"Aggressive Lawyer" Forum Launched! Taiwan's First Forum Exclusively for Lawyers

You may have used PTT's Lawyer board, joined Facebook groups, used LINE to some extent, or perhaps used none of these yet are eager to try.

Now there is a better choice: a dedicated forum for lawyers where they can share resources, discuss issues, make friends, and ask questions about all sorts of practical difficulties in their practice. The forum features numerous moderators who actively help reply so your posts won't sink into oblivion—don't miss out!

Why Join "Aggressive Lawyer"?

If any of the following questions have ever crossed your mind, then you should consider the Aggressive forum~

Finally, you passed the national examination and became a lawyer. You originally thought this would be the end of all uncertainties in your life, only to find that even more uncertainties begin right here. At the end of a tiring day, you often find yourself wondering:

• Why do senior lawyers argue that trainee lawyers should not be paid? Should trainees perform unpaid labor? Were you never junior yourselves?
• As a junior employed lawyer like me, do I also have to shoulder business pressure? What should I do when the boss makes demands?
• Speaking of litigation and expertise, what I know, everyone else knows; what others know, I might not necessarily know. What can we do? Can we only resort to price competition? How do we cultivate cross-disciplinary expertise?
• Is foreign language really important for lawyers? Should I go abroad to pursue an LLM just for English? What is the price? After getting some prestige and returning to Taiwan, are career prospects really that much better?
• How do I apply to good schools? Which schools should I apply to? Which country should I go to? What specialization is advantageous?
• The path to partnership at a large firm, or the employed life at a small or medium-sized firm—how should I choose? Or should I grit my teeth, start my own partnership, and set sail for the grand line?
• Am I suited to be a criminal lawyer? Looking at these god-like figures in the criminal law circle, what must I do to gradually measure up to them and realize the justice in my heart?
• Taiwan is a small country, yet we have over a dozen bar associations that all require membership dues. What on earth is going on? Why are they year after year the same guys I don't know asking me to "vote for them" upon our first meeting, yet they can't even spare the budget to hold a public hearing? Bar associations, other than being exceptionally good at publicly spending my money on dinner parties and tours, what on earth have they done for me?
• What kind of future should the new generation of judicial reform have?
• What kind of vision and practice style should tomorrow's lawyers possess?

Don't be a silent fleet. We are not asking you to stand up immediately and shout at the top of your lungs, but you can exchange views with other lawyers in similar situations and build solidarity. Then together, we can surely change something.

Here, there are people who have thought about the questions you are thinking about, who want to hear about your experiences, and who are even more eager to share the hard lessons they've learned and their coping tips and advice with you. At the "Aggressive Lawyer" forum, we sincerely welcome you to bring your questions and take back the determination to change the status quo. Join us now.

What the Forum Hopes to Achieve…

• Provide a communication platform for young lawyers to share resources and alleviate anxiety in practice.
• Through platform exchanges, find senior lawyers willing to support young lawyers, hold small-scale sharing sessions, and provide practical experience.
• Foster the formation of lawyer communities, encourage active participation in lawyers' self-governing bodies, expand the influence of lawyers, and pursue reforms in the legal profession and legal system.

How to Join?

• As long as you have a Facebook or Google account and accurately provide your attorney certificate number, you can register.
• The "Aggressive Lawyer" forum uses a new https certificate. Unupdated XP systems using IE or Chrome may encounter errors and fail to open normally; please use the Firefox browser.

What Kinds of Topics?

We have come up with a few topics that interest lawyers to serve as food for thought, and we welcome lawyers to discuss them!

1. Comprehensive Practice Guide

   • Continuing Education and Training
     Exchange and discussion of information related to continuing professional education and training
   • Advanced Legal and Other Degree Studies
     Information exchange on domestic and foreign long-term and short-term legal or other degree/certification studies
   • How Dare You Venture into Danger Without Real Skills?
     What core skills are required in each lawyer's professional field so you don't make a fool of yourself? Find materials and post articles here!
   • When You Open the Window of the Legal Profession
     The intersection of law with other disciplines or skills in practical business; for example, forensic psychology and psychiatry, forensic accounting, patent agency, tax law, etc.

2. Let's Start a Business Together

   • Find partners and set sail for the grand line—information exchange on shared offices, partnerships, strategic alliances, solo practices, and the personnel and peripheral resources needed to run a legal business

3. Tales of Legal Practice

   • Seeking comfort / a soft section for resting on senior laurels ~ finding an outlet for a lawyer's life, and giving advice to others...

4. Rise Up! Young Lawyers Alliance

   • Why must trainee lawyers perform unpaid labor? Why do bar association elections never state policy platforms or hold public hearings? What have you done, and why should I vote for you? Taiwan is a tiny country, what the heck are over a dozen bar associations doing? With over 4,000 young lawyers gathered together over five years, do senior senior lawyers dare to play deaf and dumb?

