Veteran lawyers such as Warren Hua and Wang Junfeng have had front-row seats in the transformation of the Chinese legal industry over the past three decades.
When China emerged from the chaos of years under Mao Zedong to reform its legal system in the late 1970s, the country had a few thousand lawyers. Judges often had no academic background and civil litigation barely existed.
Today, the number of lawyers is approaching 700,000 — nearly five times the UK. Among the 50 largest law firms in the Asia-Pacific region, 15 are either local Chinese groups or international firms with most of their lawyers in China. Yingke, estimated to be the world’s biggest law firm by headcount, boasts around 12,000 lawyers alone.