Responsible persons of relevant departments of the Ministry of Justice answer reporters' questions on the construction of the national lawyers' creditworthiness information publicity platform

In order to thoroughly implement the Requirements of the Party Central Committee on deepening the reform of the lawyer system, and to promote lawyers and law firms to practice in accordance with law and in good faith, the Ministry of Justice, together with the All-China Lawyers Association, has developed and built a national platform for publicizing lawyers' creditworthiness information, facilitating the people's timely access to lawyers' and law firms' creditworthiness information. The public may log on to the website of the National Lawyers Creditworthiness Information Publicity Platform (https://credit.acla.org.cn) to inquire about basic information, annual assessment information, rewards, punishments, and other such information as full-time and part-time lawyers and law firms nationwide. Recently, the responsible person of the relevant department of the Ministry of Justice answered reporters' questions on the construction of the national lawyers' creditworthiness information publicity platform.

1. Q: Why did the Ministry of Justice establish a national lawyer creditworthiness information publicity platform?

A: The PARTY Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core attaches great importance to the work of lawyers. Since the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly made important instructions on the work of lawyers and the construction of the team. In 2016, the Opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Deepening the Reform of the Lawyer System require that supervision and inspection of lawyers' compliance with professional ethics be strengthened, and the credit record system for lawyers' conduct be improved. Establishing and completing systems for recording and publicizing creditworthiness information in the legal profession is of great significance to better stimulating the vitality of legal service entities and promoting the high-quality development of the legal profession. In order to thoroughly implement Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law, implement the decision-making and deployment of the Party Central Committee on deepening the reform of the lawyer system, further strengthen the construction of the lawyer team, and guide lawyers and law firms to practice in good faith in accordance with the law, in 2019 the Ministry of Justice began to develop and build a national lawyer creditworthiness information publicity platform, completed a number of work such as system construction, software development, information aggregation, quality inspection, information verification and confirmation, and established a timely collection and update mechanism for creditworthiness information, using information means to promote lawyers and law firms to standardize their practice. Safeguard the lawful rights and interests of the people. In mid-November 2021, the publicity platform will be open to the public for test operation. At present, the publicity platform has realized the normalized, timely, accurate and complete disclosure of lawyers and law firms' creditworthiness information functions, and is now officially open to the public.

2. Q: What is the significance of building a national lawyer creditworthiness information publicity platform?

Answer: The establishment of a national lawyers' creditworthiness information publicity platform is an inevitable requirement for raising the self-discipline awareness of the legal profession and standardizing lawyers' practice behavior. Establish a unified national platform, centralizing the aggregation and publication of lawyers' and law firm's creditworthiness information, to achieve an "overall portrait" and "panoramic display" of lawyers' and law firms' credit status. The disclosure of creditworthiness information is like the image and "face" of lawyers and law firms, which truly and completely reflects the basic information and honesty and trustworthiness of lawyers and law firms. Publicizing the creditworthiness information of lawyers and law firms can provide an important reference for parties in selecting lawyers. At the same time, lawyers and law firms can be guided to practice in good faith through lawfulness, strengthen credit self-restraint, improve the quality of legal services, continuously accumulate their own credit, and harvest more credit dividends.

The establishment of a national lawyers' creditworthiness information publicity platform is an objective need to increase the transparency of legal services and enhance the people's sense of well-being and security in the rule of law. Since the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the cause of lawyers in the mainland has made great progress, the scale of the legal team has been continuously expanded, and the division of labor among lawyers has become more and more refined. At present, the total number of lawyers in the country has reached 576,000, and there are more than 36,000 law firms. How to select suitable candidates from lawyers with a large number of people and a more refined professional division of labor to avoid "stepping on the thunder" and being deceived has become a problem that the parties urgently need to solve. The publicity platform brings together lawyers' administrative licensing information and practice reward and punishment information, providing a window for parties to inquire about the creditworthiness status of lawyers and law firms, solving the problem of information asymmetry in the field of lawyers' legal services, effectively improving the transparency of lawyers' legal services, and further enhancing the people's sense of happiness and security in the rule of law.

