discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
When you think of live streaming, you probably think of shopping, and that's fair.
Me too, to a degree.
But in China, a different kind of content is capturing millions.
Live streamed legal advice.
People are now opening up social media apps to get immediate counsel from lawyers, sidestepping traditional firms entirely.
But this instant digital help comes with real risks, sparking urgent debates about ethics and accountability.
We're live from Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thank you so much for sharing your time with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yushan and Jingyu.
First up, live streams are no longer just for shopping.
A new trend is captivating China.
The live streamed practice of law.
Millions are foregoing the intimidating cost of traditional firms seeking counsel directly through their phone screens.
On platforms like Douyin and RedNote, barristers have become broadcasters.
They host vibrant live sessions fielding an onslaught of queries in real time, and their purview is vast, encompassing the deeply personal turmoil of divorce, the sharp friction of employment disputes and the complex entanglement.
Thank you very much.
Urgent questions of liability, ethical boundaries and the very definition of competent representation.
It's not entirely new, I don't think.
It's been around for a little while.
And, as a matter of fact, the idea or the concept of broadcasting court or legal issues has been around for longer than you'll imagine, than you'd expect.
And we'll get to that as well.
But I think we can say that the popularity of the short video lawyer is now and present.
And it's kind of a cool trend that's happening.
Especially on Douyin, I think, because I don't really have a Douyin account, but I can tell that on Red Note it's also attracting a lot of just young people interested in what's really going on in those live streams and what are these licensed lawyers doing and even in some cases educating us about.
So this is what we're hitting on right now.
These licensed lawyers.
They're using platforms like Doin and Red Note or whatever platforms to create short, highly engaging videos and also live streamings that explain legal concepts, comment on current events or give general advice, or even pick up the phone and get an open mic session with one of the listeners and chat about their specific cases.
So this is a completely not that completely new, but relatively newer form of legal outreach for just general public, to get a bit of education, learn a bit more and also, you know, hear a bit of the tea spelt in the live streams.
Yeah, and these are certified legal, this isn't a shtick, right?
This isn't a show.
It's not for entertainment value although i think we will talk a little bit about that too that some people are watching because it's entertaining for them.
But that's not the point of this.
This is done to get people real advice from real lawyers.
And the lawyers, the professionals, the legal professionals are taking advantage of the platform's viral mechanics, just as other influencers do.
What about the reach?
How popular is it?
Yeah.
Actually, yesterday, I checked on Douyin.
I downloaded Douyin to search for these lawyers on this platform.
And one of those successful lawyers that have become influencers on this platform.
I've checked lawyer surnamed Guo.
So on this platform, he has amassed 5.6 million followers.
I think I know who you're talking about.
Yes, he's really, really famous on the internet.
And he is based in Wuhan, which is in central China's Hubei province.
And he specializes in criminal law.
And that account started in 2023.
So that was like two years ago.
But now he has over 5 million followers.
And he has this relatable down-to-earth image and not so serious that type of lawyer image.
And many audiences, they like them.
And for him.
He says that by hosting these live stream sessions every single day and also participating, post these kind of short videos on the platform, he's able to first get known to more people, to have a more extensive reach of potential clients.
And also, it is a way to show their capabilities through these videos to clients.
And also, they can attract like-minded individuals.
And actually, the firm he works in, it's not the only account.
So because the prominence the prominence of this particular account.
They have been building like 10 other similar accounts.
Other lawyers at that law firm.
Yes.
And they have like over 10 accounts, but in different specific legal areas like marriage case consultations or labor arbitration, family laws or different categories.
And they've they have been making a lot of money out of it, I have to say.
How did you know about this?
How did you know about a Wuhan lawyer?
Right?
Because this is kind of the fascinating thing about this.
How were you aware of that person?
If I am to be...
Totally honest.
I was aware of him just last night.
But the thing is I saw someone else commenting on Red Note that nowadays I have three major go-to gossip hotspots on Red Note.
