Our China practice is designed to be different from the standard model for assisting U.S. clients in dealing with China. It is different in the lawyers handling our clients' Chinese legal matters (both Chinese corporate law and Chinese litigation matters), different in the legal connections we have in China, and, most importantly, different in the way we bill for and conduct our Chinese legal work.

Experienced China Lawyers. Fluent in Chinese Language and Culture.

Our attorneys have been involved in Chinese legal work since long before China business became the hot topic. We have been working in China since the opening to the West in the late 1970's. We have been doing legal work and legal education in China since 1984.

Steve Dickinson, who heads our China Law practice out of Qingdao, China, began his studies of Chinese language and culture in 1975. He is fluent in both spoken and written Chinese. He has worked extensively in China both on legal matters and on legal education. During the mid 90's he headed up the University of Washington Law School's program for training Chinese legal professionals and was an Associate Professor of International Law. Steve was the first attorney invited to teach in China by an independent Chinese Bar Association and he continues to lecture frequently in China regarding international law issues. Steve has also acted as a guest lecturer (in Chinese) for the intellectual property law program at the Beijing University School of Law and international contract law in Italy for the International Development Law Organization.

Ben Dietz began his Chinese language and culture studies in 1980 and has been involved with China and Tawian ever since.  Ben spent two years working with a Taiwanese law firm and he is fluent in both spoken and written Chinese. Ben's practice focuses mostly on advising Chinese companies doing business in the U.S. and on advising American and European companies on the legal aspects of doing business in Taiwan and in China.  Ben works out of Seattle.

Dan Harris has been handling international law matters in Asia for more than 15 years and he is there constantly.  He loves to tell of the time the Westin Chosun Hotel in Seoul photographed him and gave him gifts because it was his 100th stay there and of how that was so many stays ago he can hardly remember.  Dan's Korea stays invariably are on his way to or/and from his many China trips.  Dan speaks and writes extensively on the legal aspects of doing business in China.

Leading national and international media, including, The Wall Street Journal, The International Herald Tribune, Forbes, Business Week, Investor's Business Daily, The New York Times, The National Law Journal, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, China Economic Review, China International Business Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio (NPR), and CCTV (China Central Television), have all come to us because of our China law expertise and LexisNexis chose us to head up its China law site.

Our Clients are also Different

The focus of our Chinese law practice is on the small and medium sized company and on the large company needing specialized international law assistance. Though hardly anything in a Chinese legal matter could ever be said to be typical, the nature of our Chinese transactional and litigation work usually has some common threads. The corporate side of our China work usually involves assisting American or European companies in establishing Chinese manufacturing operations and protecting their intellectual property and brand name rights. The litigation side of our China work usually involves assisting American and European companies in pursuing claims against Chinese, Taiwanese, and Hong Kong companies who have violated intellectual property rights, have failed to pay on a contract, or who have manufactured defective goods.

Many of our Chinese law clients do not have their own in house legal counsel and their regular outside law firm is unfamiliar with Chinese legal issues.  We frequently work with other law firms on matters requiring China legal knowledge. Sometimes this involves our helping another law firm's client figure out the legal requirements for doing business in China and other times it will involve our being "the China lawyers" on a domestic or international litigation matter.

Cost Effectiveness is Key

Harris & Moure handles its China law matters very differently than the typical large law firm. Almost all of our China work is done on a flat fee basis. We tell you in advance what your legal matter will cost and there are no surprises. We almost always charge a flat fee for OEM agreements, employment contracts, employer manuals, trademark filings, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), and company formations (particularly WFOEs), among other things.

We have long established relationships with top Chinese law firms in Shanghai, Beijing, Qingdao, Shenzhen, Dalian, and various other cities throughout mainland China. We work directly with these firms in the Chinese language to ensure communication is effective and costs are contained. Using this approach, we have proven wrong the usual impression that collecting on a debt or pursuing a breach of contract claim in China is "twice as difficult and twice as expensive" as doing so domestically. We routinely handle our Chinese litigation cases for roughly what they would cost domestically.

Trademarks in China — Absolutely Essential

You have worked too hard building up your name to lose it in China. There are actually a number of people in China who make a living by usurping foreign trademarks. The fact that you are manufacturing your product in China just for export does not in any way minimize the need for you to protect your trademark. Once someone registers "your" trademark in China, they have the power to stop your goods at the border and to prevent them from leaving China.

