Zhong Lun Law Firm Says: Don’t Ask Me To Pay You, Idiot! Contracts Are For Fools.

Many US law students are contacting me these days for advice about how to get a job and succeed while working at a Chinese Law Firm, like my law firm Zhong Lun. A few of them already work as interns in Chinese law firms. Here is my advice to this crowd based on my experience working here at Zhong Lun:

Good luck, buddy.
Dont assume that Chinese lawyers will help you, especially if they don’t pay you now. I find that they are mostly dishonest and completely inconsiderate of the well-being of others. If anything, my advice would be for you to make contact with another firm, then steal as much client info from your current firm as you can so you can have something useful to provide to the new firm.

I have now seen how Zhong Lun purposefully cheats people, including its own employees. The reason the firm does this is primarily since they want to make as much money as they can. But, that is not different than what foreign attorney are trying to do, but they don’t hurt people like Zhong Lun does.

The difference is that it is impossible to enforce a contract against Zhong Lun, especially if you are foreign employee or client. And, my experience working with Zhong Lun, as I’ve discussed in many entries in this blog, is that they are abusive, dishonest and sometimes dangerous when they are challenged to pay.

My first hint at the scope of the dishonesty at my firm occurred a few months ago when I invited the general counsel from Europe’s biggest pharmaceutical company to lunch, and invited some partners, including: Wang Lihua, Shirley Xu, Zhang Decai, Zeng Xi, and others to join us. I did this because my contact with Zhong Lun requires the firm to pay me for business that I bring to them, so I thought that it didn’t matter who ultimately received the business since I would ultimately be paid. But, the arrival of the guest caused a financial disaster I didn’t anticipate.

When each of of the invitees arrived at the restaurant, they competed with each to talk about themselves. When lunch ended, and the check arrived, nobody offered to pay their share of the meal, so I ended up paying, assuming that the issue would be resolved later.

Wrong. Six weeks later, nobody has offered to pay me, even the firm’s management. Wierder yet, the client has forwarded to me emails from three of the Zhong Lun attorneys that mock the others who went to lunch. Here’s one

“Dear [name of client withheld], I want to stay in touch with you and let you know that I am Zhong Lun’s only accredited litigator. The others who met you that day, including the foreign attorney, are not even allowed to practice Chinese law.”

Lesson #1: If you do business with Chinese lawyers, get them to pay cash when they eat.

Next, I started hiring foreign interns to help me with my work, and when they showed their competence after a few months and asked me to tell them how to turn the internship into a full time job, I learned a few things about their existence at my law firm. Here is a list:

a. Chinese interns get RMB 50 (US$ per day, while the foreigners, including many law students, get RMB 80 (US$11) per day. That’s barely enough to pay for transportation to and from work each day.
b. Each intern is required to bring his/her own computer to work, since Zhong Lun requires its partners to purchase their own computers for their staff, as I’ve discussed in a previous blog entry, when the IT guy bought fake Dell computers for me, and charged me real Dell computer prices. Asshole.
c. Interns don’t attend meetings, mostly because Chinese attorneys don’t like to have meetings with their colleagues.
d. Interns are not shared among attorneys, and to stay busy are assigned shit work. Specifically, two US interns working for Liu Chi, were told to spend their whole summer writing an article for him on sports law, since he was so desperate for new work that he thought, on a whim, that it might be worth trying to find new clients in that field. Wrong, Liu Chi.
e. Interns are required to get dressed up every day. Fortunately, they don’t have to wear the terrible, shiny black, pointed shoes that the Chinese employees wear.
f. Interns are never told about their future, or prospects for a real job with the firm, and this is purposeful to lead them on. The firm simply doesn’t answer their questions, but it has no history of hiring any interns. Diane, the HR director, wont ever give them an answer.

Lesson #2: An internship at a Chinese law firm means nothing and will not help you

Zhong Lun travels to the top Beijing law schools each year, and I travel with them, in an effort to recruit new, smart, young graduates. These nervous, hardworking, poor kids have a tough road ahead, and here’s what it looks like:

a. We hire about 1 out of 50 we interview, to do an internship.
b. The internship last 3 months, during which time they are paid RMB 50 per day, as mentioned above.
c. After the three month internship, we release 2 of 3, and keep one.
d. They are given a tiny desk, and have no chance of one day becoming a partner with the firm. The entire firm has nearly 60 partners, but only one of these partners was hired out of law school, worked for the firm and eventually became a partner. All other partners at Zhong Lun previously worked at other firms, and moved to Zhong Lun in a client grab.
e. Last, and equally threatening, is the problem that they confront when they leave Zhong Lun. As I’ve described, attorneys who leave don’t get paid their last few months wages or bonuses. Their contracts are not respected, and there’s nothing they can do to force the firm to pay them.

Lesson #3: An entry level job with a law firm is hard to get and will make your life miserable. And, you have no prospect of ever improving your status.

The big lesson here is that although US law firms are cut-throat, Chinese law firms like Zhong Lun are both cut through and dishonest. They have no concern for anyone’s well-being, don’t feel obligated to respect contracts they sign, and will abuse, mock, and threaten you if it means they can keep more money for themselves. If you are foreign law student and are thinking about working in this environment, you are going to have huge problems surviving.