And there are Lawyer Guo, Lawyer Lan, and Lawyer Ding.
And I think that Lawyer Guo is who you just mentioned.
So these three, this very netizen was trying to tell everybody that if you've never seen the darker side of real world disputes, just spend some time lurking in their live streams, and there's always something new going on.
So that's kind of like where I learn about well these lawyers.
They can really harness such a huge popularity, some even accumulating over 15 million followers on one single platform.
So these are all making them instant celebrities of sort and key opinion leaders in the digital legal space, and also the scale gives them a massive reach that's far beyond any traditional law firms advertising budgets.
So yeah for them.
Some of them like these names we mentioned.
Some of them work individually, some of them work and align themselves with the law firm, All of which are good ways for these firms or these individuals to promote their service.
Yeah, 100%.
And the live streams, to watch them, obviously that's free.
If you want to take it a step further for private consultation.
I'm guessing that's where you would start to pay for the service.
But to just tune in costs you nothing at all.
And I think, for ordinary citizens who find traditional legal services intimidating or perhaps expensive.
Well then, these live streams or these videos, these are kind of low barrier entry into the field where you can acquire a lot of really useful information, either for something that you're going through or just for your own knowledge, which a lot of people find fascinating.
These streams can sometimes last for hours.
These lawyers put a lot of hard work into these things.
Like I said, it's not a joke.
And also, as I mentioned, these questions coming from the people in the live streams.
These are very, very real questions from very, very real people who are going through something difficult at the time or sometimes just curious about things.
One of the questions, for example, was my husband bought a house before we got married.
Do I have any legal right to that?
Good question, right?
I don't think you do, but.
Tune into the live stream to find out.
I was curious to know the answer to that one as well.
That might seem on the lighter side of things, but then there are really serious questions too.
One of them was, I don't have a steady income.
Can I still win custody of my daughter?
Talking about who's going to have custody of the child after the court case right?
Sounds like divorce cases.
Yes, divorce cases.
So, like I said, these are very serious questions, sometimes from very real people who are looking for very real advice.
Right.
You said it started a couple of years ago, at least, right?
Yes.
But why are so many lawyers now embracing social media?
Is this done out of choice?
Is this done out of necessity?
I think for those individual lawyers to move to social media is less about being trendy but more about just professional survival and adaptation in today's competitive market.
There is one online stand in a sharp contrast to the wider profession.
And also there is a survey showing that the number of lawyers has surged to 833.
That's a growth of more than 10 annually, while court cases rose just 1 last year, meaning that there are more lawyers out there than actually needed in court.
There are more fish in the sea.
So the market is saturated.
So they are going to these online platforms such as Red Note Douyin, instead of these traditional court platforms, areas that we see.
I think social media really offers a powerful tool for them to build a personal brand.
Like we've talked about these top influencers on Douyin, or another example that I've checked online is a doctor surnamed Luo.
So another lawyer, sorry.
And he has been deeply engaged in making short videos and host live stream sessions for the past seven years and because he has accumulated over millions of followers, he is able to build a firm company of his own.
Yes, and he has founded a company and then now that company has over 100 staff and the 90 of the firm's clients originated from this law lawyer lua's own personal ip.
So that refers to intellectual property.
So by building a personal brand, they have been able to uh, attract more clients and um yes you, you are able to build your.
Not everyone.
Good example.
That wouldn't apply to every lawyer, I'm sure.
But from a law firm's point of view, allowing to or even encouraging their lawyers to do this and build their own brand would be a really smart idea for them as well.
A law firm will have various lawyers covering various topics, but when they can do this, the opportunity to build a bigger clientele or customer base is really possible.
And if we think about the ways that lawyers or law firms typically advertise themselves, then this would be a lot cheaper, I would think.
Easier.
And a lot easier, a lot faster.
Right.
And a lot more effective because again, that low barrier entry or zero barrier entry, because I think a lot of people have legal questions but it's that extra step to pick up the phone and call a lawyer and ask, or to get in the car or whatever and go to a law firm and meet a lawyer and ask.
