(Issued on March 29, 2022 in accordance with Decree No. 189 of the People’s Government of Guangzhou Municipality and to be put into force on June 1, 2022)

　　Article 1     These Measures are formulated in accordance with relevant laws and regulations, on the basis of the actual conditions of this Municipality and with a view to strengthening the construction of the public legal service system, improving the quality of public legal services, meeting the people’s growing demand for legal services and turning Guangzhou into a leading city in the modern legal service industry.

　　Article 2     The term “public legal service” herein refers to the legal service facilities, products, activities and other related legal services provided by the people’s government and with the participation of the society to meet the increasing demands of various social groups for legal services, mainly including the rule-of-law publicity and education services, lawyer-related legal services, notary legal services, legal aid services, mediation services, legal advisory services, arbitration services, forensic identification services, legal professional qualification examination services and other related services.

　　Article 3     These Measures are applicable to the promotion of public legal services and related activities within the administrative area of this Municipality.

　　Article 4     The development of public legal services shall aim at covering both urban and rural areasthat provides convenient and efficient public legal services to all, and adhere to the principles of the Party’s leadership, the government’s responsibility, departmental synergies, and public involvement.

　　Article 5     The municipal and district people’s governments shall strengthen their leadership over the work related to public legal services, include the construction of the public legal service system into the overall plan for economic and social development, establish an overall coordination mechanism for public legal services, improve the incentive mechanism for securing the public legal services, adjust the effective supply of basic public legal services based on economic and social development level, and ensure the funds for public legal services.

　　The town people’s governments and the sub-district offices shall, in accordance with relevant regulations, well manage the public legal services within their respective administrative areas.

　　Article 6     The municipal judicial authorities are responsible for formulating and implementing the development plan for the construction of city-wide public legal service system, coordinating the allocation of the Municipality’s public legal service resources, supervising, guiding and promoting the city-wide public legal service related work, and organizing the implementation of these Measures. The district judicial authorities are specifically responsible for the public legal service related work within its administrative area.

　　The authorities in charge of development and reform, human resources and social security, finance, civil affairs, commerce, market regulation, industry and information technology, government service data management and petition, among others, shall make earnest efforts to promote public legal services within the scope of their respective functions and duties.

　　Article 7     The trade unions, communist youth leagues, women’s federations, disabled persons’ federations, industry and commerce federations, law societies, and other legal service-related industry associations shall, within the scope of their respective functions and duties, participate in the construction of the public legal service system to make joint efforts in promoting public legal services.

　　Villagers’ committees and residents’ committees shall provide and promote public legal services in accordance with relevant regulations.

　　Natural persons, legal persons and other organizations may support the development of public legal services in such forms as making investment, donating property, funding projects, sponsoring activities, setting up public welfare funds, and providing products and services. Donated properties are entitled to tax incentives as provided for by the law.

　　Article 8     The physical platforms for public legal service include the municipal public legal service center set up by the municipal judicial authorities, the district public legal service center set up by the district judicial authorities, the town (street) public legal service workstations, and the village (community) public legal service offices.

　　The physical platform for public legal services can be set up independently, or set up by relying on other facilities. A public legal service center may be set up on the premises of legal aid institutions and other units, a public legal service workstation may be set up on the premises of town (street) judicial offices or other facilities, and a public legal service office may be set up on the offices of villagers’ (residents’) committees.

　　Article 9     The municipal judicial authorities shall formulate a list of service items and service guides for the municipal public legal service center, and formulate the uniform work specifications on the city-wide physical platforms for public legal services.

　　The district judicial authorities shall formulate a list of service items and service guides for the district public legal service center, town (street) public legal service workstations, and village (community) public legal service offices.

　　The list of public legal service items shall specify public legal service names, service contents, service providers, and other related information, and shall be updated and adjusted in a timely manner according to the actual situation. The list of public legal service items and service guides shall be duly released to the public.

　　Article 10   The municipal/district public legal service center provides the following legal services:

　　(1) Services of legal publicity and education, legal consultation, legal inquiry, legal aid, and mediation;

　　(2) Guidelines for handling such legal affairs as lawyers defense or procuration by the attorney, notarization, forensic identification, administrative reconsideration, and arbitration;

　　(3) Receiving and answering inquiries related to judicial administration and other related business, and guiding relevant services;

　　(4) Other legal services.

