Justice System: I Litigate for the Whole City

Chapter 306: The Table by the Window

The hallway of the Chongzheng Firm's building smelled of mop water, disinfectant, and the sour scent of paper left sitting too long. December 11, 9:50 a.m., in Chengdong. On the third-floor door, the corner of the legal aid duty roster had curled up. The middle slot had been dampened by moisture; the ink had bled fuzzy at the edges but was still legible: "Li Huilan."

Inside, two people sat at the long table. One was typing at a keyboard, unhurried. At the end by the window sat an enamel mug, tea leaves settled at the bottom.

"Zhengping Firm." Li Huilan looked up and recognized Shen Zhixia first. "You came in May."

"Lawyer Li."

She pushed her chair back. One arm of her glasses was wrapped in tape. Last time it had been clear tape; now it was black electrical tape, wrapped thinner than before.

"Why didn't Director He come herself."

"She sent us," Shen Zhixia said. "She said asking someone over means sending people in person. Sending a letter doesn't count as asking. She sends her regards."

Li Huilan glanced at the corner of the desk, stood, and poured water. The thermos wasn't hot enough; the tea leaves floated on the surface and wouldn't sink. She pushed two glass cups across: first to Shen Zhixia, then to Lu Jibai.

"This one."

"Lu Jibai." He eased the cup closer. "Jiangzhou Zhengping Law Firm."

"The one who came down from Hengzheng," she said. "How'd you end up above a noodle shop."

"Transferred firms July seventeenth."

"What I heard was July twelfth, you resigned." She sat back down. "Resigned, and five days later you'd walked into someone else's door."

"That's right."

"Did Hengzheng settle up with you?"

"The former-firm opinion line—they wrote 'approved.'"

Li Huilan rotated her cup half a turn and tilted her chin toward the other end of the table. The young lawyer typing there closed his notebook, picked up his cup, stood, and pulled the door shut behind him on his way out.

"He doesn't need to hear this," she said. "Talk."

"Three things," Lu Jibai said. "Who the responsible person is. What they're liable for. Where the cases come from."

"First one—you." She looked at Shen Zhixia.

"The firm needs restructuring," Shen Zhixia said. "From a sole proprietorship to a general partnership law firm. Three requirements: at least three partners, each with three or more years in practice, and assets of over three hundred thousand. Miss one, and the paperwork gets kicked back at the Justice Bureau."

"What happens to Director He's name."

"It stays in the partner column. She won't be the responsible person, won't take new cases, won't keep office hours."

"Among the three partners going forward—anyone ever hit with a suspension from practice?"

"No," Lu Jibai said.

"Then get that on paper," Li Huilan said. "This kind of thing, saying it a hundred times isn't worth one verified sheet of paper."

"I have a written reminder on my side," Shen Zhixia said. "It's on file with the Bar Association."

"A reminder isn't a disciplinary sanction," Li Huilan said.

"If a review actually asks, I'll answer," Lu Jibai said. "She won't be a partner. That slot doesn't need her."

Li Huilan didn't press further. She looked toward the landing window, fogged over with condensation.

"She really won't appear in court anymore?"

"December ninth, eleven a.m., the Kang family matter—four pages signed," Shen Zhixia said. "That afternoon she punched holes and bound the file herself, wrote the file cover in her own hand. She told the two of us, to our faces: last case."

"I've heard those words from her before," Li Huilan said. "The previous two times, three months later she was back in the courtroom."

"This time she's not even taking cases," Shen Zhixia said. "The firm's cases go to me. I appear in court. I sign."

"You don't fill that slot."

"I got my certificate July nineteenth. Not enough years in practice."

"Then who supervises you for the next three years."

"He does."

Li Huilan's gaze shifted to Lu Jibai's face and held for two seconds. "Until when."

"Until the day she reaches three years," Lu Jibai said.

"And after she's trained?"

"After that, she trains others herself."

She made a small sound of assent, lifted her cup, and drank. It was cold; she drank anyway. "Second item."

"Me," Lu Jibai said.

She looked at him without hurry, from the shoulder line of his jacket down to the tea at his hand, then back to his face. "You'd put your name on a small firm as responsible person."

"Being named requires reporting practice history," he said. "The certificate says July seventeenth. Flip a page and it's right there."

"I'm asking whether you're willing, not whether it can be filed."

Lu Jibai set his cup down flat. "Every piece of paper outside the firm carries my signature. If something goes wrong inside, it carries my signature too. General partners bear unlimited joint and several liability for the firm's debts."

"How many times have you checked that provision."

"Three."

"Checking and knowing aren't the same thing."

"Then wait until the day I sign, and see whether I know."

Li Huilan made another small sound, stood, and moved the enamel mug to the windowsill. The bottom left a circle in the thin dust. Outside, a truck was unloading aluminum stock, bars dragged down one by one, the noise seeping through the window gap.

"Third item."

"Where the cases come from," she said.

"Legal Aid Center assignments," Lu Jibai said. "Referrals from the subdistrict, from the Women's Federation. People who come up from downstairs to ask."

"And the rider groups," Shen Zhixia said. "The alleys around Old Town—when something happens in someone's family, they ask at the noodle shop first."

"Fees?"

"The legal aid portion has a subsidy. The rest is per case," Shen Zhixia said. "Low."

"How low."

"A month's fees, after rent, utilities, paper and printing—what's left is enough for two people to eat noodles," Lu Jibai said.

