IDEOLOGIES OF CIVIC PROFESSIONALISM IN THE US BAR

The standard US conception of the lawyer role emphasizes zealous advocacy for clients in support of the adversarial legal process. This client-centered vision is complemented by a tradition of (at least rhetorically) robust public commitments, where lawyers serve as “officers of the court” and “lawyer statesmen” (Kronman Reference Kronman1995). Lawyers are tasked with not only providing technical legal analysis but also judgment and wise counseling of clients (Wilkins Reference Wilkins1998, 1528). Practitioners are invited to pursue the lawyer role as a calling, either in the framework of cause lawyering, where the lawyer explicitly seeks to realize a personal vision of a good society, or in the framework of neutral-partisan client service, where the lawyer provides access to justice as a precondition for a functional democracy (Pepper Reference Pepper1986, 617; Spaulding Reference Spaulding2003).

This perspective on lawyer identity has deep roots in what Terence Halliday (Reference Halliday1999, 1052) refers to as an American tradition of “civic professionalism” drawing on lawyers’ “altruistic, prosocial, humanistic, and other-regarding motivations.” Historians trace civic professionalism to the early American legal profession before the Civil War, when lawyers were heavily represented in public office as well as serving as country attorneys who provided access to justice (Auerbach Reference Auerbach1977). This public-service tradition finds further support in American lawyers’ prominent roles as civil rights leaders, legal change agents in the common law system, and, more generally, “societal problem solvers” (Edley Reference Edley2012). These ideals are said to be reproduced through US legal education where students are socialized into a professional collective based on a shared identity and an obligation to serve the public.

Commentators have lamented the growing commercialization of legal practice and the decline of the lawyer-statesman ideal (Kronman Reference Kronman1995). This lament features prominently in the recent wave of research and commentary on US legal education, which stresses the importance of inculcating students in “civic professionalism” and a sense of duty to “the members of the public the profession is pledged to serve” (Sullivan et al. Reference Sullivan2007, 4). In sum, the ideal American professional identity presented to new US lawyers, and in some respects offered for export to developing countries, frames lawyers as public-regarding professionals who internalize a sense of civic purpose in their representation of clients and in their leadership in legal and social reform. As a collective, these lawyers are expected to work within the channels of the liberal legal order to provide a semi-autonomous alternative to the market and state.

IDEOLOGIES OF CIVIC PROFESSIONALISM IN THE CHINESE BAR

Western observers frequently suggest that legal professionalism in China is compromised by guanxi relations (reciprocal networks of relationships that span personal, legal, and political arenas) and state oversight, such that Chinese lawyers “have not developed a strong professional identity independent of the desire to get good work and stay out of trouble” (McMorrow Reference McMorrow2010, 1102). The state supervises legal practice, as evident in the required party cells in law firms, state control over bar associations, and the oath to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) taken by new entrants to the bar. This supervision contrasts with the liberal notion of an independent, self-regulating collective of professionals. Lawyers’ neutrality is filtered through the “socialist rule of law,” creating a “fundamental conflict of interest between lawyers’ loyalty to the state and their loyalty to their clients” (Michelson Reference Michelson2006, 30). This conflict may be most visible among criminal defense lawyers and other lawyers who take controversial cases where they can face personal liability.

Some recent scholarship has highlighted emerging, but limited, norms of professional independence in the Chinese bar. These norms have been influenced by lawyers’ mobilization around recent cases where lawyers have been prosecuted (Alford Reference Alford, William, Winston and William2010; Liu, Liang, and Halliday Reference Liu, Liang and Halliday2014). In addition to defending the legal profession, these movements have included a growing commitment to pro bono practice, spurred by global markets and rhetorical campaigns and policies of the Ministry of Justice and the All China Lawyers Association (Dong Reference Dong2016). These pro bono contributions generally consist of charitable donations and education projects rather than legal representation (Dong Reference Dong2016), although pro bono legal representation within the framework of state legal aid initiatives is publicly celebrated (Stern and Liu Reference Stern and Liu2020, 241). As reflected in interview excerpts discussed below, Chinese lawyers are also frequently called on to provide informal pro bono legal services to friends and family (Stern Reference Stern2013, 155–56).

