Jiangsu accelerates construction of modern public legal service system

The judicial administration of East China's Jiangsu province has accelerated construction of a modern public legal service system in recent years, taking a comprehensive approach to people's growing need for the service.

Closer to the public

To address people's pressing concerns, Jiangsu has taken the lead in the country in establishing a five-level physical public legal service platform featuring one-stop services. It has also launched a unified hotline and website to the same end, both of which are available at any time.

The province now boasts a distinctive public legal service system with physical platforms as its backbone and four networks for legal publicity, pro bono legal services, dispute resolution and special group-oriented services as its pillars.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), Jiangsu's physical legal service platforms at various levels served people over 3 million times while its public legal service hotline received more than 700,000 calls from the public, 95 percent of which were fully attended to.

Over the same period, the province's public legal service website was visited over 20.82 million times, offered legal advice 250,000 times, and provided such services as notarization, legal aid and mediation more than 40,000 times.

As a result, the approval rates of the three platforms all exceeded 95 percent.

Serving people in challenging time

In response to the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic last year, Jiangsu's judicial department promptly announced 10 measures aimed at supporting the public and enterprises with online services.

During its legal aid campaign last year, the province handled a total of 111,000 cases in which more than 130,000 people received aid.

The province has also designated legal counsels for 395,000 impoverished families with the view of eliminating poverty through legal approaches.

Paying close attention to people's needs, judicial administrative authorities of Jiangsu have developed 411 products capable of offering services cover citizens' full-life circle.

Supporting businesses

Actively exploring ways to support industries, Jiangsu's legal department led the country this year in releasing guidelines on providing industrial chain-specific legal services.

Striving for a law-based business environment, it has conducted legal risk reviews for over 220 provincial-level major projects and more than 50,000 enterprises, helping them recover up to 940 million yuan ($145 million) in economic loss.

Strengthening the government-court collaboration in facilitating restructuring of bankrupt enterprises, the department has helped courts handle over 1,800 corporate restructuring cases, resolve 45,000 enterprise-related disputes, and dispose of non-performing loans worth nearly 100 billion yuan in total.

To increase legal service supply in industrial parks, it has established service platforms in all the province's 176 industrial parks at or above the provincial level.

The department has also set up 16 overseas legal service centers which cover all the major Belt and Road countries. So far, they have helped over 160 enterprises launch projects abroad which involve a total investment of $1.8 billion.