A series of regulations will give China's legal profession momentum to continue the progress it has made over the past 20 years. Wu Mingde, secretary general of the All-China Lawyers Association, told China Daily that the association and the Ministry of Justice are drafting new rules and amending existing rules to govern this fledgling profession in China. And suggestions for change are now being taken, ministry sources said.

The ministry and the association wrote or revised about 20 regulations last year, Wu noted.

"We hope that one or two years of efforts will provide us with a set of regulations binding not only lawyers' professional conduct but also their ethics," said Wu.

The legal profession was restored in China after the "cultural revolution" (1966-1976). In the past two decades, the nation's 212 lawyers with 79 law firms have expanded to more than 110,000 with 9,000 firms. Many now work with banking, securities and real estate.

And those firms have evolved from State-owned only to State-financed firms, co-operatives and partnerships.

But the government's administration of the profession lags behind its development.

Lately the public has complained about lawyers' professional skills and their ethics.

"Over the past years, we have issued more than 80 regulations on the profession," said Wu. "But most of them need amending according to the changed conditions."

Regulations due soon will cover civil and economic cases, lawyers' participation in arbitration and the government's supervision of lawyers' professional skills.

Rules on how attorneys handle finance and securities cases and aid real estate transactions are also on the agenda.

A catalyst for the new rules will be an amendment of the Lawyers Law, which was issued in 1994.

"The clauses in the Lawyers Law are mostly about principles, and the related regulations follow suit," said Wu. "When the law is amended, it should be more feasible to enforce."

The princi gples guiding lawyers themselves will also receive great attention as changes are discussed.

"There are loopholes in the existing system, which have admitted some morally unqualified people into the contingent of lawyers," said Wu.

He said requirements for entering the profession should be more strict and that lawyers who act unethically must be punished.