CPPCC member proposes building of foreign-related legal talent database

During a recent interview, Liu Hongyu, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC)， China's top political advisory body, and deputy head of the corporate legal counsel division of the All China Lawyers Association, proposed to build a foreign-related legal talent database in order to enhance China's ability to cope with global legal risks.

The interview was conducted on the sideline of the third session of the 13th CPPCC held from May 21 to May 27 in Beijing.

"During the past 40 years of reform and opening-up, with China's burgeoning social and economic development, the country's demand for foreign-related legal service talents and specialists becomes ever more prominent," said Liu.

She suggested that China should take a long and global view in the cultivation of such talents, making sure that the talent pool is big enough to cover the entire world, especially countries that are major recipients of Chinese investments.

According to Liu, there are multiple ways to cultivate the needed talents, including sending them abroad under government-funded overseas study programs, encouraging Chinese law firms to open overseas branches, prompting globally-expanding Chinese entities to dispatch legal specialists to their foreign branches, and adding the post of legal counselor to Chinese embassies.

She said she expects a growing foreign-related legal service force to provide services for overseas activities of Chinese governments, enterprises and citizens, and to contribute to the foreign application of Chinese laws.

As for how to build a foreign-related legal talent database, Liu proposed to set up a unified standard for selecting candidates, taking into account their practical experiences, professional skills and research fields.

She also called for establishing a multi-tier mechanism for cultivating internationalized legal talents which should be comprised of three sub-databases for legal experts, professionals and reserve talents, respectively.

"We must find the joint between the building of the foreign-related legal talent team, the current legal education system, the legal profession qualification system and the legal profession training system so as to improve the selection and cultivation mechanism for foreign-related legal talents," said Liu.