Executive Director Zhiheng was invited to participate in the ninth season of the opening speech - "From Shenzhen to the whole country in 3 years: Law firm scale, feelings, opportunities and methods are indispensable" speech transcript
In the past two years, the economy has been on the decline, the market has entered the era of stock, and the number of large-scale law firms has also become saturated. The advantage of relying on the number of people to win in scale has gradually faded, and the process of national law firm scale has begun to show a slowing trend. Under this situation,
has emerged suddenly, quickly ranking among the scale rankings and rising rapidly in two years. At present, Zhiheng has 20 branches across the country, nearly 8
00lawyers, and ranks 48th in scale.
Why does Zhiheng still firmly choose the path of scale in the current situation? What are the right things that law firms can do to expand and develop rapidly?
On December 14th, the ninth season of the opening speech · About the present, about the future, we invited Chai Yongxia, Executive Director of
, to share "From Shenzhen to the whole country - the exploration path of a new generation of law firms", and talk about the current large-scale development path of law firms in Zhiheng's eyes, and the story of how the new generation of law firms are transforming and developing.
This article is a transcript of Chai Yongxia's speech.
Speech | Chai Yongxia, Executive Director of
Source | Openwords Season 9 · About the present, about the future
has a belief - we want to be one of the top ten largest firms in the country.
In the past three years, Zhiheng has set out from Shenzhen to establish a national network, facing many challenges and difficulties, and has also achieved some results. Today, I would like to talk to you in depth about the large-scale development of
s. 01
Old and new development
First, let me briefly introduce Zhiheng. Zhiheng was established in 1995 and was originally a boutique small firm focusing on the field of intellectual property business. In 2022, Zhiheng transformed into a comprehensive law firm and officially started the road to scale. Therefore, we often say that Zhiheng is the new development of the old firm.
Regarding the development strategy of Zhiheng, it is two simple sentences: from Shenzhen to the whole country; from Hong Kong to the world. That is, scale and internationalization.
In terms of scale, Zhiheng currently has 18 branches in operation across the country, and another 4 branches will open soon. (Note: with the opening of the Urumqi branch and the Guiyang branch, as of today, Zhiheng has 20 offices nationwide.) Zhiheng has completed the layout in four key cities in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, especially the Beijing branch, which just opened in October this year, and already has about
50practicing lawyers.
At the same time, as a law firm that started in Shenzhen, we also strive to cover the whole area of Shenzhen. There are still some branches in the country under preparation. We plan to complete the layout of 30 branches in China next year or the year after.
Today, while law firms are developing on a large scale, they must take the international route. Zhiheng's international development is based in Hong Kong, with a layout in South East Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. In the future, it will further expand overseas, and expand business for domestic law firms and lawyers by linking overseas government affairs, business and legal resources.
Among them, the first step of Zhiheng's internationalization is to set up a branch in Hong Kong, using Hong Kong as a bridgehead to provide global services to domestic customers through the Hong Kong branch, and then open the road of Zhiheng's internationalization. At present, Zhiheng Hong Kong branch has become the largest Chinese law firm in Hong Kong. 24 lawyers have obtained registered foreign lawyer licenses issued by the Law Society of Hong Kong, and many domestic lawyers and overseas lawyers are applying.
Zhiheng also established a joint office with the US-based Sleiber Law Firm in Qianhai, which is a Sino-US joint office in the Greater Bay Area. With the help of Sleiber Law Firm's business advantages in cross-border e-commerce and intellectual property, Zhiheng further strengthened its professional advantages in the field of intellectual property.
02
Law firms take the road to scale, both with feelings and with opportunities
According to the relevant data of the national TOP100 scale of the new statistics, Zhiheng only began to transform in April 2022. By November 2023, it had entered 96 national scale firms and 369 lawyers. Then, through half a year of development, the number of law firms exceeded 543 and the ranking was promoted to 66. The latest data in November this year shows that the number of lawyers at
has reached 765, entering
48in the country at a 40% growth rate.
Due to the ongoing scaling process, the number of law firms is expected to exceed 1,000 before the Spring Festival.
Zhiheng takes the road of scale, both because we see opportunities in the current legal services market.
First, let's take a look at the top ten large firms in the country. It is not difficult to find that there are 8 law firms from Beijing, 1 from Shanghai, and 1 from Chengdu, but there are no law firms from Guangdong and Shenzhen. Among the top 50 large firms in the country, there are only 7 law firms from Guangdong and 4 from Shenzhen.
From the perspective of economic status and economic size, there should be a place for Guangzhou and Shenzhen law firms among the top ten firms in the country. In the future, more than one Guangdong firm may enter the top ten in the country, but we hope that one of them is Zhiheng.
Second, the current market is in a period of economic downturn. Have you noticed that many small and medium-sized law firms are actively seeking new development opportunities?
Third, only if a law firm has a certain scale, especially national integration and scale, can it truly promote the integration of national law firm resources, and then better carry out professional development and achieve business growth.
Fourth, as mentioned earlier, the large-scale development of Zhiheng is inseparable from the internationalization development strategy. The current large-scale development of law firms is not just a simple pursuit of scale expansion, but also the foundation and guarantee for Chinese client groups to go global and provide customers with global services.
03
The rapid development of law firms, what did Zhiheng do right?
Zhiheng's large-scale development has allowed for rapid growth. What are the right things to do?
