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China Law. Creatives Need Not Apply?

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

Leslie Forman over at the Beijing Corporate Training Blog did an interesting post the other day regarding a conversation she had with a Chinese lawyer on creativity. The post is entitled, "Creativity in the Context of Chinese Legal Work" and it relates how this Chinese lawyer insisted Chinese legal work mandates against creativity. This morning, Leslie started a discussion on this topic over at the China Law Blog Group on Linked in, here. The key lines from the post are as follows:

He [the Chinese lawyer] kept saying, ?I?m not creative.? In his work, it is rare for anyone to make ?Be creative? a chirpy imperative. Legal work depends on both established procedures and clients? expectations, and it would be quite odd for a manager to insist on explicitly creative output. Also, he mentioned that a Chinese manager would lose face if he admitted that he ?himself cannot solve the problem in question.? In the rare circumstance that he would communicate such a thing, he would do so in a roundabout way that would both maintain his dignity and imply the desire for assistance.

Nearly a year ago, I said something similar in a post I did, entitled, "Working With Chinese and Korean Lawyers. The Big Four Issues With Each:"

The Chinese lawyer?s role is different. Chinese lawyers far too often see their role as doing what the client tells them to do, rather than telling the client what should be done. If a client calls me and says she wants to do A, my knee-jerk response is to ask why. The typical Chinese lawyer?s response is to say yes

Are Chinese lawyers really less creative (generally) than Western lawyers? If so, why? I am not at all sure the division on creativity is a Chinese/American one. I actually find the division runs more along the lines of civil law versus common law countries. What do you think? Also please feel free to discuss this here as well.

Full post as published by China Law Blog on January 21, 2010 (boomark / email).