A great deal of scholarly and media attention has been paid to China’s cause lawyers or, as they are generally labeled, “rights protection” () lawyers. These lawyers are often framed as the harbingers of political liberalization, although researchers offer a more modest portrait of their impact. It may even be strategically advantageous for Chinese cause lawyers to be moderate, politically embedded, and explicitly patriotic (Michelson 2007; Fu and Cullen Reference Fu and Cullen2008; Liu and Halliday Reference Liu and Halliday2011; Stern Reference Stern2013). Yet a minority of Chinese lawyers are “motivated by cause rather than cash” and attracted to the “idealistic identity” of being a “rights-defending hero” (Stern Reference Stern2013, 51). Lawyers who match this description appear to adopt a similar professional identity to US cause lawyers, who aspire to find in their careers “something to believe in” (Scheingold and Sarat Reference Scheingold and Sarat2004, 51).

While this body of literature has increasingly examined Chinese corporate law offices (Liu Reference Liu2006, Reference Liu2008; Li and Liu Reference Li and Liu2012; Liu and Wu Reference Liu and Wu2016; Stern and Li Reference Stern and Li2016; Liu and Wilkins, Reference Bliss, Liu, David and Cambridgeforthcoming), researchers have yet to empirically study how new lawyers in this sector are influenced by liberal understandings of civic professionalism. Foreign efforts to promote political liberalism in China via the legal profession have been fostered by development organizations, banks, aid agencies, private foundations, bar associations, universities, and US congressional, judicial, and executive branches, prominently President Bill Clinton’s 1997 China Rule of Law Initiative (Carothers Reference Carothers2006; Erie Reference Erie2009). Robust funding for these activities became available beginning in 2002 (Stephenson Reference Stephenson and Carothers2006). The development community behind these initiatives has been criticized for assuming that spreading the “legal language of globalization” will facilitate the rise of global capitalism and that reform in corporate law will “spill over” into the development of rule of law (Dezalay and Garth Reference Dezalay and Garth2011). Regarding China, this Trojan horse strategy is summarized by Matthew Stephenson (Reference Stephenson and Carothers2006, 199):

Skeptics have long suggested that the Trojan horse model relies on an unrealistic assumption that the legal complex is a “machine that runs itself,” which will automatically “trigger a chain reaction transforming economic liberalization into political and social reform” (Silverstein Reference Silverstein2003, 427).

Trojan horse efforts may currently be losing potency as the Chinese model of law and politics ascends as a coherent vision of authoritarian legality (Gallagher Reference Gallagher2017). While the United States has sought to “plant seeds in patches of sunlight” through commercial law reform, the Chinese leadership has effectively set up “institutional firewalls” around areas of legal reform considered to be off limits (Stephenson Reference Stephenson and Carothers2006). As Sida Liu (Reference Liu and Halliday2011) notes, the narrative that the Chinese legal order is transforming from “the rule of guanxi” to “the rule of law” does not match the reality of what has become “a strong Chinese state underneath the structural outlook of a market economy.” This view is bolstered by Xi Jinping’s recent efforts to position China as a global epicenter, which rejects Western norms and, instead, pursues a “Chinese dream” () and a Belt and Road foreign policy of increasing influence abroad. Taisu Zhang and Tom Ginsburg (2019) have argued that although President Xi frames himself as a “champion of law and legalization,” he does so primarily as a self-legitimating strategy while seeking to limit the rule of law in practice. In the legal profession, Xi’s rule has brought tightening control over lawyers’ independence and more explicit ideological training in the “socialist rule of law” and Party loyalty (Stern and Liu Reference Stern and Liu2020).

SAMPLE AND METHODOLOGY

Edited volumes compiling research on the legal professions of various countries have provided rich resources for comparative insights into the globalizing legal profession (see, for example, Abel and Lewis Reference Abel and Lewis1989; Sarat and Scheingold Reference Sarat and Scheingold2001; Dezalay and Garth Reference Dezalay and Garth2011; Cummings, De Sa e Silva, Trubek, Reference Cummings, De Sa e Silva and Trubekforthcoming). These volumes have included a substantial focus on the transnational corporate bar in particular (Wilkins et al. Reference Wilkins2017; Cunha et al. Reference Cunha2018; Liu and Wilkins Reference Bliss, Liu, David and Cambridgeforthcoming). Yet it is rare to include multiple legal professions within the same empirical study, drawing on the same research questions and methods to create direct comparisons. Such research designs face formidable challenges in dealing with cultural and linguistic differences, in addition to the wide range of confounding variables introduced when analyzing social phenomena across countries. For the primarily theory-generating purposes of this qualitative study, this broad scope of cross-national variation can be advantageous and can help shape narrower research questions for future inquiry. This article wades into these waters by employing cross-cultural methods: a visual identity-mapping exercise and a bilingual approach to research interviews and analysis.

