a telemarketing company."
In the office area, she did not see the name of the law firm, but she found that they had many medals, more than a dozen pennants on the walls, and various trophies for working with state media.
She was then taken to a separate office, where a "legal director" pulled out a contract. Zhang Xiaoyu endured a toothache and was so anxious that she didn't read the terms of the contract carefully.
When signing the contract, she asked, which one in the group is the lawyer? A middle-aged man in a suit replied, "Our entire legal team is here for you." As soon as she heard about the legal team, she was even more sure that she had hired a professional lawyer this time.
After signing the contract, Zhang Xiaoyu transferred 7,000 yuan to a legal consulting company, which was her salary for nearly a month and a half.
After that, the communication will be conducted online. But what puzzled her was that before filing the case online, she had to complete the work of collecting and sorting out the evidence by herself, and the "lawyers" did not have any communication with the hospital, only saying that they could provide guidance.
She asked the "lawyer" if she had sent a lawyer's letter to the other party, and the answer was that there was no need to send a lawyer's letter. She later learned that only law firms could send lawyer's letters.
The consulting company that Zhang Xiaoyu contacted was called "Guanglu Online Law Firm", and she mistakenly thought that "law firm" was a "law firm".
According to industrial and commercial information, the "Guanglu Online (Dongguan) Consulting Services Co., Ltd." will be established in 2024, and its business scope includes legal consultation (the above shall not engage in legal service business in the name of lawyers; It is not allowed to engage in litigation and defense business for economic gains), enterprise management consulting, and so forth.
According to The Paper, on major short video platforms, legal consulting companies usually publish videos on hot legal topics, and use Internet channels and advertisements to attract traffic to buy legal services under various names offline.
The same thing happened to Li Qing. Li Qing, 30, who works in the e-commerce industry, has "no knowledge" about the law. In July, in order to recover the arrears, Li Qing reported to the police. But the police said that it was a civil dispute and could not be filed, and suggested that she go to court to file a lawsuit.
It just so happened that she swiped Sichuan's "Hongda Worry-free Legal Consulting Co., Ltd." on Douyin. When she saw the word "law", she thought that the other party was a "lawyer".
On the first day she contacted the other party, the other party sent her past success stories and had a video conversation with her. She saw the man in the video show her his business license and show her the office environment. At that time, Li Qing felt, "It's quite formal." ”
Soon, Li Qing spent 600 yuan to entrust a legal consulting company to recover the arrears. She provided the phone number of the debtor in a WeChat group that claimed to be a "lawyer".
Subsequently, the "lawyer" claimed that he had made two telephone reminders, but to no avail. After they asked Li Qing to send a reminder letter to the other party's WeChat, the other party blocked her.
Unable to contact the debtor, the "lawyer" suggested that Li Qing go through the legal prosecution process, and at the same time asked her to pay 1,752 yuan. Li Qing remembers that at that time, the other party sent a QR code, opened it was an electronic contract, and she saw that one of them was "3% rebate fee". After signing the contract, the page was closed, and then she wanted to look at the contract again and found that it couldn't be opened.
Li Qing expressed his concerns to the "lawyer". She only has the mobile phone number, name and WeChat account of the debtor, as well as the chat history and transfer records between her and the debtor. The "lawyer" said that the evidence was sufficient to find out who owed the money.
What if the prosecution is unsuccessful, she asked? The reply was that the fees were fully refunded to the original method. Based on trust, she transferred the investigation fee, 1,752 yuan.
But four days later, the "lawyer" told her that the mobile phone number she had provided did not match the name of the debtor, and that they could not find out who the other party was.
At that moment, Li Qing had a feeling of being deceived. It was August 4th and she asked for a full refund. She called the after-sales phone of the consulting company, and the staff said that the corresponding expenses needed to be deducted, and only 900 yuan could be refunded.
In the meantime, she still did not suspect the identity of the other party.
One dispute becomes two
Less than half a month after Zhang Xiaoyu signed the contract with the legal consulting company, the hospital outpatient offered to settle and was willing to compensate her 30,000 yuan, and she agreed.
After reaching an agreement, she said in the "legal group" that she asked to withdraw the lawsuit. The "in-house counsel" said, why do you want to reconcile with the other party? Zhang Xiaoyu said that the hospital had lost money, and she didn't want to toss it, so the lawsuit was over. But the "legal counsel" said that doing so affected our interests.
Zhang Xiaoyu wanted to withdraw the lawsuit after reconciliation, and the consulting company asked for a rebate fee
She later learned that no matter how she got the compensation, she had to give the consulting company a 5% rebate fee.
Zhang Xiaoyu thought to herself, isn't the rebate fee returned after winning the lawsuit? "Legal Affairs" said that as long as you get the money, you have to give a rebate fee. If she didn't pay within three days, they would sue her as agreed in the contract. Hearing the word "prosecution", she was inexplicably frightened, afraid of facing another lawsuit.
