On the Professionalism and Marketization of Lawyers

Abstract

New-quality legal technology, represented by artificial intelligence, is bringing a series of transformative changes to the legal profession in knowledge management, organizational models, and business paradigms. The traditional advantageous position of the lawyer profession is receding while a new model of legal services is taking shape. This has sparked intense debate between professionalism and marketization within the legal profession, driven by intensifying involution-type competition among lawyers themselves and market-based competition reinforced by external capital and technology. Through an examination of legal professionalism and marketization, this article argues that the legal profession possesses public service, expertise, and autonomy characteristics, proposes that the legal services market should be a regulated market competition, and clarifies that professionalism and marketization are not mutually exclusive oppositional concepts but rather complementary relationships characterized by dynamic balance and integrated development.

Wang Zheng, Doctor of Law, China University of Political Science and Law; Director, Zhejiang Taihang Law Firm; President, Zhejiang Zhonghe Legal Technology Intelligence Research Institute.

Keywords: Lawyer; Professionalism; Marketization; Legal Technology

Professionalism and marketization constitute two crucial dimensions for understanding the characteristics of the legal profession. As the rise of capital and technology challenges traditional theories of legal professionalism, lawyers widely feel that their lofty professional ideals have been torn to shreds by harsh reality. Should the legal profession steadfastly uphold its professionalism or embrace the market? How to balance these two aspects has become a profound issue that the legal community must deeply contemplate.

I. Are Lawyers Merchants?

Lawyers, doctors, and teachers have been regarded as professions rather than "hired labor" activities since their inception.¹ Max Weber further pointed out that the independent "practice" of doctors, lawyers, or artists represents autonomous professional specialization.² The professionalism of lawyers encompasses three core elements: public service, expertise, and autonomy.³

From the perspective of public service, the legal profession is characterized by its core mission of public welfare, with justice and public well-being as its ultimate goals.⁴ Durkheim's sociology of law similarly emphasizes that professionalization should be clearly oriented toward public service, where professionals apply theoretical expertise to practical work to give back to society. Its legitimacy derives from society's grant of control authority to the professional community, and legal professional groups with certain political functions are organizations explicitly empowered by law, thus introducing the concept of "social intermediary organizations."⁵ In other words, law firms are "organizations" rather than "companies," possessing political functions and public duties rather than being purely commercial service enterprises.

Regarding professional expertise, legal professionals are specialists who meet specific requirements for political quality, professional competence, professional ethics, and qualifications. They constitute a professional group engaged in legislation, law enforcement, adjudication, legal services, and legal education and research. In China, the legal profession specifically refers to the occupational group composed of those who have obtained the national unified legal professional qualification and serve as judges, prosecutors, lawyers, notaries, and legal arbitrators, as well as civil servants in administrative organs engaged in administrative penalty decision review, administrative reconsideration, administrative adjudication, and legal counsel.⁶ The resulting legal professional community forms the cornerstone of national rule-of-law construction, and building an independent, professional, and robust legal professional community represents an inevitable choice for achieving a society governed by law. On December 6, 2021, Xi Jinping emphasized during the 35th collective study session of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee that political guidance for lawyers must be strengthened to educate and guide them to consciously uphold the basic requirements of supporting the leadership of the Communist Party of China and China's socialist rule of law, striving to be good lawyers satisfactory to both the Party and the people.⁷ Therefore, whether it is the legal professional qualification examination for market access, the internship assessment for lawyer practice, the annual evaluation of lawyer competency, or the annual inspection of law firms, as well as the requirements of Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law for the legal profession—all serve to maintain and emphasize the professional expertise of lawyers.

Concerning professional autonomy, the core of enabling ideal professional group functions lies in the group's self-governance, also referred to as co-governance. Lawyers exercise self-management and supervision through professional associations to ensure compliance with industry standards and professional ethics. China's lawyer associations are autonomous organizations granted to the legal profession by law, serving as industry bodies that protect professional rights and implement self-regulation. Since the restoration of the lawyer system in 1979, the legal profession has evolved from state legal workers without autonomous rights to legal service providers with limited autonomy, and now to a model combining judicial administrative guidance with industry self-discipline. The autonomy of the legal profession continues to evolve, representing its ultimate pursuit. Professional autonomy is founded on independence, with expertise and social service as its core functions, and professional independence also forms the basis for legal ethics and practice rights protection. Consequently, the autonomy and independence of the legal profession represent important distinguishing features from legal consulting firms that possess only market attributes without professionalism.

In summary, the core elements of legal professionalism include public service, expertise, autonomy, and independence. These professional characteristics serve as criteria for distinguishing lawyers from non-lawyers, as value judgment guidelines for resolving conflicts among social public interests, client interests, and lawyers' self-interests, and as the theoretical foundation for lawyers to differentiate themselves from other legal service providers and realize their social value. Therefore, legal professionalism provides the best answer to the question, "Are lawyers merchants?"