China offers a strategic site for examining how professional identity formation is globalizing. Emerging economies have been a source of dramatic growth in the global legal profession. Nowhere has this growth been more pronounced than in China. The number of lawyers in the People’s Republic of China has multiplied roughly one hundred fold in the past four decades—from just three thousand in 1980 when the post-Mao legal profession was formally revived to nearly three hundred thousand in 2017 (Minzner Reference Minzner2013; Stern Reference Stern2013). I focus on the corporate law sector in both countries to support commensurability in the United States-China comparison, although I also discuss some structural variations in these firms’ training and advancement programs (Liu Reference Liu2008).

These elite corporate-lawyers-in-training are not representative of the full bar in either country. The US legal profession has long been characterized by a division into two hemispheres, one serving large organizations and the other serving individual clients (Heinz and Laumann Reference Heinz and Laumann1982). This division has become less distinct over time, yet the large-firm corporate law sector has increasingly departed from other practice settings in terms of compensation (Heinz et al. Reference Heinz1998). New lawyers in large firms earn roughly double the incoming salaries offered by small firms and triple what new lawyers earn in solo, government, public interest, and legal aid practice settings (Dinovitzer et al. Reference Dinovitzer2004).

The Shanghai respondents’ international orientation, elite educational credentials, and foreign-facing practice settings make them good candidates for investigating the globalization of professional norms. Yet these very traits distinguish them from the mainstream lawyers in the Chinese bar, many of whom suffer from acute “economic and institutional vulnerabilities” that are absent in transnational corporate practice (Michelson and Liu Reference Michelson, Liu and Li2010, 311). Throughout this article, my presentation of the US data is abridged, and I cite to my previous publications on the American sample for more detailed analysis (Bliss Reference Bliss2017, 2018). The Chinese portion of the study was designed as an extension of the US project, applying a Mandarin language adaptation of the same interview protocol and identity-mapping method. All interviews referenced in this article were conducted by the author.

The US study draws on longitudinal interviews and identity mapping with three cohorts of law students and young lawyers. The earliest cohort was followed through their first three years of practice. These respondents all attended the same top-tier law school. While the study included respondents who pursued other career tracks, this article focuses on the thirty-nine respondents who interned at large corporate law firms, including respondents in the first cohort whom I continued to interview in their post-graduation jobs in large firms. Four respondents from the earliest cohort did not complete an identity map and so are excluded from any counts in the identity map analysis. Most US respondents were recruited by requesting their volunteer participation through in-person announcements in first-year classes. This approach was supplemented by a small amount of snowball sampling. Table 1 provides a breakdown of the sample characteristics. The sample is approximately reflective of the law school’s demographics and those of new lawyers across the US legal profession, but it may overrepresent women and racial minorities within the corporate category (Dinovitzer et al. Reference Dinovitzer2004).

Table 1.

US Sample characteristics

Note: The “second-year job path” is determined by students’ internships in the summer after their second year of law school and their aspirations for post-graduation employment. As evident in the follow-up interviews with the first cohort and, more generally, in the legal job market, students who take a summer internship in corporate law are highly likely to return to these firms after graduation.

The Chinese sample consisted of thirty corporate law associates who were in their first three years of practice at elite law firms in Shanghai. For this comparative extension of the US study, I initially considered sampling Chinese law students rather than young Chinese lawyers, given that my US data consists of more law student interviews (104) than post-graduation follow-up interviews (forty-nine). However, after conducting a pilot study, I concluded that focusing on legal education in China would miss most of the professional socialization process. Many young Chinese lawyers complete their legal studies at the undergraduate level, which focuses on black letter law with few experiential elements and little expectation that graduates will become practicing lawyers. For those who do become lawyers, their first substantial exposure to the profession occurs on the job. In contrast, US law students in juris doctor (JD) programs undergo a deliberate professional socialization program including experiential education and supervised legal practice opportunities. Comparing Chinese law students to US law students would likely prove unfruitful for a study of professional identity formation. Instead, I sampled new Chinese lawyers, who are undergoing on-the-job socialization, and US law students and new lawyers whose professional socialization begins in law school and continues in their first positions as lawyers.

