Interview with: Jigao Zhou, Managing Partner

What do you see as the main points that differentiate Shanghai JianLingChengDa Law Firm from your competitors?

The main differences between JianLingChengDa and the competitors are:

(1) Goal-thinking: Each member of our team takes the client’s target as service target. To be specific, for dispute resolution cases, the goal is to win the case and realise clients’ rights as soon as possible; for non-litigation legal services, the goal is to solve legal issues and prevent legal risks.

(2) High-efficiency teamwork: JianLingChengDa implements integrated management and has the ablity to form multiple teams with different advantages. We can also provide our clients (including their headquarters, subsidiaries and branches) with high-efficieny and high-quality legal services on different aspects, such as construction engineering, investment and financing, and daily ccorporate management;

(3) Rich experience in cross-region disputes: With our base in Shanghai, JianLingChengDa has provided legal services of litigation, arbitration and non-litigation in 30 provinces of PRC and foreign countries, such as Britain, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Rwanda.

(4) Capable of dealing with difficult and complicated cases: JianLingChengDa specilizes in handling novel, difficult, complicated and high amount litigation and arbitration cases in the field of construction projects, investment and financing. In several complicated large cases where we participated in after first instances, with our efforts, the second instances were revised, sent back for re-trial, or retried. Furthermore, we also successfully undertook the first Trust Dispute case and the first Third-Party Revocation Action in PRC.

Which practices do you see growing in the next 12 months? What are the drivers behind that?

In the next 12 months, we estimate that our legal services of construction project dispute resolutions and relevant non-litigation services will increase. The main reason is that most of construction projects cannot resume work on time after the Spring Festival due to the Novel Coronavirus. The construction schedule would be delayed. Besides, due to the shortage of personnel and materials in a short time, the prices of labor and materials would increase a lot after resuming the work in the future. It is estimated that increasing construction enterprises would desire to adjust the contract price. However, the employer may not agree with the adjustment on the grounds that the price agreed in the contract is not adjustable. Meanwhile with huge downward pressure on China’s economy since last year, more relevant disputes will further erupt.

In addition, for the same reasons mentioned above, the demand for non-litigation legal services for construction projects will increase. Since the Novel Coronavirus is a force majeure event, usually contracting parties would not encounter such serious force majeure. Therefore, in order to safeguard their rights and interests and reduce and mitigate the losses caused by the novel coronavirus, a large number of contractors need professionals to provide practical advice on how to assess the impact on the performance of construction contracts, how to claim exemption, how to make decisions on the contracts being performed, how to claim compensation, etc.

What’s the main change you’ve made in the firm that will benefit clients?

(1) Strengthen the research ability: Considering that disputes over construction projects and legal services such as PPP are becoming more and more complicated and difficult, some legal issues involved are entirely new. No high-quality services can be provided without research. Therefore, JianLingChengDa requires every lawyer and paralegal to do deep study and research on the problems encountered in the process of handling each case or providing legal services in new areas such as PPP, and to provide services to clients based on research results.

(2) Set up a new department of Property Preservation and Enforcement: Considering the importance of Property Preservation in cases and the specialty of case enforcement, JianLingChengDa has set up this new department compromised by lawyers with rich experience in Property Preservation and Enforcement to provide better services to clients and improve the efficiency and effect of Property Preservation, and to maximise the interests of clients.

Is technology changing the way you interact with your clients, and the services you can provide them?

JianLingChengDa has established more efficient and convenient communication with clients by using WeChat group, cloud conference system and video conference system. For example, by using video conference system, it can hold video conferences with clients’ project teams located in Hangzhou and even the related One Belt One Road country.

Thus, we can provide legal services for foreign projects without going abroad, expand our service area from 30 provinces of PRC to the world.

Can you give us a practical example of how you have helped a client to add value to their business?

In a construction contract dispute case, the client (the Contractor) intends to recover the final payment of 150 million RMB through legal means to get back money as soon as possible, which has deducted the delay damages claimed by counterparty (the Employer). After collecting and studying the case materials, we analyzed that there were two major problems of such claim. One is that the employer is mainly responsible for such delay, and the other is that the rate of delay damages is too high. We concluded that the delay damages claim would be declined in great possibility and the client would be paid more. After formulating the strategy, we filed this lawsuit on behalf of the client at an amount that did not deduct the delay damages, after then, the counterparty counterclaimed the delay damages. Based on effective and professional legal services, especially strengthening the collection and proof of evidence, case retrieval and research before prosecution, we finally won a full-scale lawsuit, with the winning amount reaching 300 million yuan, which doubled the client’s expected result of 150 million RMB.

Are clients looking for stability and strategic direction from their law firms – where do you see the firm in three years’ time?

JianLingChengDa has provided legal services to many large state-owned construction enterprises for more than three consecutive years. Many subsidiaries of the group are also on our client list. We are confident that we can continue to maintain the cooperative relationship with existing clients and develop more high-quality clients in the next three years.

JianLingChengDa has already become a leader in legal services in the construction real estate field in China. in 2019, JianLingChengDa was evaluated as an excellent law firm in Shanghai and listed as Band 3 in Chambers’ construction engineering field. In the next three years, JianLingChengDa will further realise the new goal of becoming one of the world’s top boutique law firms in construction engineering field.