Her family also advised her not to make extraneous branches, so she transferred 1,150 yuan to the "rebate fee". After they received the money, they kicked Zhang Xiaoyu out of the WeChat group, and then blocked her.
After receiving the rebate fee, the consulting company removed Zhang Xiaoyu from the group chat
When she woke up the next day, the more she thought about it, the angrier she became. Originally, she wanted to find a lawyer to help her defend her rights, but she didn't expect to get into another dispute.
So, Zhang Xiaoyu chose to complain by phone.
After she called the 12345 hotline, the staff sent the matter to the local neighborhood office for handling. The street office told her that she had signed a contract and that if she wanted to defend her rights, she would go to court to sue.
Someone from the local judicial bureau also called back to say that the state has not yet issued regulations for legal consulting companies, and they have no authority to manage these companies.
She also reported to the tax office that the consulting company did not issue invoices, and the next day the consulting company only issued the invoices, and the refund was still not made.
Li Qing thought about suing to resolve the matter, but the company was in a different place and needed to go to a court in a different place, which took a long time, and the "money and time cost" for her to defend her rights was too high.
Wang Ke said that considering that most of the cases deceived by legal consulting companies involve small amounts of money and the efficiency of rights protection, the main means of rights protection are to file complaints and reports with the market supervision department and the judicial administrative department. However, based on his experience, the situation of rights protection is not optimistic.
Legal services ≠ entrusted agents
Zhang Xiaoyu recalled that after signing the contract, the "legal affairs" only helped her do two things, writing a complaint and filing a case online. When the case was first filed, the materials were returned because the evidence was not marked with page numbers.
It is not uncommon for consulting firms to include the name of a well-known law firm as part of their company name, giving the impression that the company has a specific connection to the law firm. In order to solicit cases, many legal consulting firms do not provide significant risk warnings, such as not informing them of the expiration of the statute of limitations, which may lead to losing the case. "This so-called litigation guidance is not qualified." Wang Ke said.
Zhang Xiaoyu still felt angry when she thought about this, "If the consulting company told me that they were not lawyers and could not represent me in litigation, I would not have looked for them." ”
After complaining to no avail, she went to a local law firm. The lawyer read the contract and said that she had been deceived, "You signed a legal service contract".
He told Zhang Xiaoyu that when a law firm signs a contract with a client, it will state that a lawyer will have full authority to represent the case, but there is no such clause in the legal service contract. The lawyer will first take out his lawyer's card, listen to the client's statement of the incident, and then analyze the suitability of the case for prosecution or settlement. The "in-house counsel" are different, "they don't calmly dissect the whole thing, and it's worth the lawsuit." ”
The lawyer told her that if the court was able to open the case, it might order her to refund the fees paid to the consulting firm, based on previous jurisprudence.
The lawyer's agency fee is about 5,000 yuan, and she has transferred more than 8,000 yuan to the consulting company.
In the case that Wang Ke contacted, if the party concerned found out that he had been deceived and asked to terminate the contract and refund the fee, each consulting company would have different tactics. For example, if you have already started work, the fee will not be refunded according to the contract; Civil cases do not require a lawyer to appear in court, but criminal cases require a lawyer to appear in court; The company has never said that it wants to provide litigation representation services; The partner law firm can be allowed to sign the contract with the parties.
Later, Zhang Xiaoyu found a group similar to herself on the Internet, and found that everyone in the group of one or two hundred people was "deceived by a legal consulting company". And what this group of people consider to be fraud is difficult to identify from a legal perspective because they have not paid attention to preserving complete evidence before.
Eventually, Ms. Zhang decided to sue the legal consulting firm, and some of the WeChat chat records she kept contained evidence of fraud by the company's staff claiming to be lawyers.
In July, she went to the courthouse and submitted the complaint and other materials. In the complaint, she claimed that the other party was fraudulent: the other party claimed that he could help her with the medical lawsuit. However, at present, she has not received a notice from the court to file a case.
That day, when she went to the court to file a case, she walked in a 100-meter-long alley and saw more than a dozen law firms next to the court, and she found that none of the law firms there had closed down, and all the legal consulting companies there had closed down, and the big words "store transfer" were posted on the door.
The contract signed between Zhang Xiaoyu and the legal consulting firm
Grey areas and lack of regulation
Wang Ke once helped his friend deal with a case. My friend's mother is a middle-aged female teacher in a township primary school, and she has a loan of 185,000 yuan that she can't recover, so she found a legal consulting company on the short video platform to inquire.
During the consultation, the staff never reminded that the scope of services did not include litigation representation. "For many parties who are not highly educated or do not understand the law, it is actually a kind of concealment of inaction." Wang Ke said.