The Chinese sample is evenly split between lawyers working for elite Chinese domestic firms (fifteen respondents) and those working for elite foreign firms (fifteen respondents). Respondents were employed by a total of five domestic firms and six foreign firms. Of the six foreign firms, two are headquartered in the United States, two are structured as multinational Swiss vereins, and two are headquartered in Europe. Firms in both categories draw top law students, offer attractive salaries, handle large entity clients, and have expertise in international legal matters. The domestic firms in many respects imitate foreign firms, as observed by Sida Liu (2008, 786–87): “From minor issues such as document settings and website design to more substantive aspects such as billing method and management structure, these Chinese law firms want to look similar to the Anglo-American mega-law firms in almost every way, even firm size.”

The Chinese interviews were conducted during two data collection trips to Shanghai in 2015 and 2016. Respondents were primarily recruited with the help of gatekeepers at law firms (generally law firm partners) and direct queries on lawyer-specific WeChat groups. The interviews were held in a confidential setting. Pilot interviews were conducted in respondents’ offices. The subsequent interviews for the study were mostly held in a meeting room at the Harvard Center Shanghai. As in the US study, interviews were recorded with respondents’ consent. The characteristics of the Chinese sample are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2.

Chinese sample characteristics (n = 30)

The semi-structured interview protocol in the Chinese study largely mirrored the US protocol, focusing on entrance into the profession, sense of professional purpose, civic contributions, legal education and training, and professional and personal identities. The Chinese interviews were conducted in Mandarin. Interview data was coded and analyzed by the author with research and language assistance from two law students at Koguan Law School and one at Harvard Law School. Midway through each interview, I introduced the identity-mapping exercise that I first developed in the US portion of this study (Bliss Reference Bliss2017). This method provides visual representations of how one’s professional role relates to one’s broader self-concept. Underlying this method is a Goffmanesque theory of role distancing and personal identity, which emphasizes the continual alignment of roles on a spectrum, some roles being more proximate, embraced, and central constituents of identity and others being more distant and detached (Goffman Reference Goffman1959).

The first step in the exercise is to list all of the roles one enacts in daily life. The only role that respondents were specifically asked to include was “lawyer.” I then handed the respondent a sheet of paper with a large circle representing the respondent’s identity. Respondents then drew and labeled smaller circles on this identity map representing each of their roles—placing roles that felt constitutive and self-expressive closer to the center and roles that felt less essential to one’s identity further from the center. This exercise was followed by a fifteen- to thirty-minute interpretive dialogue in which respondents discussed the placement and labeling of their roles. As evident in the examples below, this exercise provided visual cross-cultural data as well as helping to open interview discussions of abstract, personal, and somewhat politically sensitive questions about professional identity. All identifying references have been eliminated in order to maintain participant confidentiality. Respondents have been randomly assigned pseudonyms. For the Chinese sample, these pseudonyms are drawn from a list of common Chinese surnames.

US FINDINGS: CONSTRAINED, DIVIDED, AND UNSTABLE PROFESSIONAL SELVES

This part builds on my earlier published analysis of how US corporate-lawyers-in-training form their professional selves. Here, I concentrate on the civic dimension of professional identity (Sullivan et al. Reference Sullivan2007). Many US respondents in my sample entered law school with what I label a cause-lawyering identity profile, where the lawyer role was central in their identity maps and overlapping with personal and political roles. When describing their motivation for attending law school, these respondents emphasized their strong political orientations and the civic and social-change capacities of the legal profession (Stover Reference Stover1989; Granfield Reference Granfield1992). However, in their second year of law school, those respondents who had accepted positions in elite corporate law firms generally came to locate the lawyer role in a more peripheral position in their identity maps amid accounts of instrumental professional identity (Bliss Reference Bliss2017). Rather than pursuing a public-interest calling, they described their upcoming positions as primarily motivated by income. See, for example, Sara’s identity map from her second year in law school, after she had accepted an internship in a large corporate law firm (“Big Law”) that would lead to a post-graduation job at the firm (Figure 1). After paying down her debt for several years in a law firm, Sara hoped to return to what she labeled in Figure 1 as an “Impact Litigation/Civil Rights Lawyer.” Notice that the “Big Law” role is completely outside the identity circle. In the interview, she explained that this job lacks public-interest value and does not reflect her identity. Her “biggest concern” was that she would become “addicted to money” and find it difficult to leave corporate law practice.

Figure 1.

US identity map: Sara.