Not too many people do that, I would think.
So to be able to have your questions answered.
In this sense, I think it's just a really wonderful opportunity.
And it's also making it making things easier for people who actually have a need of service from the lawyers.
So I've kind of tuned into a law firm style live stream yesterday and it was hosted by one lawyer, but he very publicly state that oh, we do this here.
So he represent his own law firm throughout that very hour.
And he also said that oh, if you want lawyer blah blah blah's advice, he's going to be showing up in like one hour's time or at eight o'clock.
So it means that they all take turns in that law firm.
Okay, they rotate.
Rotates up with their shifts and doing live streams.
And people can actually tune in to certain specific person based on what they are specialized of.
And also this firm.
They operate in a way where each of their live streamer lawyer steps up and introduce themselves, start to answer questions from the comments, answer calls and open mic for people.
And then they also send out small links, kind of like putting links of items in the shopping cart in traditional e-commerce live streams.
Links for what?
Links for one-on-one session in more detail.
Yeah, we have our full support for you if you pay a certain amount and book up with us.
That's a lot easier for you to actually try to search for someone else.
Is this law firm good enough?
Is this person trustworthy that I'm booking a session with him?
Because booking also can charge money and time too.
So in this case, you're publicly introducing your firm and your services provided to the general public and to have them decide on if they can find you to seek help.
Yeah.
And there's proof that this is successful.
Jingyu, you talked about the guy who started his own firm from this, and 90 of the customers come from these live streams.
But it's also indicative, I think, of a wider change in China's legal services market.
And it's a big market.
It's worth about 300 billion yuan.
That's about $42 billion.
That was last year.
And as more people are seeking help online, these lawyers are making themselves accessible to people.
Getting 100000 followers is impressive, but can be seen on the lower end of the scale from time to time.
But the primary goal here is and this is where our chat starts to shift in a bit of a different direction because the primary goal it's not entertainment, it's conversion.
Just like an online shop wants you to put the items from your shopping cart into your home.
The lawyers want these customers to go from online questions into real paying customers for themselves and for their firms.
Yeah, these are digital name cards sent out to the millions and millions of audiences that's watching right?
Because nowadays, success is also measured via in high follower numbers and content reach as well.
And those lawyers who post frequently and stick to popular topics can often achieve massive digital success, with some gaining more over 100000 followers very quickly.
Sure, yeah.
So this massive digital following translate to immense professional visibility?
Yes, like i said, the digital name cards.
But, that being said, oh you go, let's see.
Let's see if we were going to say the same thing.
Yes, but we were, as we were, talking about conversion.
You said converting these potential viewers to customers or clients, but when, as a new starter, for example, you don't have these number of followers, you want to get more attention, you want to get more reach or you want to get more traffic, then sometimes it can turn.
I know I mean the shift of your content can turn a little bit towards to performative content.
It can.
Yes.
And I think the pressure to perform would grow as well, particularly if you're a lawyer at a firm and the firm has 10 lawyers in rotation and the other nine lawyers are bringing in clients from these live streams.
They're getting a lot of followers, but you aren't doing so well.
You have 20 followers.
Well, all of a sudden, you're going to feel an immense amount of pressure.
And then how would you respond to that pressure?
You would think I need more followers.
How can I get more followers?
And then, all of a sudden, you go from the perspective of a lawyer to the perspective of a content creator.
Because that's what content creators think about all the time.
So that's where we get into potentially a little bit of a problem here.
Yes.
I think I've bumped into one of the examples online as well as was searching these live stream lawyers and some of the comments or some of the netizens.
They doubt that the online contents or videos or even live stream these audio calls.
They are scripted.
They doubt that because some of the examples shown on these videos are too bizarre or too unusual so that you think that this can be Like a bait or like something to attract more customer.
But it's not real.
Here's the perfect question.
