On November 3, 2024, at the invitation of my alma mater, East China University of Political Science and Law, I hosted a thematic sharing session for the graduating students, focusing on 'The Career Development Path Choices for Young Lawyers.' In this sharing, I discussed with the students the topic of 'How can young legal professionals adapt to digital transformation and seize new opportunities in criminal business?' I hope this exchange can help students find their direction in career planning and bring some new insights. The following is a整理 of the sharing content from this event.
Hello, fellow students, I am Lawyer Shao Shiwei. I feel quite emotional to be back at the campus of East China University of Political Science and Law. Time has flown by fast, and it has been seven years since I graduated with my Master's from East China University of Political Science and Law in 2017. Seeing all of you full of vitality feels like I have returned to my campus days, and like all of you, I am filled with aspirations and expectations for the future.
Today's topic is 'How can young legal professionals adapt to digital transformation and seize new opportunities in criminal business?' I will share my own learning and growth experiences in conjunction with this topic, hoping this discussion can inspire everyone in their future career planning.
I studied Japanese for my undergraduate degree and chose to pursue a Master's in Law at East China University of Political Science and Law. During my graduate studies, I noticed that my university had a study abroad cooperation program with Okayama University in Japan. After applying and going through an interview assessment, I went to Japan to study law for a year at Okayama University.
(Photo with my Japanese mentor Professor Yoshikawa - taken in 2016)
Therefore, based on my own learning experience, after graduating from graduate school, I chose a lawyer team that specializes in Japanese business. The daily work involved dealing primarily with Japanese corporate clients, focusing on non-litigation work related to antitrust, corporate mergers, and corporate compliance.
After obtaining my lawyer's license, as I could represent cases in court, I wanted to experience the adversarial nature of litigation more. Therefore, after my internship period, I chose a team that primarily deals with litigation. At that time, my supervising mentor had nearly twenty years of experience in the system, mainly focusing on complex civil and commercial litigation and criminal litigation. During this time, I participated in handling a wide variety of cases; I represented nearly all common types of criminal cases and also handled many socially influential cases involving organized crime, economic crimes, and civil-criminal crossover cases. Additionally, I was involved in several complex civil and commercial litigation cases with claims of tens of millions or even over a billion.
This work experience lasted nearly two years, with a high-intensity routine of working from 5 AM to 10 PM, year-round, handling hundreds of cases annually, which allowed my professional skills to improve rapidly compared to my peers in a short time. However, during this period, I felt that I had entered a phase of professional burnout because I had become very proficient in the business itself. I believed I had the capability to handle cases independently, so I sought greater challenges and left my original team to start managing business independently.
I consider myself quite lucky. In the early stages of my independence, many colleagues around me thought I was experienced and reliable, and they would seek me for collaboration on cases, making my independent work experience quite fulfilling.
However, while busy with various types of business, I also occasionally think about the choice of my future specialization direction. Clients have many lawyers to choose from for their legal needs. So why would clients choose you? In other words, what is your core competitive advantage?
I believe lawyers need to have a label for their vertical field, as this is a prerequisite for others to have an impression of you. Secondly, within the label you choose, you need to continuously showcase your in-depth research and expertise in that field.
Therefore, I have always believed that the degree of specialization of a lawyer in a specific vertical field is very important. After choosing a certain field, continuously providing professional output and showcasing a professional image can enhance the influence of one's personal brand, allowing more people to recognize, understand, and acknowledge you.
In today's internet era, there are various ways for young lawyers to showcase themselves. For older lawyers, it's more about spreading reputation through friends and clients, relying on their familiar circles to acquire business. This poses a disadvantage for young lawyers just starting their careers, but internet channels have expanded lawyers' business from private to public domains, allowing more people to see you.
By chance, I learned that Mankun Law Firm primarily provides legal services in the new economy and blockchain. To be honest, at that time, I hadn’t thought deeply about whether I should engage in this area of business; I just felt that this was a group of people with direction and a sense of purpose. Although each individual lawyer in the industry works independently due to its uniqueness, I believe the energy around me is very important. The partners at Mankun are a group of energetic and vibrant young lawyers, and the working atmosphere of the firm is also an important criterion for me when choosing a law firm.
So let's go back to the choice of specialization.
When I first joined Mankun, it was around the time when the concept of NFT digital collectibles was at its peak, with many digital collection platforms being established.
As an emerging industry, the digital collection industry has been booming, but it also faces many problems. Many platforms were then confronted with the dilemma of users seeking legal protection. Due to the lack of relevant legal regulations, the judicial authorities' understanding of this industry was severely lacking. Together with the director of our firm, I represented multiple cases involving the criminal activities of digital collectible companies. During the case handling, we found that compared to traditional cases, due to unfamiliarity with emerging phenomena, judicial personnel were more willing to engage in deeper communication and discussion with lawyers and were more open to listening to lawyers' opinions.
During that time, our team represented numerous criminal cases involving digital asset platforms across the country, all of which ended with the police withdrawing their cases. This brought a great sense of achievement to me as a lawyer. This also strengthened my confidence in choosing criminal law as my career development direction.
But the criminal law field remains a vast concept. How then do we choose a more specific subfield? Is blockchain-related legal service suitable as a direction for me to delve into? I once had the following reflections:
From the perspective of national policy, anti-money laundering has always been one of the key tasks of judicial rectification. Virtual currency is inherently suitable as a tool for money laundering and is a high-incidence area for criminal activities. Nowadays, the money laundering methods in the online black and gray industry are primarily based on more concealed virtual currencies. Given my previous work experience, I have handled multiple cases of cybercrime and economic crime.
Blockchain legal services are a relatively new and niche field, and the number of lawyers specifically focused on this industry is relatively small, so choosing this track won't be overly competitive.