This disappointment with the corporate law path was common in the US sample, particularly among students who began law school with public-interest sector ambitions. As these students met elite firm recruiters during the on-campus hiring program at the beginning of the second year of law school, they often moderated their judgment toward these firms, although some respondents continued to hold profoundly negative views (Bliss Reference Bliss2018, 2010–12). In spite of their reservations, many of these respondents took positions in large firms. Following the acceptance of these job offers, these respondents often adopted a pessimistic view of their upcoming professional identities, as one student concluded: “I don’t even want to be a lawyer anymore. Everything these [large-firm lawyers] do sounds unappealing” (2012).

Students who emphasized a lack of civic calling in corporate law practice generally continued to offer similar accounts in the post-JD interviews (Bliss Reference Bliss2018, 1981). When asked about their sense of professional purpose, these lawyers emphasized ethical contributions to clients and the legal system; however, these contributions often fell far short of their initial expectations for civic engagement. They emphasized political identities and a desire to contribute to large-scale social, political, and legal reform but felt that those values were disconnected from their current daily practice. Instead, many of these respondents suggested that their own emphasis on ethical client service was merely a post hoc rationalization for the decision to “drift” to a corporate law firm instead of starting their careers in public-interest practice settings (Granfield Reference Granfield1992). Thus, one respondent who cited the adversarial professionalism ideal for his decision to work in a large firm (that “everyone deserves a defense, even corporate clients”) quickly clarified: “That’s probably just a justification for myself so I don’t have to feel like a sellout” (Bliss Reference Bliss2018, 2020).

Pro bono opportunities seemed to alleviate some of this disappointment with the civic significance of working in corporate law. Amid the institutionalization of pro bono programs in large US law firms, associates are incentivized to meet pro bono hour targets (Cummings and Rhode Reference Cummings and Rhode2009). In this process, pro bono coordinators often put great care into matching associates to pro bono cases that suit the individual associate’s values and interests while avoiding “difficult” clients and legal matters (Bliss and Boutcher, Reference Bliss, Boutcher, Cummings, de Sa e Silva and Trubekforthcoming). However, respondents’ heavy emphasis on pro bono when discussing their civic contributions was often associated with their underlying view that their service to the firms’ paying clients was not socially beneficial.

Some of these frustrations were rooted in external constraints on associates’ civic professionalism resulting from their relative lack of autonomy, control over clients, and opportunities for pro bono service. But I also found evidence in the US sample of internal constraints on civic professionalism. Some respondents described their legal practice in transactional terms as business careers with primarily remunerative value. Others held onto an image of themselves as cause lawyers and planned to return to public-interest practice after a few years in large firms, but they explained that they had little interest in attempting to express their civic values in large-firm practice. Instead, they had developed “divided selves,” where the performance of a professional role was described primarily as a matter of passing time (and paying down student debt) in a corporate law environment until a future date when they could return to a more central professional identity as a public-interest attorney.

Other US respondents seemed to push back against external constraints on civic expression within corporate law practice, proactively seeking out opportunities to engage in, for example, pro bono, diversity, and environmental sustainability efforts. In the same spirit, some respondents emphasized their duty to steer powerful clients toward ethical and socially beneficial behavior. These bottom-up efforts from young lawyers may influence their firms’ continued priority on pro bono and corporate social responsibility. Indeed, large US firms often cite the civic dimension of corporate law practice as a key ingredient in recruiting and retaining talented young lawyers (Cummings and Rhode Reference Cummings and Rhode2009).

US respondents tended to express dissatisfaction with their current placement of the lawyer role, particularly when the lawyer role was located on the far periphery of their identity maps. This desire to move the lawyer role inward was made visually apparent in some maps, where arrows and others markings indicated an intention or hope that the role placement would change in the future (see, for example, Sara’s chronological arrows in Figure 1, which express her hope to inhabit a more central lawyer role when she later changes jobs). Respondents often explained this instability in their professional role alignments as a function of their lack of civic expression and intrinsically rewarding work.

In summary, US corporate-lawyers-in-training often struggled fundamentally with a tension between their desire for public-interest outlets and their limited opportunities for such outlets in their daily practice. To some extent, this struggle may reflect an inherent tension in the stated American ideals of professional identity, where lawyers are expected to serve as client agents while also playing a robust public role as officers of the court and lawyer statesman. This tension is heightened for young corporate lawyers who came to the profession seeking to reform market, state, and legal systems, but who feel that corporate law practice instead reinforces these systems. For some of these lawyers-in-training, frustration with the limited public-service outlets available in their daily practice can motivate bottom-up efforts to expand civic commitments in the corporate law sector. But these lawyers’ experiences of “divided selves” also raise concerns about job satisfaction, mental health, and the pipeline into these firms (Bliss Reference Bliss2017). This sense of constrained civic expression emerges from my analysis as a defining feature of the lived experience of civic professionalism among many US corporate-lawyers-in-training.