　　Article 11    The public legal service workstation provides the following legal services:

　　(1) Services of legal publicity and education, legal consultation, and mediation;

　　(2) Guidelines for handling such legal affairs as legal aid, lawyer defense or procuration by the attorney, grass-roots legal services, notarization, and forensic identification;

　　(3) Organizing and coordinating village (community) public legal service offices and village (community) legal consultants to provide legal services to village (community) residents;

　　(4) Other legal services.

　　Article 12   The public legal service office mainly provides such legal services as publicity and education on the rule of law, legal consultation, and people’s mediation.

　　The district judicial authorities shall coordinate the resources of lawyers, the villagers’ (residents’) committee and the law firm shall sign a legal consultant appointment contract through two-way selection, the law firm shall regularly assign qualified lawyers to serve as village (community) legal advisors at public legal service offices to carry out related work. Village (community) legal advisor provides the following legal services:

　　(1) Providing legal opinions on village (community) governance, assisting in the general election of villagers’ or residents’ committees, (formulating) revising village rules and regulations, and participating in community consultations, etc.;

　　(2) Providing legal advice to the public, conducting legal lectures and other legal publicity and education activities;

　　(3) Accepting the assignment of legal aid institutions to undertake legal aid cases within the jurisdiction;

　　(4) Participating in people’s mediation work and assist in the handling of major sensitive group cases (incidents);

　　(5) Other services as agreed in the appointment contract.

　　Article 13   The municipal/district judicial authorities shall, in conjunction with the departments of industry and information technology, government service data management and other departments, strengthen the application of information technology to public legal services, comprehensively develop and use such modern information technologies as big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence to promote integrated development of public legal service physical platforms with public legal service network platforms, hotline platforms and other relevant government service platforms to achieve functional interoperability and information sharing.

　　The municipal judicial authorities shall establish a unified electronic legal document demonstration platform for such public legal services as notarization and forensic identification, and promote the development and integrated application of such information-based public legal service facilities and products as the “Guangzhou Law Popularization” integrated media platform, the “Guangzhou Fashitong” remote video system for legal consultation, the “Guangzhou Wisdom Mediation” applet, and the intelligent self-service terminal equipment for legal services, so as to provide quality and convenient public legal services to the public.

　　The municipal/district judicial authorities shall combine the use of big data on public legal service to predict the development trend of legal service demand and the risks of social conflicts, thus can improve the quality and development level of public legal services.

　　Article 14   The municipal judicial authorities shall take the lead in establishing a mature coordination and liaison mechanism for the examination affairs of this Municipality for the national unified legal professional qualification exam. The municipal departments of education, industry and information technology, public security, health and other relevant units shall, within the scope of their respective functions and duties, set up test seats at test schools and ensure power supply and network security, conduct public security management and traffic command and coordination, provide support and cooperation in terms of medical treatment and Covid-19 prevention and control, to ensure the smooth running of the examination work.

　　Article 15   Affordable units and individuals are encouraged to cooperate with administrative law enforcement units in providing free services of legal publicity, legal consultation, mediation, and recommendation of public legal services to the society, by using traditional and emerging media to expand channels for public legal services and innovating public legal service supply models.

　　Entities and individuals that provide public legal services are encouraged to put more emphasis on servicing such special groups as low-income groups, disabled persons, migrant workers, the elderly, minors and single-parent families in difficulties, as well as such special care recipients as military family members and veterans, open “green channels” to give priority to handling their matters, and grant deducted or exempted service fees. Notary institutions and forensic identification institutions shall reduce or exempt notarization and identification fees for legal aid recipients.

　　Entities and individuals that provide public legal services are encouraged to provide public legal services in areas where public legal service resources are relatively short, so as to promote the balanced development of public legal services.

　　Article 16   An administrative law enforcement authority shall, in accordance with the requirement of “the law enforcement authority is responsible for strengthening public legal awareness”, formulate its own law popularization responsibility list for providing rule of law advocacy services, which shall specify the laws, regulations and rules to be popularized, the legal popularization objects, expected goals, popularization methods, time schedules, responsible persons and other contents. The relevant administrative law enforcement authority shall, in accordance with the responsibilities specified by the newly promulgated laws, regulations and rules, formulate a responsibility list for special law popularization, and organize the publicity and education of the newly promulgated laws, regulations and rules. The list of responsibilities for law popularization shall be released to the public in a timely manner and accept social oversight.

