On The Embedded Value Of Lawyer Culture In Rule Of Law Culture

As the main body in a business and functioning legal system, lawyerconstitutes an important part in the rule of law culture. Over the years,lawyers played outstanding role in some socially concerned cases, whichalso inspired some discussions on the lawyers’ occupational quality andsocial value. Facing these questions, we need to point out the positivefactors in the culture of lawyer system, while recognizing the negativefactors, so as to make some improvements on the lawyers’ role inpromoting cultural development. Lawyer culture means that as a type ofprofessionals, the system characteristics embodied by lawyer when itslegal activities in different stage of legal development history and itscorresponding reflection in the social life. The lawyer culture is partand an important component of the culture of the law rule and the cultureof law rule shall profoundly affect the lawyer culture. Lawyer culturea characteristic branch of culture of the law rule. The innovation ofthis dissertation lies in that the author treats the lawyer culture aspart of the culture of law rule and conducts observation and researchfrom holistic perspective using legal sociology.Lawyer as a professional class of legal history can be traced back to2000years ago. With a high degree of development, the ancient Greeklawyer culture was widely recognized as judicial Art, and the Romanjurists won and honorable reputation. World lawyer system has differentcultural expressions: the British lawyer system is the world’s oldestand is also unique system which focuses on classification system of thebarrister and solicitor. America has the world’s most developed lawyerculture whose lawyer cultural characteristics can be summarized asfollows: a large number of lawyers appear in court involved in wide rangeof cases, fine division of labor and more business atmosphere. The Frenchlawyer culture boils down to be linked to the spirit of freedom. Frenchlawyer’s status is much higher than any other legal profession, and isable to win the respect of society. The German lawyers enjoy a relativelylow position in the legal profession, whose business activities can becompared to the civil service and featured by unique style of rigid,strict and compliance, and there was relatively less negative socialevaluation. While in China, as early as in the late Qing dynasty thelawyer emerged in the form of consular jurisdiction, and the lawyersystem also was set forth in the Ding Dynasty Criminal&Civil ProceduralLaw. During the Republic of China period, the lawyer as a profession hasfully developed. New China lawyer system, although experienced twistsand turns, has been fully developed since reform and opening up.Lawyer enjoys a higher social status in the present stage of Chinesesociety as a free form of career. In the process of legal relation, thelawyer provides legal assistance to the litigant mainly throughservice-cored work, which decided his workplace, work pattern, workattitude and work style. Different from the judges and prosecutors whohave decisive powers, the lawyer has no power of decision, only influence.The lawyer has to make every effort to influence the judges and theprosecutors to fight for the best interests for the litigant. The lawyer also constitutes an active group in the state political system.The law firms have their offices in the commercial buildings, whichin itself indicate a cultural awareness. The specifications, grade anddecoration style of the office space also display the credibility of theoperational strength of the law firms, which also help classify thelawyer into different level, business types and customer bases. Hardwareand equipments of the law firm venues, as well as the personal clothingof the individual lawyers constitute the symbol expression of the lawyerculture. As part of the service industry, the fee system of the lawyeris closely linked with its professional characteristics. In the serviceindustry, the lawyers enjoy a relatively higher income making them ahigh-income group in the society.The legal profession is a special type in the modern service industry,and individualization is the most prominent cultural identity, The Actof Lawyer also allows individuals to create individual law firms. Caseundertaking, agent identity, court proceedings are all characterizedwith individualization, which decide the lawyers individual cultivation,cultural connotation, legal background, professionalism, character andmorality are important factors to conduct business activities.The business scope of the lawyer profession is increasingly extendingand gradually subdivided into different specialties, where every lawyerhas its own main professional areas, and each law firm also tend to havetheir own professional specialty. More than frequently, the professionalspecialties are closely related to the professionalism of the lawyer.The professional specialty constitutes the external brand while theprofessionalism the inner quality. Every lawyer selects a professionaldirection and make known to its clients. However, the level of theprofessional specialty in certain areas is determined by the lawyer’sinner quality. The lawyer’s working style can be divided into general working styleand individual working style. The general working style is closelyrelated to the basic requirement of the lawyer profession andstandardized by the basic conduct of the same industry. While theindividual working style is the behavior of the individualcharacteristics resulted from individual personality differences. Itshould be said that the lawyer with distinctive personal style in thejudicial practice always leaves good expressions on the litigant and thejudges. Reputation and fame are the "soft power" of a law firm, whichoften combined with its professional expertise.The job character of the lawyer determines that he has to carry outjudicial practice through“negotiating”approach in the legal relation.The lawyer firstly has to deal with the litigant and the trustee. Whenundertaking the case, he has to deal with more juridical personality,which helps form a cultural circle, and the lawyer will receivecorresponding comments. Insiders’ exchanges will have an importantimpact on the lawyer shaping the culture image. Such exchanges includebenign interaction between lawyers, also the contradictions and disputesbetween the lawyers, both of which are the true reflection of the culturalphenomenon of the legal practitioners. As to the legal businessactivities, every type of cultural phenomenon is the combinationindividualization and team. Lawyer teamwork and interaction betweencounterparts have