An inspection conducted by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice showed that one out of 10 of 495 examined lawyers' offices in the capital city have irregular management practices, the authority announced Wednesday.

Among the nearly 500 law firms supervised, 52 percent were ranked as "regular," while 38 percent were "basically regular," Geng Jingyi, the bureau's deputy director said Wednesday.

The 495 lawyers' offices were all established before August last year. The total number of law firms in Beijing is 735, according to the bureau, the authority in charge of regulating lawyers.

The inspection, which started in April, is part of a campaign to fight against irregular behavior within the booming legal industry.

Examinations showed that the 10 percent irregular law firms were lacking in their management systems when it came to personnel, finance and risk control.

Furthermore, some lawyers' offices did not properly supervise lawyer operations, sources said.

As a result, statistics show half of the complaints against lawyers received by the bureau and the Beijing Lawyers' Association had to do with lawyers failing to fulfil their duties.

For example, some lawyers made fake promises through the news media.

"Some vowed to win any case that they handled and said they would pay back their fees if they lost," said Geng, noting this has seriously damaged the image of the legal industry.

The local bureau of justice requires all of Beijing lawyers' offices to conduct internal examinations and correct errors by themselves.

All of the lawyers' offices are told to examine whether they have established 11 systems according to requirements set down by the Ministry of Justice, including systems for fee collections, training, operational quality supervision, financial administrations, distributions, and systems dealing with complaints from customers.

The law firms proved to be irregular will receive another examination by the justice bureau after their self-inspections are completed.

They will be forbidden to apply for annual inspections to continue operating if they fail to pass re-examination by the justice bureau.

(China Daily July 8, 2004)