　　An administrative law enforcement authority shall establish a mature work system for interpreting laws with cases, strengthen the collection, sorting out and publication of typical cases, and give play to the guiding, standardizing, preventing and educating functions of typical cases.

　　An administrative law enforcement authority may organize administrative law enforcement personnel, government legal advisers, government lawyers, village (community) legal advisers and other legal workers to participate in law popularization activities, so as to improve the coverage and potency of law popularization publicity.

　　Article 17   The municipal and district people’s governments shall make full use of such public places as squares, parks, stations, public libraries, cultural palaces and red cultural venues, as well as village (community) bulletin boards, outdoor billboards, electronic display screens and other facilities to construct places and facilities for the rule of law culture promotion and education, including the rule-of-law culture theme square, rule-of-law culture theme park, rule-of-law culture corridor, and rule-of-law display window.

　　The municipal and district people’s governments may coordinate resources to build such legal publicity and education venues for minors as legal education bases, rule-of-law museum and exhibition halls, and carry out public legal services and mass rule-of-law cultural activities.

　　Article 18   A legal aid institution shall establish a mature mechanism for providing easy and smooth channels for the access to legal aid services, gradually promote the application of legal aid on a cross-city basis, and verify the financial situations of applicants in difficulties through a combination of information sharing inquiries and the applicant’s personal integrity commitment.

　　Article 19   This Municipality supports the establishment of legal aid foundations in accordance with the law. The municipal judicial authorities shall guide the legal aid foundations to organize and carry out public welfare legal aid projects, provide public welfare legal services for the poor and weak and specific groups, and promote the development of legal aid undertakings.

　　Article 20   People’s mediation organizations may prevent and reduce the occurrence of conflicts and disputes by regularly conducting comprehensive analysis and evaluation of conflicts and disputes and participating in the investigation of conflicts and disputes, and can improve the quality and efficiency of people’s mediation legal services by adopting an approach that combines law, reason and emotion when proceeding with mediation of conflicts and disputes.

　　The municipal/district judicial authorities shall establish a litigation-mediation coordination working mechanism with the people’s court, protect the parties’ right to know and choose the people’s mediation before litigation, improve the procedures for judicial confirmation of agreements reached through people’s mediation, promote the organic connection between the people’s mediation, administrative mediation and judicial mediation, and apply diversified methods to resolve conflicts and disputes.

　　Article 21   The following persons are encouraged to practice public legal services as volunteers in accordance with the law:

　　(1) Lawyers, public notaries, forensic identification experts, arbitrators, grass-roots legal service workers and social workers;

　　(2) In-service and retired personnel engaged in legal education and research;

　　(3) Students majoring in law at colleges and universities;

　　(4) Other qualified personnel who have professional legal knowledge or are engaged in law practicing.

　　Public legal services that meet the conditions for volunteer service shall be entered into the volunteer service information system designated by the Department of Civil Affairs of the State Council in accordance with relevant regulations, and corresponding guarantees and incentives shall be given to volunteers engaged in these public service services.

　　Article 22   Lawyers are encouraged to independently carry out or participate in public welfare legal service activities in the fields of serving urban and rural people, serving private enterprises, and promoting rural revitalization.

　　It is advocated that each lawyer participates in not less than 50 hours of public legal services as a volunteer or handles at least 2 legal aid cases every year.

　　Lawyers are encouraged to assist administrative organs in receiving petitions, resolving cases involving law and litigation, responding to major emergencies and participating in administrative law enforcement.

　　Article 23   This Municipality supports notary institutions to develop notary services in towns (streets) and villages (communities), and provide services of roving, centralized and online application of certificates to meet the needs for legal services of the people in relatively remote areas.

　　Notary institutions are encouraged to provide free notarization services for the wills made by the elderly age above 70 who have registered permanent residence in this Municipality.

　　It is advocated that each notary public participates in not less than 50 hours of public legal services as a volunteer every year.