"Then where does the three hundred thousand come from."

"Director He is valuing her life's savings," he said. "The rest, you and I split. It's not a big number. I'll work it up, show you the paper, then let you say the amount."

"At my age, my money isn't thick."

"I know," he said. "That's why you see the paper first."

"Do you understand what he just said," Li Huilan asked Shen Zhixia suddenly.

"I understand," Shen Zhixia said. "He's saying the number is small."

"I'm saying from now on, you need to talk the same way." She pushed the cup back onto the windowsill. "Paper first, then the number."

Li Huilan sat back down, both hands on the edge of the table.

"You ask about the cases first, not the money," Shen Zhixia said.

"Small money I can accept," she said. "Few cases, I won't."

Beneath the cup on the windowsill, another ring of water seeped out. She wiped it with the back of her hand—wiping the table, not the cup.

"What I've heard comes down to one thing: He Xiufen is stepping back, but the firm doesn't dissolve," she said. "I'll come."

Shen Zhixia's pen stopped on the page.

[Thud. The third person has agreed.]

"You're not asking about the firm."

"I already asked." Li Huilan said. "That call the night before last, I listened to it twice. A person like her, when she says 'come over,' her mind's already made up. If I weren't going, she wouldn't have called a second time."

"Her call was to you," Shen Zhixia said.

"Doesn't matter who she called," she said. "In twenty years, that woman has never asked anyone for anything."

[Thud. Three cases follow the person, not the firm.]

"But transferring firms isn't just signing a name." Li Huilan drew her hands back from the table's edge.

Shen Zhixia pressed her pen into the notebook and waited.

"I have three cases in progress," she said. "One is unpaid wages—eleven months, the labor contractor bolted, the Arbitration Commission has set a hearing date. One is elderly support—both sides are in mediation, nothing signed yet. One is legal aid—waiting for the Center to reassign it."

"What do you plan to do."

"Ask one case at a time," she said. "A case belongs to the client, not the lawyer. Whoever's willing to come with me, we process a transfer of authorization. Whoever isn't, I finish what needs finishing before I go, so no one's delayed if they switch lawyers."

"The legal aid assignment?"

"That one has to be reassigned to the firm by the Legal Aid Center. I'll handle that myself. No need for you to run it."

"Is the one with the hearing before New Year's."

"The twenty-ninth," she said. "I'll come over on the sixteenth. That hearing, I'll still handle it. If it doesn't wrap, they find someone else—but I'll be in court with them."

"And the accounts." She kept going. "On Chongzheng's side, I have uncollected agency fees, unsettled subsidies, and a delivery fee I paid out of pocket for the firm. If the firm is going to issue the opinion approving my transfer, it has to settle my accounts to zero before it does. If the books aren't clean, why should they stamp it."

"You should write this down." She looked at the notebook.

"Writing."

"Which lines are you writing."

Shen Zhixia turned the notebook slightly and pointed: "Unpaid wages case, hearing on the twenty-ninth. Elderly support case, in mediation. Legal aid case, awaiting reassignment. The legal aid one she'll handle herself. Accounts cleared to zero. The sixteenth."

Li Huilan read it, pushed the notebook back. "Missing one line."

"Which one."

"'If it doesn't wrap, I'll be in court with them,'" she said. "Don't leave that one out. Leave it out, and all that's left on the paper is a word about leaving."

Shen Zhixia bowed her head and added it, pressing hard enough that the pen bled through the page.

"The sixteenth," Lu Jibai said.

"I set the sixteenth for myself," Li Huilan said. "I've put the date out there, so I have to make it."

"Then we won't come nag before the sixteenth."

"No need to nag." She straightened the cup. "I said a day; it's that day."

"I've known her for twenty years." She said it suddenly, then stood and opened the window half a finger's width. Cold air came in first and lifted the corner of a loose sheet on the desk. "Back then, on the labor arbitration circuit, I appeared for the factory and she appeared for a female worker. The woman asked for three hundred yuan—not a cent more. After the ruling, she was still standing at the door, and no one could talk her into leaving, not until she'd gotten them to explain every word."

"She was like that then, too," Shen Zhixia said.

"That's just how she is," Li Huilan said. "So the night before last, when I heard that sentence from her, I knew this time she's really stepping away."

Li Huilan stood and walked them to the door. Passing the other end of the long table, she looked at the two of them.

"He Xiufen sent the two of you."

"Yes."

"One states three items, the other writes down three items," she said. "This firm of hers—from now on, that's what it looks like."

Shen Zhixia put her notebook into her bag, reached the door, and stopped.

"Lawyer Li."

"Hm."

Li Huilan turned back. At the corner of the desk lay a kraft paper envelope, its edges worn pale—the same as the one in May. She reached out and pushed it inward; the paper slid half an inch across the desk, the worn corner lifting.

"I've kept this original for three years," she said. "In May, I gave her a copy."

"That form, plus two others, was attached to the defense submission," Shen Zhixia said. "It never came back."

"Paper like that, once it's submitted, no one has time to give it back." She pushed the envelope back into the corner and pressed it down. "Go tell Director He: that original—I didn't keep it for nothing."

In the stairwell, the sound-activated lights came on one floor, then another. On the second floor someone was washing a mop, water running from the far end of the hall to their feet, footprints pressing over footprints.

The door closed behind them, the spring lock clicking shut.