And oh, I happen to have off the top of my head the perfect answer for you.
Is it reality TV or is it scripted?
I guess that's the kind of ideal effect they're trying to create here.
Leading people to think that it's as spectacular as a variety TV that we're showcasing here and that I am capable of covering all these topics, as long as it falls into my area of expertise, right.
Yes.
And again, we're not saying this is a scam.
We are not saying this is not worthwhile.
This is a wonderful thing.
We're simply playing devil's advocate here and saying you know there are things to be to be careful of.
Um.
What i find interesting is that the audience is primarily made up of of everyday individuals like us dealing with common um, perhaps a little bit less complex, legal issues, and they're using the, the platform as kind of a legal triage, if you, if you want to call it that.
But there's also the people who are simply watching for entertainment value or, for um, For knowledge value, learning about the answers to legal questions.
And a lot of the followers of these lawyers, they're silent, right?
They're not the ones who are posting comments or things like that.
They're just watching quietly, which I think is I think it's kind of a cool thing.
Yesterday, when I was watching, there was one lawyer who was continuing to ask, oh, we've got nine people on hold waiting to get a phone call connection with me.
So which one of you would like to step in first?
Nobody answered him.
And after three seconds he dived back to his topic, which was helping people to just how to handle deadbeat borrowers in cases where they borrow money from you and they refuse to return back on time.
So he went back to telling stories on that how you should avoid cases like that and how you should deal with people when they people like that, when they emerge, and then he comes back to okay, we're having another session for online um call connections.
Who wants to go first?
There's one, two, three, ABC.
You're all online.
You're showing an invitation host online.
So I guess a lot of the times people don't really bring urgent emergency cases or problems.
A lot of them just feel like It's like asking for online diagnosis for your skin issue or something like that.
It can be that, but it can be really helpful as well.
There was the story of one woman who kind of stumbled across a lawyer's live stream at a difficult moment in her life.
And her marriage was falling apart.
And she was thinking about a possible divorce when she saw a video on Family Affairs.
That just kind of popped up when she was on a social media platform.
And she said before finding that live stream, getting even basic legal information, meant digging through books or searching online without knowing who to trust or without knowing what to trust in terms of the information.
But that live stream gave her quick, plain language, which is what these, a lot of these lawyers will do, because legal yeah um, vocabulary can be very confusing for people, but they, they'll answer questions in plain language.
And she said after a few weeks of watching, i asked the lawyer to represent me in the divorce.
I don't know what the outcome of that case was, but my point is this is that she had a lot of questions that she probably would have given up on finding the answers to, and that really helped her out.
But let's go back to the topic so we can balance this.
You know when we're watching these videos.
What are some things that we should be wary of perhaps, when asking for advice in these live streams or short videos.
I think, first of all, as someone who are asking questions through this live streams, you are just an audience to a live streams that's delivered by a professional lawyer.
It doesn't mean that this lawyer holds fiduciary duty to you, which is, in simpler terms, a lawyer's highest legal and ethical obligation to act with absolute loyalty, trust and in good faith for your benefit.
They are not seeing you as a client yet.
Because you are not a client, so they don't have that fiduciary duty, that legal obligation to protect you.
They're simply giving advice.
Right.
So no formal client attorney relationship is established via these short videos or live streams.
And also there's no recourse for malpractice.
Because the relationship is informational and not professional.
These attorneys or lawyers, they're giving their general advice to general questions or problems.
These answers can be very simplified.
So the client cannot sue the lawyer for malpractice.
So for the audience, too, we have to bear in mind that...
I think each individual's case is unique in their own way.
So when you are seeking answers through these online content, you should be very aware that they can be generalized, not personalized.
The general advice may not apply to your specific situation, because the law is really dependent on specific facts and also local statutes and unique judicial contexts.
And that can't be captured in a short nationwide video.
But if you are a viewer.
And you try to apply that advice to your specific situation that might not apply to your jurisdiction.
So there's no recourse.