　　Article 24   When recruiting legal staff and legal advisors, enterprises and other organizations are encouraged to give priority to those with good public legal volunteer service records under the same conditions. For recruiting civil servants, recruiting legal staff and legal advisors by public institutions, the records on public legal volunteer services may bring extra points to the performance evaluation.

　　Colleges and universities are encouraged to take the public legal volunteer service as a reference for legal teachers to participate in the assessment and evaluation of social services, and under the same conditions, priority will be given to teachers with good records on public legal volunteer services. Colleges and universities are also encouraged to take public legal volunteer service as an important part of law students’ hours of social practice and professional internship.

　　Article 25   The municipal judicial authorities shall, in conjunction with the municipal authorities in charge of development and reform, commerce and state-owned assets supervision and management, establish a working mechanism for hiring lawyers for major economic and trade activities, and explore the introduction of professional opinions of lawyers as a necessary legal document for specific market economic activities in the fields of banking, securities, insurance, ecological environment, investment and financing, and intellectual property rights.

　　The municipal/district judicial authorities may, by establishing legal service groups, organize legal service talent resources such as lawyers, public notaries, forensic identification experts, people’s mediators and arbitrators to participate in major economic and trade activities and major construction projects, so as to provide special legal services for further optimization of the business environment and prevention and resolution of major risks.

　　Article 26   Public legal service institutions are encouraged to play the role of digitization and information sharing, refine procedures for handling legal affairs, provide online remote legal services, improve service facilities for the convenience of the people and enhance social satisfaction with public legal services.

　　Public legal service institutions are also encouraged to provide door-to-door services to people with limited mobility and critical illnesses, and provide public legal service products and such comprehensive family legal services as property disposal, voluntary guardianship, and will handling for the elderly that meet the age requirements.

　　Municipal and district public legal service centers and legal aid institutions shall, when providing public legal services for the elderly and disabled, provide barrier-free facilities and services according to the actual situation.

　　Article 27   Notary institutions are encouraged to deepen their practice in the fields of people’s livelihood, finance, private enterprises, property rights protection and responding to public emergencies, give full play to the function of notarization as a preventive judicial system, and participate in the diversified resolution of conflicts and disputes.

　　Administrative law enforcement authorities may introduce notarization to administrative law enforcement activities according to the actual situation, for the purpose of protecting the lawful rights and interests of citizens, legal persons or other organizations in accordance with the law.

　　This Municipality supports notary institutions and people’s courts to establish a coordination mechanism to promote notaries’ participation in mediation, evidence collection, document service, preservation and enforcement and other ancillary judicial affairs, and handle notarization that makes enforceable effect the creditor’s rights documents.

　　This Municipality encourages the establishment of a conditional advance acceptance system for notarization applications that meet the basic conditions, have complete principal supporting materials and lack secondary supporting documents.

　　Article 28   The municipal judicial authorities shall strengthen coordination with relevant industry authorities, and support industry-based and professional people’s mediation organizations in the fields of medical care, road traffic, labor disputes, property management, finance, Internet and intellectual property to take advantages of their expertise and professional strength in mediation of conflicts and disputes in their respective industries and professional fields.

　　This Municipality encourages people’s mediation committees to select and appoint lawyers, notaries public, arbitrators, grass-roots legal service workers, doctors, teachers, experts and scholars, social workers and other social professionals as well as deputies to the National People’s Congress, CPPCC members and retired civil servants to serve as people’s mediators.

　　The judicial authorities shall strengthen the brand building of industry-based and professional people’s mediation organizations and individual mediation offices, and establish a systematic online training platform for people’s mediators.

　　Article 29   The municipal/district judicial authorities may, in conjunction with the authorities in charge of market regulation and industry and information technology, federations of industry and commerce and relevant chambers of commerce, integrate legal service talent resources, provide legal publicity and education service, legal consultation service and other services for enterprises and individual businesses in need, and promote the implementation of “at least one legal advisor at one professional market (park)”, “law lectures” and “legal risk examination” for private enterprises or small and medium-sized enterprises, so as to help enterprises improve their governance structure, management systems and prevent legal risks.