CHINESE FINDINGS: INTEGRATED, PRAGMATIC, AND STABLE PROFESSIONAL SELVES

The Chinese respondents did not generally present the tension with professional identity found in the US sample. In total, 90 percent of the Chinese sample (twenty-seven of thirty respondents) located the lawyer role in what I coded as a central and integrated cluster in their identity maps. Only 17 percent of US respondents who completed one or two identity maps located the lawyer role in a central cluster in any of their maps (six of thirty-five respondents). The Chinese maps were more stable than found in the US sample. When asked whether they hoped that their identity maps would change in the future, Chinese respondents generally expressed satisfaction with their current role alignments. This stands in sharp contrast to the unstable and dissatisfied professional self-portraits in the US sample. Among the multiple interpretations of this variation, respondents in both the US and Chinese samples emphasized their relationship to the civic dimension of professionalism. In contrast to the US experience of frustrated civic self-expression, the Chinese sample was largely satisfied regarding their degree of civic engagement. Chinese respondents offered a far more optimistic view of the public contributions of corporate law practice. In this part, I discuss their accounts of civic professionalism, as defined by contributions to clients, the legal system, and society (Heineman et al. Reference Heineman2014). I then discuss how these respondents described their internal constraints on civic expression.

Contributions to Society

In contrast to the common perceptions among US respondents that corporate law firms provide little public-interest value, the Chinese sample presented a far more salutary sense of their civic engagement, emphasizing contributions to national economic development. In the interviews, these lawyers’ initial responses to questions about their professional goals () and the purpose of lawyers in society () generally did not begin with claims of broad public contributions. They most commonly began by saying that they aspired to be successful as lawyers. However, most of the Chinese respondents were expansive when prompted with the question: “How important is it to you to make a public contribution” ()? The elaborate and elevated ideals expressed in response to this question reveals that these lawyers had previously reflected on these issues to a great extent. For example, Li explained: “[Lawyers help] to resolve society’s contradictions () and promote the development of business for the benefit of the economy, and to promote the perfection and development of law.” Li further emphasized that Chinese lawyers have a distinct capacity to contribute not only through their daily practice but also through legislative work: “Chinese law feels very incomplete. Not everything has specific regulations. Lawyers can participate in drafting and interpreting laws drawing on their legal experience.”

Developing the national economy was the primary focus of respondents’ claims to public contributions. These comments often specifically cited the international economic relations facilitated by Shanghai corporate law offices. The Chinese sample was near unanimous in expressing the belief that, as one respondent phrased it, “the globalization of the economy is good for the country.” Some respondents pointed to the work of more senior corporate lawyers in their own firms and similar firms, who constitute the first generation of the modern private bar. Respondents credited these senior attorneys with paving the way to the reform and opening up () of the post-Mao economy, including the emergence and radical expansion of the middle class. These reflections locate respondents’ work in a patriotic tradition supporting China’s ascension as a world power, although respondents were often quite modest about their current contributions as junior attorneys. Zheng explained: “I would not say that my work makes a great contribution to society, but I do think that business lawyers in general are helping to improve the economy … [which is] the most important issue for our country.”

This emphasis on supporting the economy is well aligned with state policy and with the CCP’s long-standing claim to legitimacy on the basis of sustained national economic growth. But respondents consistently clarified that their support of the economy was conducted in a manner that distinctly reflected the values of the legal profession in contrast to the contributions of other business professionals. These accounts underscored the professional obligations of lawyers to supervise client behavior, as Wu explained: “Business people are driven more by profit and willing to do unlawful things for profit. But lawyers have to look out for the bottom line and the risks. Thus, lawyers make sure that business people conduct themselves in a lawful manner, while supporting their financial interests as well.”

When asked about pro bono practice, most Chinese respondents explained that pro bono was an important component of lawyers’ obligations to society. These accounts emphasized future contributions, as young associates had few pro bono opportunities in their current positions. Depictions of pro bono varied between domestic and foreign firms. Domestic firms are legally required to take pro bono cases assigned to them by local bar associations. Some respondents were aware of these requirements but suggested that other lawyers in their firms handled pro bono matters—in particular, lawyers specializing in litigation, senior partners who took high profile cases to gain prestige and political favor, and lawyers in flagging practices. Pro bono may also be employed as a strategy in times of “organizational slack,” when firms have spare resources and personnel (Sandefur Reference Sandefur2007).

