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Most Beijingers Go to Court Without Lawyer
Despite Beijingers' increasing awareness of the law, most of them still choose to go to court without a legal counsel, statistics from the Beijing Higher People's Court said.
In 1999, only 40,000 out of 200,000-odd lawsuits involved lawyers, which means that 80 percent of Beijingers prefer to standing their lawsuits alone, court officials said.
Rather than the scarcity of lawyer in Beijing, a city possessing a modest pool of over 3,800 registered lawyers, the phenomenon results from Beijingers' deficient knowledge of the importance of lawyer and their worry about the possible big cost of a lawyer, experts said.
As a result of legal reform, Chinese court judges no longer act as interrogators and investigators, and all these work is left to attorneys of parties involved.
These changes will make the role of lawyer more important, because non-professionals are hardly knowledgeable enough to win their cases without the help of legal counsel.
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