　　Article 30   The municipal/district judicial authorities shall cooperate with the education authorities to promote the demonstration activities of law-based schools and boost the work of “at least one legal advisor at one school”, “the vice principal in charge of law-based school governance”, etc., to improve the legal awareness of minors and effectively safeguard the legal rights and interests of minors.

　　Article 31   This Municipality encourages extraterritorial law identification services through such means as the establishment of extraterritorial legal identification service agencies, nation-specific legal information databases, case databases and expert databases, so as to expand and optimize extraterritorial legal identification channels and methods.

　　Article 32   The municipal/district judicial authorities shall bring up internationally competitive legal service institutions, and support legal service institutions to carry out international cooperation to provide legal services for this Municipality and the “Belt and Road” countries and regions in the fields of integration of customs clearance, cross-regional trade platforms, industrial technologies and energy resources.

　　The municipal judicial authorities shall strengthen the legal service industry’s external cooperation, promote the development of the Guangzhou Office of “Belt and Road” Lawyers Association, the Guangzhou International Commercial Mediation Center and the Guangzhou International Business Related Legal Service Center, and support the construction of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Commercial Dispute Resolution Center and the Asia-Pacific Regional International Arbitration Center.

　　The municipal commerce authority shall, in conjunction with chambers of commerce and relevant industry associations, build an information exchange platform for foreign-related law firms and foreign-related enterprises, and promote foreign-related legal services as the key content of such domestic/foreign exhibitions and business fairs as the China Import and Export Fair (Canton Fair).

　　Article 33   The municipal judicial authorities shall, in conjunction with the Guangzhou Lawyers Association, promote law firms in this Municipality to establish joint operation and business alliances with world-renowned law firms and join internationally renowned lawyers associations or alliances of lawyers associations, aiming at creating branded law firms with international and professional competitiveness.

　　The municipal judicial authorities shall, in conjunction with the Guangzhou Lawyers Association, boost the pilot work in this Municipality for Hong Kong and Macao legal practitioners and lawyers to obtain Mainland practice qualifications and engage in legal affairs, and actively explore the lawyer practicing insurance system for Hong Kong and Macao lawyers to purchase practicing insurance in the Mainland with reference to the insurance types and standards of Mainland lawyers.

　　Article 34   The municipal/district people’s governments shall, based on the national economic and social development level, population structure, environmental conditions and the needs of the development of public legal services, reasonably set up the quantity, type, scale and layout of public legal service facilities to construct and gradually improve public legal service facilities as per the principles of balanced development and convenience for the people, with such factors as regional radius, traffic and flow of people being taken into account.

　　Article 35   This Municipality spares no efforts to promote the construction of legal service clusters, integrate such legal resources as legal services, legal education and legal research, optimize the structure of the modern legal service industry, encourage the entry of quality and efficient legal service institutions, build itself a legal service maker base, and cultivate social organizations in the field of legal services, so as to form a modern legal service industry development agglomeration belt with reasonable spatial layout, clear industrial characteristics, and complete supporting functions.

　　This Municipality encourages the gathering of quality legal resources to build a legal center based in Guangzhou, leading in Guangdong Province, influencing the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and having a global presence.

　　Article 36   The municipal/district people’s governments shall include the construction funds and government procurement funds for basic public legal service industry into the annual financial budget to ensure thefunding for platform construction, legal publicity and education, legal aid, people’s mediation, village (community) legal advisors, notaries public’s participation in judicial assistance. The specific standards for the classified payment of subsidies and allowances for basic public legal services shall be formulated by the judicial authorities in conjunction with the finance authority, and shall be duly amended and subject to dynamic adjustments based on such factors as the type of service items, the cost required and the financial affordability.

　　The municipal/district people’s governments shall establish a mature system for government procurement of basic public legal services, where the purchasers shall organize and implement purchase activities in accordance with the relevant laws, regulations and rules on government procurement.

　　Article 37   The municipal judicial authorities shall, in conjunction with the finance authority, support the development of full-time people’s mediators, and encourage the addition of more full-time people’s mediators in the places with large populations, excessive conflicts/disputes or heavy mediation tasks as well as in industry-based and professional people’s mediation committees.

　　Article 38   This Municipality supports the inclusion of such legal service institutions as law firms, notary institutions and forensic identification institutions into the scope of policy support for small and medium-sized enterprises for their obtainment of policy benefits with reference to small and medium-sized enterprises.