At the beginning of July, a friend "felt unreliable" and consulted Wang Ke. Wang Ke heard that he was looking for a lawyer on the Internet, and he currently spent 1,500 yuan, so he suspected that it might be a legal consulting company. "Because the client is in Guizhou County, unless the lawyer you find online is also from the local county, 1,500 yuan is not even enough to handle the case."
The friend was determined to get back the $1,500 his mother had already paid. Considering that the legal consulting company had not yet carried out any work at this time, Wang Ke instructed his friend to immediately send a notice to the other party, indicating that their legal services were no longer needed and that the money paid would be returned immediately.
The legal consulting firm refused to refund the money on the grounds that there was no illegal operation and that the contract had been confirmed by both parties. Later, a person in the legal service group said that the parties were asked to enter another group and sign a retention contract with the cooperative law firm as the main body.
However, Wang Ke learned that the legal consulting company is located in Chongqing, and the law firm it cooperates with is the Chongqing branch of a law firm in Shanghai, and the Chongqing Lawyers Association issued a statement in November 2023, requiring law firms and lawyers in the city not to carry out any form of legal business cooperation with legal consulting companies, legal companies and other institutions, and not to accept any cases referred by such institutions for compensation, otherwise they will be investigated and dealt with in accordance with the law.
In addition, at the end of April this year, the Hubei Provincial Lawyers Association and the Jiangxi Provincial Lawyers Association successively issued statements, requiring law firms and lawyers in the province to abide by professional ethics and not cooperate with legal service institutions such as legal consulting companies.
In addition to asking his friend to complain and report to the two-level market supervision department and the judicial administration department where the company is located, Wang Ke also reported the law firm to the Justice Bureau and the Chongqing Lawyers Association, and contacted the law firm to inform him of the situation. Soon, the staff of the consulting company, who had always been tough, agreed to the refund.
This is already a relatively lucky ending. Wang Ke said that usually, in the face of such complaints and reports, the market supervision department will ignore the illegal clues and only deal with consumer rights disputes in the form of mediation.
In the process of marketization of legal services, it does meet people's differentiated legal needs. However, the current legal consulting company is approved and deregistered in accordance with the Company Law, which also leads to the direct deregistration of the company when there is a problem, and the staff does not have to bear any responsibility.
This situation can be traced back to 2004, when the state cleaned up all administrative licensing projects in accordance with the requirements of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) at that time. The Ministry of Justice issued the "Decision on the Abolition of the Several Provisions of the Ministry of Justice and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce on Strengthening the Administration of Legal Advisory Service Institutions", and from then on, the establishment of a legal consulting company no longer needs to be approved by the judicial administrative organs, but only needs to be registered with the industrial and commercial department.
The decision also mentions that the follow-up regulatory measures for social legal consulting services will be separately stipulated by the State Administration for Market Regulation. "The so-called 'follow-up regulatory measures' that are separately stipulated have not yet been introduced." Wang Ke said.
In addition to the lack of regulation, there is almost no barrier to entry in the legal consulting market, and its employees are not required to pass any legal exams. There is no judicial administration or industry association to supervise it on a day-to-day basis.
In September 2019, the Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Strengthening and Regulating Supervision During and After the Matter clearly stipulates that the competent department shall be responsible for the supervision during and after the event for matters that have been cancelled for approval but still need to be supervised by the government.
Since the other party never agreed to the refund, Li Qing posted her experience of being deceived on social platforms, and the legal consulting company in Sichuan contacted her, saying that if she wanted to return the money (1200 yuan), she needed to sign an agreement, and asked her to delete the content that had been published, and there was a clause in this agreement that "after this agreement comes into effect, if Party A (Li Qing) spreads malicious remarks that have a negative impact on Party B (legal consulting company), Party B has the right to pursue Party A's legal responsibility."
After Li Qing posted her experience of being "deceived" on social platforms, the legal consulting firm agreed to terminate the contract
The consulting company sent Zhang Xiaoyu a company profile
Because he was too busy with work and "didn't have time to talk to them", a few days later, Li Qing agreed to accept a refund of 1,200 yuan from the other party.
Demands and barriers
Jin Shangjun sorted out the 40-year development history of the legal consulting service industry. He is a researcher in the research group of the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Law and Society at Renmin University of Chinese, and has been following legal consulting companies since 2022, and his research continues to this day.
According to him, at the beginning of reform and opening up, the market demand for legal services was strong, but the number of lawyers was small, and the state allowed government departments and state-owned enterprises and institutions to provide legal services to the outside world through the establishment of social legal service consulting institutions. This was the prototype of a legal advisory services firm. "At that time, legal consulting companies also served the high-end market, the same as law firms, which were managed by the Ministry of Justice."
