Kaifeng steps up efforts to strengthen construction of public legal service platforms

Kaifeng city, in Central China's Henan province, has made continuous efforts to strengthen the grassroots foundation of its public legal services, and to establish a public legal service system that covers urban and rural areas with high efficiency, convenience, and equitable access for thousands of households across the city.

Over the past three years, the public legal service platforms of the city have handled over 18,000 legal aid cases of all kinds, provided legal consultations for over 156,000 people, and mediated over 175,000 disputes, effectively maintaining social harmony and stability. 

The city has taken measures to establish "one-stop" public legal service platforms, in a bid to meet the people's diversified legal needs in areas where disputes frequently occur.

To date, the city has set up 11 public legal service centers, 114 public legal service stations in towns, townships and subdistricts, and 2,445 public legal service offices in villages and communities, which formed a network of public legal service providers to serve the whole city.

"We have also introduced internet-based robots to facilitate direct communication between the public and lawyers. The public can download and print legal documents and enjoy free "one-stop" legal services, including legal consultations and online mediations, offered by nearly 50,000 lawyers around China, according to an official at the judicial authority of the district.

The city has selected 17 lawyers to answer questions from the public through the city's 12348 hotline. Since 2022, the service hotline has provided convenient and effective legal services for more than 20,000 people.

To date, every village in the city has had at least one legal adviser, and a total of 56 law firms and 514lawyers have signed legal adviser contracts with over 2,000 villages and communities in the city.