become a necessity. In addition to the individualityin doing business, as the lawyer business is increasingly spreading andcomplex, working pattern need teamwork emerged and indicate the futurelawyer profession development direction. As to the socially“complicated legal case”, the lawyer will express their voice throughmedia and other corresponding appropriate platform and achieve aconsensus through exchange of controversy. The lawyer business has been fully market-oriented, so the lawyer hasto face tight competition when conducting legal practice. Viciouscompetition is widely witnessed in developing the lawyer business, while,competition requires, of course, the strength first of all and thebusiness capacity and social relations constitute the“soft”and“hard”power for the lawyer to carry out business completion. However, in thejudicial activities, the lawyer has not power of decision but theinfluence, so it is difficult for the lawyer to display his/her businesscapacity. Therefore, the social relations play an essential role in carryout business competition. Business competition, of course, depends onthe operational capacity, which may display through official or privateassessment activities, media advocacy, counterparts evaluation,word-of-mouth introduction of the litigant and other means. Theoperational capacity is a soft target, which is difficult to measure,which contributes to the depreciation between the lawyers because ofbusiness competition, causing a serious negative impact. The lawyer hasan indispensable role in the society, and in many cases, people may needthe help of the lawyer and his/her professional skills to make up theirdeficiencies in personal capacity. With the development of society,people need the help of lawyer in more occasions, and thus generate theperception and impression on the entire legal community. Because of thepersonal preference and one-sidedness on such perception and impressionon the legal community, people may have good impression with lawyer andadmire the lawyer, but also cannot help being secretly jealous of thelawyer. When being “swindle” money by a lawyer, he may have badimpressions on the entire lawyer community. The evildoings of lawyer inlegal relations mainly include evil mind, rapacity, being against one’sconscience and cruelty. The most recent cases involved disciplinaryoffences of the lawyer mainly include illegally undertaking and fees-charging, conflicts of interest, illegally seek for and harm theinterests of the litigants. Lawyers, as free community legal persons,realizing their own interests, should play their due role in theconstruction and development of the rule of law in society, which isrequired for the design of the social system. In general, as for thelawyer community in China, the vast majority of lawyers are quite goodin the moral literacy, and some lawyers are capable of adhering to thesocialist concept of rule of law, honesty and trustworthiness, diligence,with a higher level of legal literacy, while boasting a strong sense ofsocial responsibility.As a subsystem of the judicial culture or legal culture, the lawyerculture has its own unique attributes, including position, sharpness,independence, pragmatism, and socialityThe working process of the lawyer is a process to exert influence,and all the lawyer has to do is to provide legal evidences and opinionsfor others (judges, project managers or the litigants) to make decisions.The cultural connotation of the lawyer profession refers to the influenceand achieves its goals to influence the judge’s decision-making throughvarious documents, means, approaches, contexts and resources. In thelitigation activities, such means and approaches to achieve theinfluence mainly take the form of persuasion and justification. In orderto influence the judges, the lawyer has to use other relevant resourcesincluding successful judicial precedent cases, public opinion,psychological preferences of the judges, the lawyer’s own personalcharisma and so on. In addition to citing similar precedent cases, thelawyer has to try hard to realize the consistency of the judges’understanding of the facts and the laws so as to influence the judges’court decision. And the lawyer also has to make use of relevant socialsources to influence the judges’ thinking process. The social resources include the media public opinion, social effects, and moral evaluation,etc. The lawyer’s influences in the entire legal process can be dividedinto legitimate and non-legitimate influence.Judging from the perspective of the means and nature of carrying outlegal service, it is likely that the lawyer profession business will havereverse culture accumulation. In order to create and advocate good lawyerculture, we have to establish and cultivate excellent atmosphere andcarry forward the spirit of the integrity of the legal connotation. Thelawyers have to understand and touch more legal fields and expertise thanthe judges and keep following up the latest legal development trends,cultivate a spirit of keeping learning and thinking, and develop thesensitivity on the emerging legal issues. Keeping learning and thinkingwith the courage to bring forth new ideas shall become anothercharacteristic of the culture of lawyers, objectively promoting thedevelopment and improvement of the law.The nature and status of the lawyer profession decide that the lawyermay be in the forefront of social contradictions. At present most socialcontradictions are involved with legal matters. At the very beginningof such social contradictions, people tend to consult the lawyers to seeklegal assistance. However, due to the deficiencies or limitations of thelegal system, some of these social contradictions may fail to be solvedand the lawyer pay limited role in the solving process. Also in some cases,the vulnerable groups may be at loss on how to seek legal assistance,or due to the legal assistance is incomplete, the social contradictionsmay be intensified, while in other cases, the social contradictions maynot be properly resolved due to the poor service of the lawyers. It isrequired to cultivate public spiritedness and value outlook with a senseof responsibility and justice in the construction of lawyer culture. Inthe market economy, the lawyers also plays a role not to be underestimated, and the lawyer cultural value is promoting the formal, steady, positive,orderly and legitimate development of the market economy. As to thedevelopment and cultivation of the civil society, the market economy isa fundamental condition, and the independency, freedom and rule of lawin the lawyer culture shall equally contribute to the formation anddevelopment of civil society.