1. Planned and organized scale
First of all, Zhiheng has set a five-year development plan based on the clear goal of entering the top ten largest institutions in the country. If you want to enter the top ten in the country, you must have at least 3,000 practicing lawyers in the country. To further break down this goal, we must complete the layout of at least 30 branches in China, and each branch must become a 100-person strong firm on average. Branches in key cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen will also exceed the size of 100-person firms.
In the past, the logic of many law firms' rapid scale was that because of the economic upswing and the influx of a large number of young lawyers into the legal team in the short term, law firms could achieve rapid scale development by attracting a large number of young lawyers and providing three to five years of growth space for young lawyers. But in today's economic downturn, we should think about how to achieve effective scale. I can summarize this in one word, "organized scale".
On the one hand, the development of small and medium-sized micro-boutique firms is struggling, and there is a demand for large-scale platforms. Taking Zhiheng as an example, we have merged many law firms, especially in Guangdong Futian, where more than 10 law firms have been merged. For example, Hanyu Law Firm, itself an excellent law firm in Guangdong that has been established for 20 years; Lvjian Law Firm is a niche boutique firm in the national environmental protection business field, Weiting Law Firm mainly does criminal business, and Themis Law Firm is a law firm that provides special project legal services for New Third Board enterprises.
During the economic downturn, these small and medium-sized boutiques are facing difficulties in the development process. Although they are prominent in professional fields, they need a national platform to help them integrate resources and achieve business growth.
In the morning Big Fish chat room, we discussed whether law firms or lawyers should take the path of specialization. In this regard, I think if you are already on the path of specialization, can you consider seeking a national platform for resource integration like these boutique firms?
If you are a young lawyer, the amount of independent practice is not enough to solve your own food and clothing problems, and you should rely on the resources of the law firm to accumulate and accumulate experience.
On the other hand, the legal team seeks to develop, and also needs to be empowered by the law firm. In addition to small and medium-sized law firms that need the support of a large platform, there are also some legal teams that have no room for development in their original law firms and want to seek a platform that can better reflect their own value and grow. Zhiheng has therefore absorbed many professional teams in different fields.
2. Two important institutional guarantees
In order to achieve the national layout and development of law firms, institutional protection is also very important. Zhiheng's system is formulated around the goal of how to combine the corporatization management of law firms with the commission system for lawyers' business. To sum up, there are two words: one is national direct investment, direct sales, and direct management; the other is the construction of professional managers.
First of all, to ensure direct investment, direct sales, and direct management of branches across the country, the purpose is to achieve integrated operation and management of total branches. Integrated operation management is not only the unification of law firm decoration and office conditions, but also the real unity of law firm branding, risk prevention and control, financial management, and market expansion, etc., software and hardware.
In order to better realize the integrated construction of the general branch, we have recruited outstanding local lawyers from the branch as founding partners to jointly build the Zhiheng platform; at the same time, we have designed an equity senior partner system to protect the rights and interests of partners and ensure the smooth and rapid development of the national branch with supporting systems.
The construction of professional managers is also a key institutional guarantee for Zhiheng's rapid development. Because lawyers, especially the partners of traditional partnership law firms, are busy with business every day and have no time to take care of operation and management matters such as team building. Zhiheng chooses a corporatized operation model, and the first thing is to hand over the operation and management of the law firm to special people.
At the same time, the team of professional managers also implements national integration construction to ensure that the overall score is integrated in terms of ideology, construction, and business development.
Here I would also like to emphasize the "empowering and symbiotic" relationship between professional managers and law firms. Many law firms often wonder: we have also recruited some executives to be responsible for the operation and management of the law firm. Why is he not really empowering the law firm?
The reason is that the construction of professional managers must be bound to the interests of law firms and fully authorized. The development of professional managers must become a symbiotic relationship with the interests of law firms and lawyers, and will do everything possible to help lawyers empower.
04
The core competitiveness of the scale institute lies in resource integration
Today, the core competitiveness of large-scale law firms lies in the ability to achieve the integration of resources at the law firm level "national chess game".
In this regard, Zhiheng often holds activities in branches across the country, with the core purpose of fully realizing national linkage and resource interaction, and promoting the formation of effective business cooperation between lawyers from all over the country. For example, on December 28, we will hold an event in our Dongguan office to discuss topics related to regional collaboration, non-performing assets, and execution business areas.
We hope that everyone can connect to the cooperation resources they need on the law firm platform, which is also the core of Zhiheng becoming bigger and stronger.
Finally, Zhiheng's development also has a bottom-level support, that is, the senior equity partners have a common will, agree with the platform construction of the law firm, and agree that Zhiheng belongs to everyone and every Zhiheng person. Therefore, to become a partner of Zhiheng, not only must have professional strength, but also have feelings and the same values.
Speaking of which, I would like to mention two people. One is Director Zhang Shanhua, director of the management committee of Zhiheng Headquarters. He once said: "We visited more than 200 law firms in Shenzhen, large and small, in the hope that there will be a local Shenzhen firm that can become bigger and stronger. I hope to do a historic thing at Zhiheng and draw a successful end to my career as a lawyer."
Another, Lan Caiming, head of the management committee of Zhiheng (Qianhai) Law Firm, once said: "Lawyers are just a profession. After we do a good job as lawyers, we need a career. Building a law firm from Shenzhen to the whole country together is what I most want to accomplish."
Finally, I would like to use Zhiheng's development concept to encourage everyone, "the unity of knowledge and action, constant and far-reaching". The large-scale development of Zhiheng requires a group of like-minded people to build together, and we also look forward to more people who agree with Zhiheng's concept to build Zhiheng platform together.