The establishment of a national lawyers' creditworthiness information publicity platform is an important measure to strengthen supervision and improve the management efficiency of judicial-administrative organs. Publicity is supervision. In the context of deepening the reform of the lawyer system, in the past, it was difficult to adapt to the needs of the new situation and new tasks by relying solely on traditional supervision methods such as inspection and sampling, annual assessment/inspection, and investigation and handling of individual complaints. The publicity platform collects the originally scattered data of lawyers and law firms under the name of each subject, uniformly presents it to the public, and any unit organization or individual can inquire into the creditworthiness information of lawyers and law firms, and after discovering problems, they can go to the judicial administrative organs to request corrections or reports, effectively expanding the scope of social supervision, improving the accuracy of supervision, and providing strong support for strengthening supervision and improving the level of supervision.

3. Q: What information can be queried on the national lawyers' creditworthiness information publicity platform

A: The publicity platform brings together the administrative licensing information of 470,000 full-time and part-time lawyers and 36,000 law firms across the country, except for the two public lawyers, as well as the integrity information formed in the course of practice, including: 2.175 million annual assessment information, 94,000 reward and commendation information, 6,086 professional evaluation information, 8,277 information on participation in politics and politics, as well as 1,061 administrative punishment information and 376 industry sanction information during the publicity period, and so on. The public can log in to the platform, enter the name of the lawyer or the name of the law firm in the "search bar" on the home page, and directly inquire about the creditworthiness information of relevant entities. If you need to search for a lawyer or law firm in a specific condition or in a specific area, you can use the Advanced Search or Map Search feature to query further.

4. Q: How to ensure that information on the national lawyers' creditworthiness information publicity platform is promptly updated and accurately announced

A: At present, judicial-administrative organs have established mechanisms for collecting and updating lawyers' creditworthiness information, advancing full-service, whole-process online handling such as administrative licensing, annual assessments, and complaint investigations, and lawyer management data can be automatically collected, promptly entered, and automatically left behind, and gathered in real time into the national lawyer creditworthiness information publicity platform. At the same time, before the relevant creditworthiness information is made public, lawyers and law firms are to verify the authenticity, accuracy, and completeness of the information about themselves and the firm. If it is found that the information is incorrect, it may be completed and corrected, and the judicial-administrative organs will update the data confirmed by the judicial administrative organs to the publicity platform, so as to ensure the accuracy of the public information.

5. Q: What are the plans for advancing and improving the establishment of a national lawyers' creditworthiness information publicity platform in the future?

A: In the next step, the Ministry of Justice will focus on the following aspects. The first is to broaden the collection channels and improve the portrait of creditworthiness. On the basis of comprehensively aggregating credit information held by judicial-administrative organs and lawyers associations, further strengthen in-depth cooperation with relevant units, establish data docking with websites such as the China Judgment Documents Network, Credit China, and market supervision administrative punishment documents networks, enriching lawyers' creditworthiness data, and forming a complete portrait of lawyers' creditworthiness. The second is to strengthen data research and judgment to achieve accurate supervision. Use the big data analysis function of the publicity platform to accurately focus on high-frequency violations of laws and regulations in a certain area, and improve the perception, prediction, and prevention of illegal acts. Make lawyers and law firms with frequent violations of law the focus of supervision, reasonably determine the matters and frequency of key supervision and inspections, and strive to improve the effectiveness and accuracy of supervision and law enforcement. The third is to improve the system and mechanism and formulate management measures. The collection and disclosure of creditworthiness information is closely related to the interests of lawyers, law firms, and the public, and it is necessary to ensure that the content of the disclosure is objective, accurate, and appropriate, the procedures are rigorous, standardized, and efficient, and the rights, obligations, and responsibilities of relevant subjects are clear, and it is necessary to improve relevant rules and standardize management. The Ministry of Justice will formulate and promulgate the Measures for the Management of Creditworthiness Information of Lawyers and Law Firms as soon as possible, clarifying relevant matters.