The transformation of China’s legal profession and its representation: a critical discourse analysis

Cheng, Zhihui 2021. The transformation of China’s legal profession and its representation: a critical discourse analysis. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

This thesis argues that hegemonical struggles between the colonization and adaptation forces in the process of naturalizing the implanted Western legal profession in China set a fundamental context without which the transformation of the Chinese legal profession cannot be fully understood. The thesis also argues that LegalTech, which is embedded in the digital transformation of nearly everything in today’s society, has enabled various social groups (that were once excluded from the legal industry by various professional monopoly mechanisms) to successfully penetrate into the Chinese legal field. Different groups of field players compete to construct discourses of professionalism to legitimate their ways of producing the legal services and organize the producers. This research conducted a corpus assisted critical discourse analysis, coupled with the framing analysis, to excavate the frames that some British and Chinese newspapers had utilized to advocate different versions of professionalism in their competitive framing of the same series of lawyer detention events that happened in China between 2015 to 2018. This research employed the same methodology to find the frames that various kinds of publications had deployed to organize ideas around LegalTech, especially the discourses on the implications of the rise of LegalTech to legal services production, access to justice, and the existential state of the legal professionals. British newspapers developed a “war on law” frame to cover the series of lawyer detention events in China. Chinese newspapers constructed a counter frame of “law and order for the lawyers” to organize the news on the same events. This research identified an “access to justice” frame that argues LegalTech can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of legal service production and widen people’s access to justice. There is also a “disruptive innovation” frame that focuses on the disruptive effects that LegalTech bring to the old ways of legal services production and the existential state of the traditional legal professionals.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Journalism, Media and Culture
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) K Law > K Law (General)
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	15 December 2021
Last Modified:	04 Jan 2023 02:33
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/146160

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