　　This Municipality supports the development of foreign-related lawyer training institutions and the training of foreign-related legal talents, so as to improve the professional level of legal services provided by foreign-related lawyers.

　　The municipal/district people’s governments shall formulate favorable policies for the development of legal service institutions and legal service talents, and provide rewards or subsidies for legal service institutions with outstanding contributions to the economic and social development of this Municipality or whose annual operating income has reached a certain amount and legal service talents whose taxable income has reached a certain specified amount, and implement preferential policies for high-end or in-demand legal service talents working in this Municipality in terms of house purchase and settlement, children’s schooling, medical insurance.

　　Article 39   The municipal/district judicial authorities shall establish a mechanism for applying public legal services to response to emergencies at the corresponding level, and formulate contingency plans for major emergencies in accordance with the law. In the event of a major emergency, the judicial authority shall immediately initiate the contingency plan and organize relevant authorities to provide the public with such special emergency public legal services as special legal publicity for legal issues related to the emergency, special legal consultation, mediation, notarization, forensic identification and legal aid related to the emergency as well as other legal services beneficial to promoting the resumption of work and production and the restoration of social order.

　　Article 40   The municipal/district judicial authorities shall strengthen the supervision over the public legal service institutions and their staff in this Municipality, establish a mature quality evaluation mechanism of public legal services, and regularly organize the evaluation on public legal service institutions in terms of infrastructure, staffing, business development, document quality, archives management and public satisfaction to improve the quality and efficiency of public legal services and to promote the systematized and standardized development of public legal service institutions.

　　The municipal/district judicial authorities may introduce the third parties to conduct evaluation on performance of public legal services by public legal service institutions, and take the evaluation results as the basis for the assessment, reward and punishment of public legal service institutions and their staff.

　　Article 41   The municipal judicial authorities shall, in conjunction with relevant industry associations, improve the quality and credibility of public legal services, provide more targeted guidance to public legal service personnel, strengthen business training and case warning education, guide them to maintain proper relationship with service objects and concerned parties and eliminate tunneling, and promote the establishment of an accountability mechanism for identifying and investigating responsibilities for misjudged cases and poor service quality to investigate and punish acts in breach of laws and regulations.

　　This Municipality supports lawyers associations, notary institutions, forensic identification and other industry associations to play their roles as self-discipline regulatory organizations and to establish mature industry credit mechanisms and industry disciplinary systems.

　　Article 42   The judicial authorities shall establish mature public legal service information disclosure systems, timely announce to the public the information on public legal service institutions and their practitioners, service platforms, service content, service hours, assessment results of service institutions, and expenditures related to basic public legal services (including government procurement), and consciously accept public supervision.

　　Article 43   Natural persons, legal persons and other organizations shall have the right to oversight, evaluate and put forward opinions and suggestions on public legal services in accordance with the law.

　　The municipal/district judicial authorities shall establish mature reporting and complaint systems, and provide hotlines, mailboxes, e-mails and other channels for reporting, accept and take a law-based approach to handle reports and complaints related to public legal services.

　　The municipal/district judicial authorities shall establish and improve such work systems as public legal service leader consulting days, feedback on and announcement of public opinions and suggestions, etc.

　　Article 44   The term “public welfare legal services” herein refers to the non-profit legal services mainly provided by relevant entities or individuals to support social public or welfare undertakings. Public legal volunteer service is a kind of public welfare legal service.

　　The term “legal consultation” herein refers to the provision of answers to legal questions, legal guidance and other services through channels of the Internet, hotlines and on-site consultation.

　　The term “legal inquiry” herein refers to inquiry services and legal map inquiry services that provide basic information of legal service institutions and their practitioners, as well as the records of their occupation, rewards, punishments, business activities, performance of social services, credits, etc.

　　The term “mediation” herein refers to mediation services including people’s mediation and administrative mediation, including the mediation over labor and personnel disputes.

　　The term “physical platform for public legal services” herein refers to places and facilities set up by municipal/district judicial authorities, town people’s governments or sub-district offices to provide public legal services to the society, and in essence, a kind of government service platforms.

　　Article 45   These Measures shall come into force on June 1, 2022.