21 ASIAN LEGAL BUSINESS CHINA • 亚洲法律杂志-中国版 WWW.LEGALBUSINESSONLINE.COM/CHINA reinforce the independence of securities lawyers.” Zhang tells ALB that Grandway has always focused on capital markets as its core practice and has established clear management systems in areas such as practice management, conflict of interest, project management and archives management. For securities legal services in particular, the firm established a nearly “ruthless” internal review mechanism as early as in the 1990s. Given the new trend of tightening regulations, Grandway is also “working to continuously reinforce internal selfinspection and self-correction, refine work guidelines, standardize legal documentation templates, and improve other optimization mechanisms to further raise the quality and efficiency of securities legal services, and prevent and control risks of such services.” DEALING WITH ANXIETY Amid rapid changes in capital markets services since the beginning of this year, Xu has also observed something else. “In the past few years, the capital markets practice has been very popular among young lawyers. With increasing regulatory requirements and intensifying practice challenges, we have felt a certain degree of anxiety among the profession.” “For example, in the resumes we have recently received, many law school graduates state straightaway that they are not interested in capital market practice. This is because news has been spreading in law schools that securities practice is hard, with very frequent business trips, endless paperwork and higher regulatory pressure, making it unattractive among young lawyers.” Xu thinks this is all very normal. “In recent years, the securities industry has enjoyed extremely rapid and booming development. As a result, investment banks and law firms have attracted a large number of young people. For example, the investment banking department of a securities firm, which used to have one or two hundred people, has now expanded to one or two thousand people. Changes in the IPO market will definitely lead to a process of adjustment, and those who are unable to adapt to the changes may voluntarily exit the market. All of these are normal.” During recent exchanges, Xu has repeatedly relayed several key thoughts to young lawyers. “First, securities legal practice will always be a major practice area with long-term prospect. This is because turning to the capital market is inevitable during the growth of a top enterprise. For lawyers, this means there will always be room for imagination in this securities market. Moreover, securities legal services impose higher requirements on lawyers, which can help them achieve personal development and become better and better.” “Second, in the current market climate, it is all the more important for lawyers to build up capacity, search for new business highlights in the industry, and serve the entire lifecycle of listed companies. Young lawyers with very good CAPITAL MARKETS industry competency can still provide valuable services for clients.” “Therefore, young people should change their mindset to build up better legal services capabilities. They cannot just work to ‘put icing on the cake’ while being unable to ‘send in the calvary’. Capital markets legal services need to match the entire lifecycle of enterprises and should be diverse, comprehensive and integrated. Our young lawyers still feel confident after listening to these thoughts,” says Xu. DIVERSIFICATION CRITICAL Recent economic fluctuations have also made firms and lawyers, especially securities practitioners, realize that “merely focusing on a single practice area has a negative impact on a firm’s stable revenue generation and long-term development, so business diversification will definitely be the future trend,” says Zhang. However, diversification does not necessarily mean blindly expanding the size of the firm. “The core of business diversification is based on changes in client needs. It is necessary to start from the actual situations of the firm and form ‘tailored diversification of leading practice areas’. Only by doing so can the firm have a strategic direction for longer-term growth.” According to Zhang, “after years of service and word-of-mouth reputation, Grandway has earned a high degree of trust from hundreds of listed company clients. Clients also need more comprehensive and multi-level professional legal services. Guided by client needs, we have introduced and nurtured mature and specialized lawyers and teams in dispute resolution, intellectual property, real estate and construction engineering, compliance, taxation, and other capital markets-related fields.” Zhang shares that in the first half of 2023, Grandway continued to integrate quality professional strength and resources, and established five major practice groups and three major industry research committees, so that “we divide work while cooperating and coordinating with each other, to effectively promote synergy between diversified practice areas and the capital markets practice.” “The registration-based IPO reform is to hand over the right of choice to the market. Therefore, the new system has raised higher requirements on the professional competency and practice quality of IPO lawyers.” — Zhang Liguo, Grandway Law Offices “全面注册制改革把选择权交给市场， 对IPO律师的业务水平和执业质量提 出更高要求，执业风险也相应扩大。” — 张利国，国枫律师事务所
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