The key to protecting a trademark in China is actually very simple: register it in China.

China's trademark requirements are actually quite similar to those in most other countries. The trademark must not conflict with an existing Chinese trademark and it must be distinctive. China allows for registration of all marks for goods, services, collective marks and certification marks. A Chinese trademark gives foreign companies a surprising amount of protection in China. If a foreign company learns someone is infringing on its trademark in China, it has a number of actions available to it. For additional information regarding Chinese trademark law, please click here for an article we wrote on this, entitled, Chinese Trademark Registration - An Essential Primer.

The Practical Solution is Always our Goal.

Our goal in negotiating business deals in China is to achieve our client's goal effectively and at the lowest reasonable cost. We rigorously avoid legal provisions that work under U.S. law but that will fail under Chinese law or business practices. We develop effective solutions that meet our client's needs in a way that actually works under China's legal system. We will never propose an elegant legal solution with no practical application under Chinese law or on the ground realities.

Chinese Contracts: OEM and Outsourcing Agreements

Chinese law is more than just the law that can be found in the Chinese law books. It is the law that is enforced every day by the Chinese courts and regulatory agencies.  Our focus is on drafting a contract that works both for you and for China's overall legal system. For more on China outsourcing, check out Outsourcing in China: Five Basics for Reducing Risk.

Chinese Employment Contracts and Employer Manuals

Beginning in 2008, China tightened up its labor laws, particularly as applied to foreign companies in China. Companies without written contracts with their China employees and an employee manual run the very real risk of getting sued and found liable for double and more in back wages. The way to avoid these China labor law problems is relatively simple and relatively inexpensive: make sure all of your China employees have written employment contracts, preferably in Chinese. We have substantial experience writing Chinese language and China law compliant employment contracts and employee manuals for foreign companies with employees in China, usually on a flat fee basis.

Chinese Language Ability is Crucial Because the Chinese Contract Controls

Our lawyers' ability to work directly in the Chinese language is a huge asset. It allows us to conduct negotiations directly in Chinese without need for constant translation and retranslation. This saves money and time.

We can ensure that your final contract is properly stated in Chinese and this is critical. There are many traps for the unwary in China and one of the most common is the dual language contract. A foreign company contracts with a Chinese company with contracts drafted in English and in Chinese. The foreign company takes heart in the fact that both contracts call for the English language contract to apply should there be any conflicts between the two. The foreign company has been fooled. Chinese law dictates that in these situations the only enforceable contract is the one in Chinese and, frequently, when the foreign company goes to enforce the Chinese language contract, it learns it is different from the English language version in many respects. The foreign company now finds itself unable to enforce the contract it thought it had. We have seen example after example of these problems and we are aware of only one sure fire solution: retaining your own lawyer who is completely fluent in both English and Mandarin Chinese.

A contract that provides for litigation in the United States or your home country in Europe is rarely a solution. The problem is that even if a judgment in the United States is easy to obtain, that judgment has little to no value in terms of actually collecting anything from the Chinese company. For that, you still need to go to China and sue on your contract there and for that you still need to be certain your contract conforms to Chinese law and is fully enforceable in China. Chinese law actually does provide powerful contractual remedies to deal with most potential business disputes. However, if your contract does not take advantage of these provisions, those remedies will not be available to you.

Representation on the Ground in China

Our clients hire us because they are aware of our reputation in international law and the high standards of our work. They know we are better able to understand Western businesses and their goals than a Chinese law firm and so we always stay close to every matter we take on. One of the distinctive ways we do this is by permanently stationing one of our attorneys, Steve Dickinson, in China. We do this to (1) maintain our close relationships with Chinese counsel; (2) keep closely abreast of the business and legal situation in China; and (3) most importantly, better serve our clients.

China Company Formation -- WFOE, Rep Office, Joint Venture

We have extensive experience forming companies in China. Steve Dickinson of our office is considered one of the foremost Chinese corporate lawyers and the leading international corporate law treatise, International Corporate Procedures (Mathew Bender/Jordan's), chose Steve to write the Chinese corporate law chapter. Steve's combination of Western corporate legal training and knowledge of Chinese and China's corporate law history ideally suits him to interpret China's business laws.

