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China Sets up Comprehensive Grassroots Legal Service Framework
Of all the counties and county- level districts across China, 2,640, or 93 percent, now have government judicial departments for the promotion of legal services, the Ministry of Justice said Wednesday.
In a press release, the ministry said that the country's grassroots legal service framework is comprehensive, and is playing an important role in maintaining social stability and social order.
The services of the judicial administrative bodies now have been extended to towns and villages.
According to statistics, in the 2,640 county-level judicial administrative bodies nationwide, there are more than 3,000 law firms, 2,793 notary offices, and one million legal mediation centers.
A total of 10 million legal mediators have handled 130 million civil disputes over the past 20 years, preventing these disputes from escalating into criminal cases, the ministry said.
To improve the services of grassroots legal professionals and government bodies, the ministry has issued regulations on the operations of government-funded grassroots legal service agencies, and on the qualifications for their employees.
The ministry will hold the first national examination of the professional qualifications of lawyers and others who work for these agencies.
Grassroots legal service agencies are operated by judicial departments across the country to provide both paid and free legal services to the public, including legal aid for the poor.
There are 119,000 legal service workers in 35,000 grassroots agencies located in 74 percent of the country's rural towns and in neighborhood communities in cities. In 1999, these people served as regular legal consultants for 400,000 enterprises, institutions, and individuals.
According to statistics from the ministry, last year, these legal service workers handled 1.86 million cases, mediated in 1.06 million disputes, notarized 2.75 million legal documents, provided legal consultations to 11.83 million, and avoided or recovered economic losses of 14 billion yuan for the parties involved.
The ministry has mapped out rules for the establishment, operating mechanism, and management of grassroots legal service agencies, and qualifications for legal service workers, their rights and responsibilities, as well as methods of management and supervision of their work.
To maintain social justice, the ministry has said that special centers for legal aid to the poor should be set up in all the provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities by the end of this year, and two-thirds of all counties should be equipped with such centers. In two to three years, each county and town with a People's Court should be accompanied by at least one legal aid center, according to ministerial plan.
Legal service hotlines with the uniform number "148" have been opened across the nation, and their services will be further improved in the years to come, the ministry pledged.
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