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PILnet has been working to build public interest law in China for almost ten years. It’s been a fascinating period of our history, one that has taught us much about the virtues of patience and unhurried determination. As we’ve learned, things can move slowly in China, and public interest work in China can move very slowly indeed. With a legal system still under construction, the country has only about 200,000 lawyers for a population of 1.3 billion—roughly the same number as the U.S.'s four westernmost states. And very few of these lawyers are working to meet the basic legal needs of its population.
PILnet’s projects in China follow the same contours as our work in other regions of the world—in Russia, Europe, Africa, and Asia—but in China, our mission of strengthening civil society and inspiring lawyers to advance the public interest often takes a different path. Pro bono is a good example.
Pro bono is a Western concept that is only just beginning to take root in China. PILnet and our Chinese partners have been gradually building the field of public interest law in China over the past decade and a few years ago we set up our China Pro Bono Clearinghouse in Beijing to help NGOs and law firms work together. More recently we have been trying to engage commercial law firms more directly to provide pro bono support.
There is great potential in China to harness voluntarism among lawyers. But for the idea to spread, it needs to have a name. How do you establish a concept like pro bono in China when there are no words for it?
That simple question came up at a recent conference PILnet sponsored with one of our partners in China, the Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims. This particular workshop brought together more than 50 lawyers from around the country, including representatives from a number of Chinese law firms and some of the country’s most well-known, innovative public interest lawyers.
After several unsuccessful attempts at capturing the meaning of pro bono through existing Chinese phrases, the participants found a new term—lü shi or lü suo she hui ze ren—which means lawyers’ or law firms’ social responsibility. That phrase seemed to do an excellent job of capturing both the imperative of pro bono and the unique role for private practitioners in China.
The notion of a legal profession is still evolving but the essence of what pro bono represents—an opportunity for lawyers to contribute to the greater good—seems to me to be captured well by the term “social responsibility.”
On a number of fronts the conference appeared to forge a new consensus among public interest lawyers and the business lawyers who support them. It’s impossible to say where pro bono will go in China but signs are increasingly encouraging. When the seeds of change take root in China, we’ve learned, they take root at their own pace.
