Ms Michelle Z. B. Yang

During her study at East China University of Political Science and Law, Michelle had achieved various kinds of honours including University-level Individual Scholarships and National Scholarships. She had also published a thesis named The Analysis of the Legal Issues on the Tires-specific Safeguard Measures Proposed by the US, in the National Level Academic Journal, Commercial Culture.

Michelle had received professional training in areas of corporate/foreign investment, capital market/securities, labour law, etc. when she was working as an intern in the Shanghai office of a sizeable mainland law firm. In addition, Michelle had worked as a research assistant for the School of Law of the City University of Hong Kong and helped to research on the PRC’s practice on international investment laws. As part of her work, Michelle was entrusted to translate CIETAC arbitral awards, the People’s court decisions of different levels, and the Supreme People’s Court’s judicial interpretations into English. Most of these translations were directly used in the research project as reference.

Michelle working languages are English, Putonghua and Cantonese.

Why I choose to be a lawyer?

During my senior summer internship, I worked at a law firm where I encountered the first criminal case in my legal life. The legal aided defendant was accused of raping three women, one of which alleged as minor at the material time. The prosecution roposed a sentence of 15 years in the indictment, if I remember correctly.

As an uneducated young man in his twenties, the Defendant was frightened by the 15 years’ sentencing proposal. He told us that his life could be ruined if he were sentenced to prison for 15 years, which sounds crucial, but we knew it was true.

We spent plenty of time engaged ourselves in the case, to interview witnesses, collect evidence, peruse dozens of materials, etc.. Eventually, we showed the court discrepancies of the prosecution’s evidence and successively defend the young man by litigating the sentence to 3 years. No appeals filed.

Almost ten years passed, I have ever met this man again. If everything goes well, he should have been released from prison years ago and started a new chapter of his life. I can’t imagine what would happen to his life if with 12 more years in prison. How many 12 years a man could have in his entire lifetime. This case shows me in the most intuitive way on how a lawyer’s work could affect one person’s life and to what extent, which is the exact reason why I decided to be a lawyer.

Now I am a qualified lawyer practising corporate and commercial laws, I am well aware of my responsibility to clients and always try my best to help them by providing meaningful legal services. Because I know that, what I do, may change their lives, in one way or another.