Steve is always in big demand as a speaker on how to avoid problems when entering into joint ventures, a topic on which he has lectured many times for JP Morgan Chase, including at their highly exclusive 2008 China Conference in Beijing. Steve also wrote an article on this for AmCham's China Brief magazine, entitled, "Avoiding Mistakes in China Joint Ventures" and Dan Harris wrote an article on the same topic for the Wall Street Journal, entitled, "Joint Venture Jeopardy."

Registering a company in China is very different from registering a company in the United States or in Europe. Registering a company in China requires much more than filling out a few forms and paying a small fee. It requires the company seeking to go into China explain to the Chinese government exactly what it will be doing in China and how its being there will be good for China.

In the United States and in Europe, registering a company is usually just a first step to securing the licenses, permits, identification numbers and approvals to do business. That is not the case in China. In China, those licenses, permits, identification numbers and approvals must be secured before registration can occur. So though it is complicated and time consuming to register a business in China, once registered, the newly formed company is fully ready to conduct business.

Chinese Litigation/China Arbitration

Many U.S. firms find litigation in China to be expensive and cumbersome. There are two reasons for this. First, since litigation must be conducted in China through a Chinese attorney, they must usually work through a U.S. attorney who is not directly connected to the case. Second, since the litigation must be conducted in the Chinese language, they are usually working through layers of translation back and forth from Chinese to English and back again. Because we have lawyers in China and in the United States who are fluent in Chinese and because we already have established long term relationships with top Chinese law firms and Chinese lawyers, we are able to commence litigation in China quickly and at a relatively low cost. We have successfully overseen a number of Chinese litigation matters in China, ranging from securing payment refunds for bad product to pursuing breach of contract and fraud claims.

We also have substantial experience with arbitration in China, including CIETAC arbitration in either English or Chinese. If your contract calls for CIETAC arbitration and it does not provide for it to be in a language other than Chinese, you are facing arbitration in Chinese.  Contact us.  We can help.

Chinese Criminal Law/Chinese Criminal Litigation

Though our focus is on business, the law is different in China and what is not a crime in the West sometimes is in China. Because of that, and due in large part to our Chinese language skills and close connections with Chinese lawyers throughout China, we have developed an expertise in assisting foreigners facing Chinese criminal prosecution. On these cases, we bring in top-flight experienced Chinese criminal lawyers and we act as a liasion between the client and the Chinese lawyer, who usually does not speak any language other than Chinese.  Sometimes our role on these China criminal cases is confined to China. Other times we aid in gathering evidence from outside China to help the foreign defendant in his or her China case.

China Law Blog

We started the China Law Blog in 2006 and it has since gone on to become the undisputed leader among China law blogs. For the last three years, The ABA (American Bar Association) Journal chose it as one of the top 100 law blogs and every year the Journal's readers have voted as the best blog in our particular category.  China Law Blog has also drawn accolades from Business Week, Alltop and Blogged. You can read more about our blog on Wikipedia. We are proud that our blog has assumed such a prominent role in the discussion regarding China law and China business.

China Construction Law/China Construction Disputes.

Harris & Moure has partnered with Bencer Project Management to create the first China construction dispute resolution project of its kind. Bencer Project Management is a German owned project management company that has been operating in China for ten years. Bencer’s China operations offer project management, engineering and real estate consulting services within China for international clients with industrial or commercial facilities in China. Bencer is made up of German and Chinese engineers with substantial technical expertise and experience in construction projects throughout China.

From having worked on a number of China construction and real estate projects with Bencer, where we provided the legal support and Bencer provided the construction engineering support, a relationship between our two companies grew. From these projects and from our discussions with other companies engaged in construction and development in China, it rapidly became apparent to both of us that China needed dispute resolution geared toward foreign companies engaged in China construction. Far too often, foreign companies have failed to pursue legal disputes with their Chinese counterparts because they were unable to find the legal and construction support they needed on their side and/or because they were unable to find an appropriate knowledgeable and unbiased forum. 

All this has led Harris & Moure to unite with Bencer in a unique partnership that will employ our many years of combined experience in the construction, project management, and international legal fields to work together to resolve your business’s most complex construction disputes through mediation, arbitration or litigation.