China now has more than 13,000 law firms with 143,000 lawyers, according to the Ministry of Justice on Wednesday.

The number of government employed lawyers has reached 2,649, who are civil servants with lawyers' qualification and only process cases of their own departments.

There are also 250 companies which have their own company employed lawyers who play a similar role as the government employed lawyers.

In recent years, Chinese lawyers have handled 8.55 million litigation cases and 4.23 million non-litigation cases, and offered legal consultation to 16,000 government agencies and 260,000 enterprises.

"We should improve lawyers' quantity and quality, help the lawyers in the middle and west of China, participate more in the international legal actions," said Wu Aiying, Minister of Justice.

(Xinhua News Agency April 16, 2008)