Modernity promises portable expertise: standardized credentials and formal training should allow professionals to work effectively across contexts. We test this promise through Chinese criminal defense lawyers who practice outside their home jurisdictions, whom we call “parachute lawyers.” Analyzing 553,814 criminal cases from 2014 to 2020, we find that parachute lawyers reduce clients’ probability of probation and increase prison sentences compared with local counsel. Elite education offers only modest mitigation, and alumni networks little compensation. Despite China’s unified legal codes, procedures, and bar examination, effective legal practice remains irreducibly local, shaped by jurisdiction-specific “legal microclimates.”
Sida Liu is Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Hong Kong.
Yu Xiaohong is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tsinghua University. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University and previously held appointments as an An Wang Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University. Her research focuses on Chinese politics, comparative judicial politics, and empirical legal studies, particularly China’s judicial reforms and the relationship between law and politics. She teaches “Judicial Politics” and “Law and Politics in the Era of Big Data.” Her work has appeared in journals including the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, The China Quarterly, and Tsinghua Law Review, as well as in publications by Cambridge University Press.
Host: Prof Dong ZHANG, Associate Professor, Division of Social Science, HKUST