Beijing recruited 17 such lawyers to its legal aid centers in January, joining a number of Chinese cities and provinces, including South China's Guangdong Province, which has spearheaded China's opening up, to employ government lawyers to provide free-of-charge services to poorer people.

"Government lawyers have the edge in that they have both the professional proficiency and the status as part of the government, this improves coordination with departments related to some cases," Zhou Xin, vice-director-general of the Beijing Judicial Bureau, told China Daily.

However, Zhou stressed that their special status would not be a barrier to government lawyers striving to uphold justice for their clients in cases against government departments.

"It is the most fundamental requirement for lawyers, government lawyers included, that they should uphold judicial fairness," said Zhou. "Government lawyers are willing to help related departments correct their errors."

According to sources with the Chinese Ministry of Justice, a lawyer's qualification is the basic criterion to become a government lawyer.

They are paid by the government and are barred from doing other work or charging clients for their services.

Different from the practice in Beijing, government judges in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, set up their own special law firms last December. They are engaged in legal consultation for both the local government and the legal aid service.

Though still a pilot scheme, the emergence of government lawyers in the legal aid service has been backed by the Ministry of Justice.

Deng Jiaming, director of the Legal Aid Center under the Ministry of Justice, told China Daily that his center is closely monitoring the business of the government lawyers and studying the trend before deciding if the practice will be applied nationwide.

The government lawyers pilot scheme started in the mid-1990s in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai when some municipal departments recruited qualified lawyers to be their full-time legal consultants.

The nation's legal aid system was established in the mid-1990s. According to China's Law on Lawyers, practicing lawyers are obliged to handle legal aid cases.

"With further reform and opening-up, more people are encountering legal problems in their lives," said Zhou. "The issues they may face are complicated, and require professional help."

There are still only a relatively small number of government lawyers, focusing mainly on daily consultation, the handling of important cases and the supervision of legal-aid cases being handled by colleagues outside legal aid centers, according to Li Shenhong, director of the Legal Aid Supervising Section under the Beijing Judicial Bureau.

"Specialization is also our goal so that government lawyers can provide more authoritative services in their specialized areas and reduce their costs," said Li.

(China Daily February 18, 2003)