References

1. Huang Meiling, "How Lawyers Become Professionalized: An Analysis Based on Ancient Greek and Roman Historical Texts," Jurist, 2017, Issue 3.

2. [Germany] Max Weber, Economy and Society, translated by Yan Kewen, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2019, p. 159.

3. Sun Boyang, "Promoting High-Quality Development of the Lawyer Profession Through Political Guidance," Ministry of Justice Official Website, https://www.moj.gov.cn/pub/sfbgw/zwgkztzl/xxxcgcxjpfzsx/fzsxllqy/202204/t20220429_453992.html, last accessed September 2, 2025.

II. Legal Services as Regulated Market Competition

The marketization of the legal profession is not entirely incompatible with its social responsibility; their contradictions can be reconciled. The commercialization of the legal profession itself is not inherently problematic, as it is rooted in social practice and influenced by external environments. However, such commercialization must remain within certain limits, as excessive commercialization hinders the fulfillment of lawyers' social responsibilities, creating an urgent need to find a balance point between social responsibility and commercialization.⁸ In other words, while pursuing commercial interests, lawyers must adhere to professional ethics and avoid harming public interests and social responsibilities through excessive economic pursuit.

From a market risk perspective based on matching authority and responsibility, the marketization of the legal profession also brings commercial risks, including intensified regulation and diversified clients, which may affect lawyers' career development and income stability. External regulatory bodies are gradually increasing disciplinary actions against the legal profession. Law firms face not only significant tax risks but also compliance considerations from regulatory authorities such as the China Securities Regulatory Commission. When law firms face hefty fines or industry bans, partners must not only bear economic responsibilities according to law but also witness the collective departure of partner teams and business contraction. While online marketing firms generate substantial profits, they also attract numerous complaints, triggering industry disciplinary actions. The practice risks arising from these excessively marketized professional behaviors are fermenting. Unregulated marketization leads not only to disciplinary actions against violators but also to the loss of public trust in the legal profession.

From a cost-benefit perspective, economists argue that law firms, like all economic entities, are driven by self-interest. The legal profession must generate income through providing legal services to sustain operations and development, with profit as its goal. Second, as market entities with tax obligations, law firms must pay taxes according to law, even though current tax policies are unfriendly due to their lack of corporate status. Finally, law firms must focus on costs and benefits, as no partner is willing or able to sustain losses long-term. This profit motive drives law firms to continuously update office spaces, software, and hardware facilities to enhance service quality and efficiency for recruiting lawyers and attracting clients.

From an internationalization perspective, foreign-related legal services constitute an important component of the socialist rule-of-law system with Chinese characteristics. Cultivating world-class law firms aims to enhance China's discourse power and rule-making capabilities in global legal affairs. This initiative seeks to provide high-quality legal protection for Chinese enterprises and citizens "going global" and safeguard national overseas interests. For China's legal industry to truly integrate into the international legal services market, it must strengthen its own construction and enhance international competitiveness to meet opportunities and challenges, all of which require participation in global legal services market competition. For example, under the UK's 2007 Legal Services Act, non-lawyers are permitted to own business units providing legal services in England and Wales. Law firms without marketization genes would clearly struggle to adapt to international legal services market competition. To grow into world-class law firms and enhance Chinese lawyers' international discourse power, law firms must strengthen their commercial attributes to match the foreign-related legal services needs of Chinese enterprises and citizens, as foreign-related legal services are not a narrow market limited to litigation representation and legal counsel but a broad legal services market encompassing business, finance, taxation, and law.

In summary, based on stakeholder theory and sociology of law, fierce "involution-type" market competition is forcing the legal profession to accelerate marketization. However, the legal profession must necessarily be a regulated market competition behavior that follows professional conduct norms. Only by adopting marketization measures such as expanding the legal services market, improving service methods, and enhancing service quality can the profession adapt to increasingly stringent regulated market competition measures and promote the modernization of the legal profession.

References

1. Gu Cunhan, "On the Commercialization Trend of the Lawyer Profession," Legal System and Society, 2011, Issue 27.

III. How to Balance Professionalism and Marketization

The competitive relationship between legal professionalism and marketization finds its most objective and authentic expression in legal services bidding markets. Achieving a win-win situation for lawyers' economic and social values, resisting involution-type competition, and forming a healthy ecosystem of fair competition requires all participants to improve market factor resource allocation. Particularly, law firms and professional associations must balance the relationship between professionalism and marketization to deepen reforms for high-quality development of the legal profession.

