China Voice: Are they safeguarding rights or breaking laws?

In China, lawyers who use illegal means to defend the rights of their clients are no longer lawyers.

A group from Fengrui, a Beijing law practice, is suspected of disrupting public order and seeking profits by illegally hiring protesters and swaying court decisions in the name of "defending justice and public interests."

The Ministry of Public Security said nine lawyers and several other suspects have been placed under "coercive measures". Since July 2012, the group had organized more than 40 controversial incidents.

Under the guise of safeguarding the rights of the parties in lawsuits, the lawyers were in fact seeking fame and economic gain. Through illegal measures, they turned legal defense in court into a farce.

In April, in Shenhe District Court of Shenyang City in northeast China's Liaoning Province, Wang Yu, a lawyer from Fengrui Law Firm, and other defenders loudly asked staff in the collegiate benches to withdraw in a bid to delay the trial of a criminal case.

"You are all hooligans! You are beasts in human skin!" Failing to achieve this goal, they shouted curses at judges and court police officers. Then Wang and other petitioners held protests outside the court, trying to influence opinion.

This is typical practice for those lawyers under investigation. Zhou Shifeng, head of Fengrui Law Firm, admitted that the practice employed popular local figures unqualified in law as lawyers, to exploit their standing.

One suspect said he believed Zhou started out seeking justice and protecting legal rights, but eventually reached a point where he was refusing to help migrant workers get back their wages on the grounds that it wouldn't generate his firm enough money.

Zhou is good at performing in court. In May 2014, in a case involving forgery and selling registered trademarks, Zhou insisted on his client pleading not guilty rather than accepting a misdemeanor offence. Zhou did this not in the interests of his client, but in the interests of promoting himself. The court convicted the defendant, but Zhou gained both fame and wealth.

Liu Sixin, who wrote legal texts for Zhou, said that after one year of contact, he realized that Zhou's professional capacity was limited.

Xie Yuandong, another suspect, said Zhou mainly relied on legal texts from Liu. If legal texts did not work, he began to talk nonsense and accuse the court.

Lawless lawyers like Zhou treat trials as performance, as a stage on which to make the public believe judges are not qualified and to encourage the public to pressurize courts.

Instead of debating in court, they tried to attack China's legal system, turning ordinary cases into political affairs in order to gain both fame and wealth.

Such lawyers have lost their legitimacy as lawyers. They should be held criminally accountable. Endi