Disrupting Consent: Digitalization and Precarity among Early-Career Chinese Lawyers
Wednesday, 11 March 2026 | 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. | Room 305. Third Floor, York Lanes, Keele Campus, York University
With Sida Liu, University of Hong Kong
This study examines how digitalization reshapes labour control in an oversupplied, tightly regulated legal services market. Drawing on 103 in-depth interviews conducted between 2023 and 2025 with early-career lawyers across nine Chinese provinces and municipalities, we show how the traditional consent to exploitative work, previously sustained by expectations of career advancement, is being eroded during lawyers’ professional socialization. Respondents describe disorganized internship and recruitment processes, dependence on apprenticeship-style training, and everyday working conditions characterized by low pay, high pressure, routinized overtime, and constrained opportunities for expertise development. As case acquisition and promotion pathways become increasingly uncertain, young lawyers turn to digital platforms and social media to secure clients and cultivate personal brands. Paradoxically, these technology-enabled strategies intensify competition and further deteriorate young lawyers’ working conditions.
Sida Liu is Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. Before joining the HKU faculty in 2022, he taught at the University of Toronto and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Professor Liu has conducted extensive empirical research on China’s legal reform and legal professions. In addition to his empirical work, he also writes on theories of law, professions, and social spaces.
This event is presented by the China Studies Group at York University.
A light lunch will be served. Please register in advance using this link.
For more information: ycar[at]yorku.ca
