The number of lawyers in China is growing by more than 10% per year, but the caseload has even experienced negative growth.
Since 2017, China’s Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has released an “Annual Statistical Analysis of Lawyers and Grassroots Legal Service Work”(年度律师、基层法律服务工作统计分析) every year.
In July 2023, MOJ released the “2022 Annual Statistical Analysis of Lawyers and Grassroots Legal Service Work”.
We analyzed the data for the past five years to get an overview of China’s legal profession.
The data shows that by the end of 2022, there were more than 651,600 practicing lawyers in China, an increase of 76,800 over that in 2021, or over 13%.
Over the past five years, the number of lawyers in China has continued to grow, with an annual growth rate of more than 10% and accelerating.
However, despite the continuous growth in the number of lawyers, the total number of cases handled nationwide is slowing down, with a negative growth rate in 2022. As a result, China's legal services market seems increasingly oversupplied.
|
Year |
Number of lawyers |
Increase in the number of lawyers |
Number of cases |
Increase in the number of cases |
|
2022 |
651,600 |
13.36% |
12,744,000 |
-2.61% |
|
2021 |
574,800 |
10.11% |
13,085,000 |
17.41% |
|
2020 |
522,000 |
10.36% |
11,145,000 |
-0.4% |
|
2019 |
473,000 |
11.82% |
11,190,000 |
4.78% |
|
2018 |
423,000 |
15.89% |
10,680,000 |
|
|
2017 |
365,000 |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
Photo by zhang kaiyv on Unsplash
Contributors: CJO Staff Contributors Team
