Our Lawyers Fee System Research

Legal service charge, as a by-product in the development of the democratic and legal construction in our country, has become one of the important contents in our legal service system. Since the democratic and legal construction in our country sometimes experienced twists and turns for a rather long time in the past, lawyer as a free and intermediate occupation could not earn the full acceptance of the society and the legal service charge was in a very unreasonable condition due to government's direct intervention. Today there are still some vestiges of the past in the legal service market.It has become more urgent than ever to reform our legal service charge system. The focus of this problem is how to put the legal service charge in the normalized condition through law in light of the new trends at home and abroad, which will determine whether our legal service can meet the demands of the development of our times and win a favorable development space.It is common knowledge that in the practice whether the legal service charge is high or low, reasonable or unreasonable is not just an economic problem. It in reality reflects social value of the legal service offered by the lawyer. However, along with the development of economy and society and putting into effect of the general plan "rule the country by law", the objective conditions and possibilities have undertaken a great change, which makes the restriction of legal service charge at low level through government's intervention more and more absurd, because this unreasonable restriction denies the freedom, independence and intermediate characteristics of the legal service and is destined to thwart the vigor and creativity of lawyers, hence the development of their professional skill and service level. Therefore, when we consider the reform of the legal service charge system, the guideline should be to show the social value of the legal service scientifically and reasonably. In view of the regional difference in the social development level of our country and the difference of the quality among the lawyers, we should avoid the rigid uniformity adopted in the past when making laws concerning legal service. In this regard the central government should lay down some elastic policy and the regional people's congress can make law according to this policy as well as its own social development condition. The bar association instead of the judicial administration should hold the responsibility for enactment and supervision of the law. In the practice it is proved that the rigid uniformity can not be put into effect in reality and will cause many problems, the unavoidable result of which is that each region does what it thinks is right.In view of those above, I try to make some suggestion in regard to the reform of legal service system based on the evolution of the legal service charge system at home and abroad.