By 2004, the Ministry of Justice no longer regulates such companies, "according to the country's institutional design, it should be lawyers who become the main body of the legal services market." Jin Shangjun said.
People thought that such companies would be slowly eliminated from the market. However, some grassroots legal service workers choose to transfer to legal consulting companies because of their meager income. "It used to be popular to call them 'black lawyers.'" In addition, some retired or resigned judges have also joined legal consulting firms, which "are prone to judicial 'brokers' and judicial corruption, affecting the rule of law environment." ”
In 2012, at the suggestion of the Ministry of Justice, the state legislatively abolished the requirement that "other citizens with the permission of the people's courts" act as agents ad litem. Since then, the staff of the legal consulting firm can no longer represent them in litigation.
The reason for the formation of the current market pattern, Tong Mengjun, another researcher in the research group, analyzed that lawyers tend to gather in big cities, or tend to accept customers with high bids and high repurchase rates, resulting in many small bids and one-time legal service needs of ordinary people cannot be met. The legal consulting service company objectively meets the needs of basic legal services.
Previously, Jin Shangjun investigated in the town in southern Jiangsu and found that there were many migrant workers in the local factory, and when there was a work-related injury, the factory did not have insurance, and disputes would arise at this time. The town's legal workers usually don't represent such cases, and ordinary workers don't write pleadings, "and the legal service needs of the injured workers are actually met by legal consulting firms." ”
"[Now] there are some regular, duty-bound legal consulting firms that only provide pre-litigation services. Many courts will resolve the matter through pre-litigation mediation, and the parties do not need to appear in court, which gives legal consulting firms a lot of room to grow. Tong Mengjun said.
Moreover, with the development of the Internet, legal consulting service companies have turned to the Internet to obtain customers, and the development has been rapid. Through the search for "legal advice", it can be found that there are about 480,000 enterprises in existence and operation, of which about 300,000 have been established in the past three years. By comparison, there are currently fewer than 50,000 law firms in the country.
Tong Mengjun observed that a legal consulting company has at least one business team or marketing team, "and its organizational form is like an assembly line, with a group of people marketing, a group of people doing materials, and a group of people providing professional answers." "Through online and offline solicitation, all the people who have asked questions online, they will call and contact the person.
Not long ago, she went to a town in Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province to conduct research and found that there was a legal consulting company with a layout in the township, and each township had a marketing staff responsible for soliciting customers.
Non-compliant legal consulting firms can persist because they can act as shell companies outside of regulation, for example, lawyers can even secretly open a legal consulting firm to obtain case sources and cooperate for profit. "Not only can it circumvent the rule that lawyers can't advertise excessively, but it can also make false promises. In addition, there is also the issue of tax avoidance". Tong Mengjun said. Lawyers themselves are highly regulated, and the organizational form of mainland law firms can only be partnerships, which means that lawyers have unlimited liability, but the form of consulting companies only bears limited liability, and lawyers operating in the form of legal consulting companies actually violate the Lawyers Law.
In addition, there are professional barriers in the entire legal service market industry, and it is difficult for ordinary people to distinguish whether the other party is a lawyer or not, and they do not even have the consciousness to check whether the other party has a lawyer's license. "So they're gullible to be deceived. This leads to a weaker access to legal services. Tong Mengjun said.
In fact, the state is actively promoting public legal services. According to Jin Shangjun, there is a national public legal service hotline 12348, and in many places it is a telephone for answering legal advice all day long, and there are lawyers on duty at the window of the government affairs hall of each county judicial bureau.
So why don't the above-mentioned deceived people seek these public legal services?
Tong Mengjun believes that although the provision of inclusive public legal services has been paved to the township level, which can provide some basic legal advice and litigation representation for the poor, "but in fact it is not as good as imagined." ”
She compares public legal services to lawyers through assignment or government purchase, and the subsidies do not match their contributions, and they stay passively in the judicial bureau. The marketing of legal consulting companies is very powerful, and the parties may not even think of seeking public legal services, but they have already been intercepted by legal consulting companies.
In May this year, the WeChat public account of the Ministry of Justice released a message saying that for a period of time, the number of legal consulting services has grown rapidly, which has played a certain positive role in meeting the legal needs of the people. In the next step, the Ministry of Justice and the State Administration for Market Regulation will, on the basis of in-depth research and full listening to opinions, study and standardize the relevant legal policy measures of legal consulting service institutions.
In the face of the chaos in the legal consulting services industry, Jin Shangjun believes that one direction of regulation is to crack down on the cooperation between lawyers and legal consulting companies. In addition, regulation also depends on the market, and when there are more and more practicing lawyers, the demand for legal services at the grassroots level can be met from professional lawyers.
(In order to protect the privacy of the interviewees, Li Qing and Zhang Xiaoyu are pseudonyms.) ）