In contrast, foreign firms in China are not legally permitted to represent clients in paid or pro bono capacities. Nevertheless, these firms generally have corporate social responsibility initiatives that reflect their international pro bono commitments. Such charitable contributions and volunteer work are common in domestic firms as well, constituting a “Chinese-style pro bono” (Dong Reference Dong2016). Three foreign-firm respondents described rendering pro bono service on behalf of foundations and nongovernmental organizations. One domestic-firm respondent described his firm’s efforts to provide clothing and education to rural children. Another respondent was working with her domestic firm on a program to provide goats and calves to farmers. Yet most Chinese respondents explained that their firms did not prioritize charitable work.

While formal pro bono opportunities were relatively uncommon, the Chinese respondents frequently described providing informal pro bono services to family and friends throughout their extended social networks. Because there are still relatively few lawyers in China, respondents found themselves in great demand. For example, Zhang’s identity (Figure 2) describes one of his core constitutive roles as being an “advice giver” () for clients and for his broader community.

Figure 2.

Chinese identity map: Zhang.

Zhang explained that providing pro bono legal advice for a great many people in his life is a professional responsibility integrated into his sense of lawyer identity:

Because I practice labor law, many friends call me up with questions that deal with law. When I’m not busy, I’ll give them advice. Maybe it is different from the United States. People around here, if they hear you are a lawyer, or if they know a person who knows you, they will directly give you a call. This kind of situation is common, where it is a friend of a friend. If it is not too distant of a connection, I usually can help them out.

In these accounts of “informal pro bono” (Mather et al. Reference Mather2001, 138–56) or “de facto pro bono” (Rhode Reference Rhode2005, 135), respondents typically emphasized a sense of personal obligation to their family and friends. Often, however, these young attorneys noted that they lacked the legal skills to help with many of the pro bono issues they encountered. This observation generally suggests a mismatch between their training in international corporate law and the legal needs that arise in informal pro bono matters. One respondent explained:

Especially if it is older people [who are asking for legal advice], they do not know anything about specialization in the legal profession. Most of the work I do is international law, business law, contract law, but most of what they ask me about is divorce law, criminal law. I do not understand those areas. … I can just know some basic legal principles. I can tell them, “Law is like this …” But there is a big difference between the theory that I learned in school and the practice that they need. I usually tell them they should really look for a more specialized lawyer. … If I have time I can help them look up legal information. But if I don’t have time I can recommend a more specialized lawyer.

This emphasis on volunteer practice, even when respondents acknowledged limitations on their effectiveness in providing pro bono services, suggests an internalized sense of civic duty and engagement.

Nine of the thirty Chinese respondents stated that they hoped to find opportunities to engage in rights protection () cases later in their careers. These lawyers may find such opportunities in the future. While news media accounts often emphasize the small cadre of committed cause lawyers in China, public-interest legal causes in China are perhaps more commonly served by attorneys who take these cases on an occasional or part-time basis (Givens Reference Givens2013). When asked about their perceptions of full-time activist lawyers, respondents often expressed admiration for these lawyers’ personal risk taking but also cautioned that their tactics and large-scale reform goals were not realistic or pragmatic. Instead, the Chinese sample generally recommended that lawyers make smaller-scale, incremental public-interest contributions working within the current system.

Internal Constraints on Civic Professionalism

Although the Chinese respondents emphasized their civic contributions in corporate law practice, they also generally acknowledged that these contributions were very moderate. For example, Qian suggested that she highly prioritized civic values in her work, but she offered a very narrow view of her impact on society: “My main contribution is to share expertise with clients and young lawyers.” Tang explained that rather than seeking to change law, lawyers should strive to improve the functioning of the legal system: “The most important role for lawyers in society is to inform people of the law.” These narrow conceptions of civic impact, wherein lawyers share expertise and inform people of law, are not only shaped by external constraints—associates’ lack of autonomy within their firms and the broader lack of lawyer autonomy in the Chinese national context. These accounts also suggest internal constraints, whereby young lawyers do not robustly push back against limits imposed by the firm, the profession, and the state. Chinese respondents generally reported feeling satisfied with their degree of civic engagement. They characterized this incrementalist approach to civic professionalism in pragmatic terms as an affirmative strategy for moderately developing the legal system and the national economy.

