In order to strengthen public legal services of government and continually provide better legal supports, Department of Justice and Department of Commerce have brought out a suggestion about legal service purchasing of government combined with actual working status according to relevant laws and regulations about government purchasing.
Government as the purchaser shall protect legal rights of the undertaker to equally take part in legal service purchasing of government, and shall not set unreasonable conditions for differential treatment or discriminatory treatment of the undertaker.
The content of purchasing legal service of government is the legal service which belongs to the scope of government's duty and is suitable for providing by market-oriented way. The instructing catalogue of which legal service may be listed into includes:
- Public legal services from government to the society as communal, public, inclusive and bottom-up legal services from entrusted lawyers and grass-roots legal service workers, mainly include legal aid, pro bono duty lawyers, people’s mediation and advocacy for rule of law;
- Auxiliary legal services which may be needed for government as legal consulting from entrusted lawyers and grass-roots legal service workers by government, mainly include participation in legality review of major decisions and major law enforcement decisions, participation in drafting and argumentation of laws, regulations, inner-party regulations and normative documents and participation in negotiation of cooperation projects, draft and amendment of important legal documents or contracts.
The purchaser shall take into account the characteristics of supply and demand of the purchase content, the degree of market development and other factors, according to the principles of flexible way, simple procedure, open and transparent, orderly competition and fair selection, adopt appropriate purchasing method to determine the undertaker, and reasonably determine the government purchase price according to the market charge standard of similar legal services in the region.
The purchaser and the undertaker shall sign a written contract for the purchase of legal service of government, specifying the object, content, duration, quantity and quality, rights and obligations of both parties, service price, method of fund settlement, service performance target and liability for breach of contract.
If you want to read the complete article, you can refer to the below link (in Chinese only): http://www1.shanghaiinvest.com/cn/viewfile.php?id=15404
If you have any question, please contact me.
Mr. Mike Chang
TEL: 0086-21-68868321 / FAX: 0086-21-68868021
Email: mikechang@shanghaiinvest.com