The intersection of my expertise in cybercrime and blockchain-related criminal business is significant. Although Web3 is a field I need to learn from scratch, the legal principles are universally applicable. My past experiences with high-intensity and saturated work have allowed me to accumulate a wealth of practical experience, so for me, I only need to invest some time in understanding this industry itself.
Moreover, although the blockchain industry has a certain learning threshold, Mankun is a great platform. Many lawyers, like Mao Jiehao and Gu Jianing, have come from blockchain industry companies and have a deep understanding of the sector, making daily communication with colleagues a good way to learn.
After multidimensional consideration, I believe that criminal business in the Web3 field is a niche I am worth delving into.
Many lawyers often communicate with me about this area of business, expressing curiosity. I think this is a great direction for lawyers who are willing to explore new fields, learn new things, and embrace challenges. Providing legal services in the Web3 field requires deep immersion in the industry, so I learn and understand new things every day.
For example, if a virtual currency exchange is determined to be involved in operating a gambling house, it is because the judicial authorities believe that the exchange's perpetual contract module is essentially gambling. As a defense lawyer, you need to know what a perpetual contract is, how its model works, and how this model differs from gambling.
For instance, if a digital collection platform is classified as a fraudulent platform, you need to understand the entire business model of the platform before you can find relevant points of engagement and communicate strong defense points to the case handlers, explaining why the platform does not constitute fraud.
And regarding common business cases, normal buying and selling of virtual currency with USDT has been classified as a money laundering offense. Lawyers must defend from the perspectives of the characteristics of the merchants' industry, whether they subjectively knew the funds were illicit, and whether they fulfilled their duty of care, etc. This is also based on a thorough understanding of the industry to find key defense points.
For me, learning and exploring new fields is both challenging and full of fun.
So, after choosing a direction, how do you get users with such legal needs to see you? This is a question to consider after selecting a niche business area.
The current era is no longer the lawyer industry of 10 or 20 years ago. Many older lawyers say that there were fewer lawyers back then, and clients would directly consult them. We can take a look at the statistics from a certain institution on the number of lawyers in various provinces and cities in 2023, which shows that the number of lawyers in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou is quite substantial. Nowadays, many lawyers are operating self-media platforms, which can also be seen while scrolling through social media like Douyin or Xiaohongshu.
So in such a competitive era, how can we find clients with related legal needs?
I believe clients do not passively wait for lawyers to come to them, nor do they come seeking to please. Instead, they generate a certain influence and appeal within a relatively vertical track, similar to a KOL (Key Opinion Leader), thus attracting and connecting with more like-minded individuals.
As a senior lawyer once shared a saying:
Rather than searching for target clients like finding a needle in a haystack, it is better to proactively tell them: Who you are, where you are, what problems you can solve, and how they can find you. Letting clients come to you actively is the best 'moat' for a lawyer's career.
I believe writing is a way to help more people intuitively recognize and understand a lawyer. I will share my insights and research results from daily case handling in written form for professional output.
In addition, besides the consultants, many friends from the public security and judicial departments follow my public account. We often communicate about business, and through these exchanges, I can gain a more intuitive understanding of the thought processes and viewpoints of judicial personnel during case handling. This also allows me to have a more comprehensive perspective when addressing issues during case processing.
The above examples are drawn from my own growth experiences for sharing with everyone. However, I want to tell everyone that the direction of development chosen by young legal professionals is formed in conjunction with their industry throughout their career development. With the passage of time and the deepening of their understanding, personal direction choices are also constantly changing.
Therefore, at the early stage of career development, we don't need to worry too early about what direction we should choose; we just need to cherish every growth experience and do well in each task at hand.
Taking myself as an example, I believe that every stage of my learning and work experience is very valuable to me now:
I studied Japanese in college, and those of you who have studied language majors will definitely know how challenging it can be. Language and law actually have similarities; both require practical application. Learning a language requires constant practice every day, repeating simple tasks, which greatly exercises one's patience and perseverance. I mentioned earlier that my work status in the litigation business team at my second law firm was a high-intensity routine of working from 5 AM to 10 PM, year-round. Some may think this intensity is overwhelming, but for me, it wasn’t, because I lived through four years of college like this. The first two years were spent preparing for the Japanese N1 exam (Japanese Language Proficiency Test N1), followed by preparing for the graduate school entrance exam and my thesis while also juggling various courses and activities. This busy study life taught me to maintain focus and efficiency under pressure while also honing my time management and self-regulation skills.
In the non-litigation business team at my first law firm, the daily work involved antitrust-related filings for business mergers, due diligence for corporate acquisitions, drafting legal opinions, and answering various legal and business questions encountered by corporate clients. This greatly enhanced my self-learning ability, my ability to deal with different government departments and solve problems, as well as the fundamental skills of legal writing.
In the litigation business team at my second law firm, the high-intensity work filled my days with challenges while also making me feel fulfilled. This work experience significantly enhanced my litigation capabilities and accumulated a wealth of practical experience. It also trained my ability to handle multiple tasks simultaneously, as I often had court hearings in the morning, met clients at noon, interviewed parties in the afternoon, held work meetings in the evening, and had to complete client reports and preparations for subsequent cases on the same day.
However, regardless of what the specific work content is, for a young lawyer or a workplace individual, mastering the important qualities that a lawyer should possess—namely, the ability to adapt to changes and solve problems—is what I consider to be the most important.
Finally, I want to say that once you choose a field that interests you and where you have accumulated experience, what follows is the execution. True execution is not driven by momentary passion and impulse, but by persistent commitment day after day. Doing what is difficult but right, believing in the power of belief, and leaving the rest to time.