You can't go back to the lawyer and say hey, wait a minute, you gave me this advice and it turned out to be bad for me.
And that, sorry, it was free online general advice.
You really have to keep that in line as well.
And I think for normal people, we need to be even more cautious when someone else is seeking us for advice.
This particular type of inquiry
Steve, you mentioned before the show that there was someone who were seeking for your help.
Was that a show related thing you said?
This happened many years ago.
Yeah.
This is.
Another great point is that if you are commenting online on a live stream, be careful what you're commenting, because you don't know what can be used against you later on.
Here's what I mean.
This was years ago when I was living in Seoul and we had a caller show on Saturdays.
We were live on Saturdays.
And one day this guy called and he said something about his wife.
And he said, oh, you know, she's this really amazing wife and she takes care of me very well.
Something along those lines.
About six months later, our show got a call not on air, our show got a call and it was the wife requesting to have the audio of her husband saying she is a great wife because they were going to court to get a divorce and part of his claim is that she was.
She was a terrible wife and blah blah.
So she wanted the audio of him saying how great a wife she was.
I said i'm, I have no idea.
You have to talk to the station about this.
I don't know the legalities of that.
But my point is, if you're on one of these live streams, be careful you know the information you're sharing, because it's not protected, right.
You're not in a lawyer's office.
You haven't signed a contract to have that lawyer-client confidentiality agreement, so just be careful, right.
Back to the lawyer's side of things, where it's a great opportunity to get a new client base.
But I want to talk a little bit about that performative aspect.
Is it fair to say that lawyers might feel that that's an effective way to get new clients through making their live streams a little bit more of a performance rather than simply giving out legal advice?
Based on the previous live streams that I've watched and also some screenshots that I found during the research, I don't think all of the lawyers that are doing live streams feel like they need to.
As long as they give good case examples, as long as they demonstrate a strong professionality in what they do, people would still stick around and listen to what they have to share.
And even better if there are more and more open mic sessions.
In a certain live stream that's commented by one of the lawyers.
He tends to get a bigger flow of audience from time to time and that is helping him to increase in his fan base.
By the fact that he is appreciating that.
I would assume he's working alone.
But for these type of live streams, that's enough them.
It's not like everybody is trying well, there are some that's trying to, you know, utilize a little bit of e-commerce side of the livestream to like they bring in the products for sale and also perhaps try to perform in ways like dancing, in ways that's you know, kind of extraordinary, like telling jokes that you wouldn't expect a lawyer to tell.
So that's all ways of attracting flows of audience.
But I would doubt if every lawyer doing live streaming feel the necessity of doing that.
Yeah, but the more that the market gets saturated.
Imagine if you're a lawyer at a law firm and your boss is pressuring you to bring in clients from a live stream.
And we're even talking about this on Roundtable today, which is proof it's in the news.
Yes.
There's already a lot of lawyers doing this.
There's probably going to be more.
So you're going, again, the point I made before, you're going to feel pressure to perform.
And for me I think that might create a conflict of interest, because at that maybe, maybe I'm saying maybe maybe at some point you start sacrificing your professional reputation for clicks or views or followers.
And that can be a slippery slope because the lawyers are all of a sudden not professional anymore.
No.
But they can become burnt out.
They can start to focus more on the live streams than they are on the cases.
That's also what I've observed, that these lawyers, they are spending...
I cannot say too much, but a lot of time and energy on these live streams during the night and by the day they're working on their cases.
Now if I'm in court for something and my lawyer was up until 3 am live streaming.
I don't want that.
I want him in bed at 9 pm the night before or her in bed at 9 pm the night before, to represent me, to the best of their ability.
I'm not saying it would happen.
I'm just saying it can be a slippery slope.
It's an interesting topic for sure.
And I'm curious to see where this will go in the future.
But even if you don't need some legal advice, pop on to Red Note or Doyen was the other popular one.
Get your popcorn and sit back and watch some other people get some legal advice.