From an internal market perspective, industry self-regulation rules already permit lawyers and law firms to conduct advertising and marketing while following certain codes of conduct.⁹ With the development of the live-streaming industry, new marketing models such as influencer lawyers and online promotion firms have emerged endlessly, with capital control over law firms even causing continuous public opinion incidents. Consequently, how to balance professionalism and marketization within the legal profession has become a hot-button issue. First, law firms are partnership organizations built on a foundation of human collaboration. Management must convince partners that law firms are not merely profit-generating tools but also uphold important non-financial professional ideals, enabling partners to practice according to professional ideals. Once this challenge is addressed, it can create stronger firm-specific capital—the core bond between partners and the firm—because it is based on financial and non-financial returns that only the firm can provide, rather than the type of capital obtainable from purely market-based entities like legal consulting firms. Therefore, the market value and professional value of law can be either complementary or oppositional, and each law firm must resolve this dynamic in its own way, considering how to achieve balance under its specific circumstances.¹⁰ Second, law firms should strengthen capital power. Although they cannot introduce capital investment for partners, they can address capital shortages through alternative paths. For example, they can transform organizational forms through internal partner capital, shifting from traditional pyramid, rocket, or diamond-shaped partner structures to flat partner mechanisms.¹¹ Another example involves integrating small law firms with fewer than 20 lawyers through "vertical and horizontal alliances" to achieve scale and become hundred-person firms. Naturally, we look forward to judicial administrative organs referencing pilot reform experiences from Shanghai and Hainan to break through partner qualification restrictions, allowing professional institutions such as finance and audit firms and legal technology companies to become law firm partners, which would bring entirely new capital pathways to China's legal profession. Finally, to resolve the demands of both professionalism and marketization, law firms should emphasize the research and application of legal technology such as legal artificial intelligence. Legal AI is a crucial production factor driving law firm modernization. Whether responding to efficiency demands from low-price competition, meeting diverse client legal service needs, or addressing technological challenges from non-lawyer commercial institutions, law firms can only transform from traditional "handicraft workshop" service models to modern legal service models by embracing legal technology, thereby adapting to the shift from low-frequency, high-consumption legal service markets to inclusive legal service markets. The era of legal technology revolution in legal services has already arrived.

From an external market perspective, lawyers face even greater marketization competition from outside the profession. First, legal consulting firms and legal service companies not subject to industry regulation are springing up everywhere. Despite numerous "solemn statements" issued by local bar associations and even joint "clean-up and rectification" efforts with market supervision departments, these attempts to exclude competition and monopolize the legal services market lack legal basis. However, regulated entities such as banks, state-owned enterprises, and listed companies often require legal service providers to be qualified law firms, though this stems from their own compliance needs rather than conclusions about external market competition. Consequently, the massive non-litigation legal services market will face even more brutal competition. Second, lawyers universally feel increasing external competitive pressure, lower legal fees, and higher professional regulatory requirements. Most law firm partners believe this represents a permanent structural change in the legal services market. Meanwhile, legal technology companies are amplifying this external market competition trend. However, regardless of how fierce external market competition becomes, the essential elements of legal professionalism remain unchanged, and the professional value and ideals of lawyers have not fundamentally shifted. In a mixed-quality legal services market, legal professionalism actually highlights the social value of the legal profession even more. Yet maintaining professional ideals while facing brutal market competition remains a contradiction that is easier said than done. How to balance legal professionalism and marketization is always a challenge that law firm decision-makers cannot avoid.

Therefore, breaking the deadlock and reclaiming the soon-to-be-lost legal services market has become key to balancing professionalism and marketization. Only through reform and innovation can this deadlock be broken. To improve and balance the contradictions between legal professionalism and marketization, three approaches should be adopted: First, establish a business community based on partner co-governance rights, transforming the traditional cost-sharing "cake-dividing" professional model into a "cake-making" market model centered on partner equity. Second, deepen a professional community built on material and non-material incentives, constructing a moat for the legal services market around professional elements such as social service, expertise, autonomy, and independence. Third, innovate modern law firms driven by capital and technology, shifting from traditional human capital-driven professional competition to "capital + technology" market competition. In conclusion, as Stephen Hawking once said, "In my lifetime, I have witnessed profound social changes. The most profound, and the one with increasing impact on humanity, is the rise of artificial intelligence."¹² In the coming decade, the era of legal AI entities will arrive—they will no longer be mere tools and assistants but partners and collaborators for lawyers, and the contradiction between legal professionalism and marketization will achieve dynamic balance and integrated development in the age of legal artificial intelligence!

References

1. Baidu Baike, "All China Lawyers Association Rules on Lawyers' Business Promotion Behavior (Trial)," January 6, 2018, https://baike.baidu.com/item/中华全国律师协会律师业务推广行为规则（试行）/23350760, last accessed July 28, 2025.

2. [USA] Mitt Regan and Lisa Rohrer, Big Law: The Business and Professional Values of Modern Law Firms, translated by Wang Jinxi and Li Hua, Law Press, 2024, pp. 7-9.

3. Wang Zheng, "A Brief Analysis of Law Firm Development Paths and Models," China Rule of Law, 2024, Issue 4.

4. Stephen Hawking's quote appears to be a general reference to his views on AI. The original text does not provide a specific citation source for this quote.