28 ASIAN LEGAL BUSINESS CHINA • 亚洲法律杂志-中国版 AUGUST 2024 COVER STORY choice lawyers need to go beyond simple analysis of legal provisions to provide clients with strategic guidance and risk management. Second is the ability to respond quickly and provide clients with timely legal support at critical moments.” “Third is the ability to have an indepth understanding of client needs. Lawyers need to customize solutions to meet client needs through in-depth communication. The last point is the building of a professional team, which is about establishing and managing a team that can handle cases efficiently.” According to Xue, high-quality legal services should have three elements: timeliness, accuracy, and effectiveness. “Timeliness is an important part of legal services. In a rapidly changing business environment, time is money and efficiency is life. Lawyers must be able to respond swiftly to client needs, provide efficient and fast responses, and offer legal opinions and solutions in a timely manner to help clients seize business opportunities and avoid losses. Only in this way can clients fully trust lawyers and be willing to give more legal matters to lawyers.” “Second, accuracy is the foundation for legal services to realize their value. Lawyers must make accurate judgment and in-depth analysis of legal issues to ensure that the legal opinions and solutions provided to clients are feasible and in compliance with laws and regulations. Any errors or deviations made by lawyers in their judgment will cause immeasurable losses to clients. Therefore, accuracy is a direct reflection of a lawyer’s professional competency and an important criterion for clients in choosing lawyers.” “Third, the effectiveness of solutions is key to legal services. Lawyers must be able to not only accurately assess legal issues, but also provide clients with practical solutions to maximize their interests. This requires lawyers to not only have solid legal skills and rich practical experience, but also keen market insight and business acumen, to be able to tailor legal service solutions for clients,” adds Xue. while service spirit means being prudent and meticulous. “Professional competency is not just about applying the law in a case, such as litigation ideas and the choice of litigation strategies. It is also about how to make judges and clients understand and agree with your points and arguments. The logic behind service spirit is that lawyers must be able to communicate, including what to communicate, whether the key points of communication are centered around the needs of clients, and how frequent to communicate. The two aspects complement each other. Lawyers rely on professional competency to gain client trust, while service spirit is backed by sufficiently solid legal knowledge and skills,” says Fang. Therefore, in Fang’s opinion, “lawyers who are professionally competent but not good at service have low customer stickiness. This is because the lawyer-client relationship is also a relationship between people which follows the basic rules of interaction. A lawyer who does not speak or communicate well will also make clients doubt his/ her professionalism. On the other hand, a lawyer who only provides services but is not professionally competent cannot withstand scrutiny, gain the trust of clients, and reflect the value of the legal profession”. Professional competency and service spirit are thus mutually complementary and reinforcing each other. In practice, lawyers need to balance the two, ensuring they can provide clients with due care and feedback while providing professional legal services. This balance helps build client trust, improve the overall quality of legal services, and achieve better results of representation and advisory. PREFERRED TRAITS Speaking of the traits of lawyers who have become “client choice”, the experts point to the importance of legal professionalism. Luo believes that it is particularly important for lawyers to have the following traits when providing legal services for clients. “First is the ability to offer comprehensive solutions. Client LI XUENING 黎学宁 Zhonglun W&D Law Firm 中伦文德律师事务所 LI YIXING 李怡星 Tian Yuan Law Firm 天元律师事务所 LIU MING 刘铭 King & Capital Law Firm 京都律师事务所 LU XIANG 陆翔 Global Law Office 环球律师事务所 STEPHEN LUO 骆嘉昀 Jingtian & Gongcheng 竞天公诚律师事务所 LV YOUCHEN 吕友臣 DeHeng Law Offices 德恒律师事务所 MA YUANRONG 马媛容 V&T Law Firm 万商天勤律师事务所
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