These themes can be illustrated through the example of Hu. As quoted at the beginning of this article, Hu expressed a particularly strong commitment to his public contributions: “The value of my existence () depends on how much contribution I can make to others, or to the society, or to the whole human race. This probably is my core identity ()…. All other roles are just an extension of this core role as a contributor ().” Hu explained that being a contributor was the top priority in shaping his legal career and that his corporate law position was the best vehicle for these civic aspirations: “I will change jobs if another job allows me to make a greater contribution to society.” This commitment was reflected in the centrality of the role labeled “contributor ()” in his identity map (adjacent to and slightly overlapping with his “lawyer” role) (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Chinese identity map: Hu.

Over the course of the interview, Hu narrowed this notion of civic contribution, clarifying that he does not seek to change society: “As a lawyer, the core of what we can do is [promoting] the rule of law. But of course I am not a radical activist ().” This notion of promoting the rule of law within the current system may reflect what many Chinese respondents characterized as a pragmatic stance on the value of nonradical legal practice in a context where lawyers generally have limited public impact. Later in the interview, Hu’s initial strong emphasis on civic contribution seemed to waver:

Interviewer: Can you talk about your sense of purpose as a lawyer?

Respondent: If being a successful lawyer counts as a sense of purpose, then I’ll say that.

Interviewer: Anything else? For example, what is the connection between being a “contributor” and your career goals?

Respondent: Contributor, this, umm, maybe it is, not that I, because … contributor is a broad idea, so it is not that you have an exact purpose that I want to be a contributor. It is an element hiding in the background () when I engage in “decision making” [spoken in English]. … Maybe this is not an “exact purpose” [spoken in English].

Interviewer: Do you have a broader sense of career purpose?

Respondent: A broader career purpose? [twelve second pause] Perhaps all I can see now is becoming a successful lawyer. ().

Following the long, twelve-second pause near the end of this excerpt, Hu’s narrative of public contribution appeared to collapse. In a resigned tone (“perhaps all I can see …”), his turn to a careerist interpretation of professional purpose (“becoming a successful lawyer”) suggests a narrow conception of civic motivation.

These internal constraints on civic expression were in some cases tied to respondents’ disinterest in politics. Only 14 percent (four of thirty) of the Chinese maps included what I coded as political terminology. These roles were labeled party member, feminist (twice), and contributor (from Hu’s map in Figure 3). While they did not generally identify with political roles, the Chinese respondents did tend to identify with the positive (but moderate) political significance of their work as corporate lawyers. In the US sample, political terminology was much more common under labels such as “Democrat,” “Republican,” “politics,” “activist,” and “social justice.”Footnote ² The US respondents generally reported that their political identities found little expression in corporate law practice. In contrast, the Chinese respondents generally reported finding satisfactory expression of their moderate political goals.

The relative unimportance of politics in the Chinese sample is reflected in Qian’s identity map, shown in Figure 4. Although Qian is one of the few respondents to report party membership, she located the “Party member” role on the periphery of her identity map. Qian estimated that there were only ten party members in her firm’s office of roughly one hundred lawyers. When asked to explain this lack of party engagement, Qian noted: “Young people are not very interested in joining the Party. Law firms do not care about [party membership]. … You have to pay the fee, just a few RMB to join meetings [of the firm’s party cell].” Another respondent explained: “Party members are all technically included in the Party cell, but you are allowed to not disclose that you are a Party member so that you do not have to pay the fee.” Furthermore, no respondents mentioned membership in a CCP youth league (), whose more than one hundred million members range from the ages of fourteen to twenty-eight. Just as Chinese respondents generally did not prioritize involvement with the CCP, they also expressed little interest in strong anti-establishment politics (or at least they did not share such views in the interviews).

Figure 4.

Chinese identity map: Qian.

In sum, respondents in the Chinese sample seemed committed to an affirmative, pragmatic account of civic professionalism. They emphasized their roles as public contributors who serve clients ethically, provide pro bono service, and advance the development of the economy and moderate improvements in the legal system. These contributions were consistently framed in state-aligned terms without liberal connotations of promoting democratic reforms, professional independence, and moderating state power. While these respondents described an unexpected sense of civic purpose in their careers, they did not appear to struggle against external constraints on the expression of these civic ideals in practice. Instead, they reported centrally integrated and stable professional selves.