ABSTRACT
China’s legal construction has made great progress since the reform and open policy of 1978. In 1997, the Chinese authorities decided to adopt a new guiding principle which is “to govern the country according to law, building a socialist country under rule of law”. Rule of law has become China’s fundamental development goal. At the same time, Chinese legal education has seen significant changes over the past three decades. In 1977, there were only three universities in China which had law schools, and altogether they only enrolled 223 students. At present, however, over 620 institutions of higher education offer law degree programs, with some 400,000 students majoring in law. In China, basic degrees in law range from bachelor to doctorate, covering LLB, JM (Chinese version of JD program in Northern America), LLM as well as JSD (PhD in law). There were only some 200 lawyers in China back in 1980, but the number has reached nearly 200,000up to now. The shortage of legal professionals is no longer a problem.
