This is really appropos of nothing, but as I was reading a recent article in the WSJ blog about the case against four employees of Rio Tinto, I thought it really illustrated the difference between the Beijing and Shanghai legal markets very well.

Specifically, if the case were being handled in Beijing, I almost guarantee you that any news article would include not just the name of the attorney hired to represent each of the defendants, but also the name of the law firm (e.g. one of the big firms here like King and Wood or Jun He, or a boutique litigation outfit).

As this case in being handled in Shanghai, the article mentions the four attorneys with no mention of any firm.

It goes like this:

Mr. Hu, boss of the ore sales team, will be represented by Duan Qihua, a well-known Shanghai lawyer known as Charles who has worked on a number of cases (in Chinese) involving multinational companies. He couldn’t immediately be reached for comment and his office said he is traveling overseas.

Another attorney in the case is Zhai Jian, a criminal defense lawyer who has handled some of Shanghai’s most sensational corruption cases. Mr. Zhai, who will defend Rio Tinto’s Ge Minqiang, said the families will pay the attorneys. His firm may also handle the case of the fourth defendent, Wang Yong.

Granted, this is criminal defense litigation, not an M&A case or something where a big legal team is the norm.

But still, this really does show the classic difference between the two markets. Shanghai is dominated by famous attorneys who dominate small firms, whereas Beijing is home of the strong law firm. Not that there are no famous lawyers up here, or large firms in Shanghai, but the generalization is still more or less accurate.

This has been another edition of things you don’t really care about.