5. The Power for Change is Not Alone

   • Legal Education Reform
     Information sharing and exchange of opinions on the fundamental reform and direction of revision of Taiwan's legal education
   • Legal Profession System Reform
     How should the selection and cultivation of judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys be revised and refined to meet the needs of the evolution of the state and judicial system? Of course, this also includes the exploration of foreign systems
   • Judicial Reform 2.0
     What kind of future will the new generation of judicial reform have?
   • Discussion Board on Legislation and Amendments of Major Laws
     Regarding legislators, please stop firing and leaving without following through!
     Who says legislative and amendment matters can only be handled by legislative lords!
     If you don't apply pressure, who will~
   • Judicial Officers (Judges, Prosecutors, Defense Attorneys) Reporting Board
     Under the premise of anonymizing individual cases, conduct discussions and opinion exchanges regarding specific illegal acts or ethical violations committed by judges, lawyers, and prosecutors in the course of exercising their duties/business ~

6. Public Interest Affairs / Case Discussion Area

   • Information exchange on the formation of teams and resources for public interest cases, pro bono cases, Legal Aid Foundation cases, or other public interest matters requiring lawyer intervention

7. Plain Legal Edition

   • People's participation in trials is about to be adopted, yet as a lawyer you still don't speak human language? Quickly promoting legal concepts in plain language is the right way to go!

8. Tomorrow's Lawyer

   • What new business models and operational forms can lawyers have? What evolutionary directions? What kind of lawyer do you hope to see yourself become in ten years? If you don't speak up, who has the qualifications to speak!

9. Chatterbox

   • You can talk about anything, and nothing is strange ~

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◎Angela／Lawyer

I recently saw Professor Liu Hung-en's masterpiece on Facebook, "Cannot Use the Sensational Appeal of 'Wandering Lawyers' to Conceal Many Old Problems in the Legal Profession," and personally, I do not entirely agree with many of Professor Liu's viewpoints. In short, I personally believe that the problem of wandering lawyers does indeed exist, and if the bar examination passing rate continues to be opened up like this, the problem will only become more severe.

Professor Liu likes to compare doctors with lawyers, so I will make the same comparison: I looked up data online, and the total number of people who passed the national medical examination in 2013 was 1,364, while the number of people who passed the bar was 892. The number of lawyers is about 65% of the number of doctors. What I want to ask is, does the number of times an ordinary Taiwanese person visits a lawyer in their lifetime reach 65% of the number of times they visit a doctor?? If so, then come tell me that lawyers don't have an oversupply problem.

Furthermore, the diversification and specialization of lawyers are indeed directions we should strive for, but this does not mean that simply working toward this direction will automatically generate cases with such demands. Why weren't there too many specialized lawyers in Taiwan in the past? Because Taiwan's economic development reached a certain level and truly entered the industrial and commercial era only in the past thirty years or so. Without active stock market trading and the emergence of market manipulation or insider trading incidents, how could lawyers specializing in securities and exchange law have a stage to shine? Without the support of the tech industry, relying merely on the characteristics and patterns of traditional industries, where would there be room for patent lawyers to develop? For example, how many cases a year are there in Taiwan for the field of "biomedical ethics, genetic technology ethics, and law" that this professor specializes in, and exactly how many lawyers can that caseload support?

By the way, Professor Liu tells us that lawyers should not urge people to litigate to find sources of cases, but should help clients prevent disputes from happening in the first place through prior contract drafting! Regarding this point, I can only say that Professor Liu's practical experience may not be entirely the same as that of ordinary senior colleagues (Daofu). First, who says lawyers only urge people to litigate? Why is it that my former boss, my former-former boss, former colleagues, current colleagues, university classmates, graduate school classmates, etc., too numerous to list, share the common experience that clients constantly want to litigate cases they cannot win, and it is the lawyers who keep trying to stop clients from litigating? But what is certain is that if the number of admissions continues this way, in the future there will only be more and more lawyers urging people to litigate (though Professor Liu thinks this is not a problem, nor will it affect the quality of litigation). Second, if most cases can be guarded for clients in advance through contracts, I believe lawyers would be more than happy to take it easy. Duh, without having to appear in court to face judges' frowns, without having to write briefs or run to court, just typing and drafting contracts—who wouldn't want that? The problem is, aside from relatively large corporate entities, how many people in Taiwan proactively look for lawyers beforehand? I really wonder how many people in Taiwan hire "personal" legal counsel! (Not to mention the ubiquitous free legal consultations blooming everywhere!)

Finally, I don't know why lawyers cannot express their unhappiness about "market rates being disrupted." If society can no longer provide professionals with a certain level of salary and social status, then the foreseeable consequence is naturally that outstanding talent will be unwilling to continue entering such work, leading to a decline in the overall standards of the industry. When the overall standards of lawyers decline, will it affect the quality of litigation? When lawyers' fees gradually decrease, forcing lawyers to take on a large number of cases to balance expenses and maintain their original living standards, will this lead to problems such as lawyers encouraging litigation and the quality of lawyers handling cases declining? I think these problems are obvious. However, Professor Liu put forward a very interesting concept: he first labels all lawyers as "unmotivated to improve" (meaning people like me who run to bar association classes on a rainy weekend afternoon must have nothing better to do), and then self-righteously lectures lawyers that they should pursue further education and cases will naturally come rolling in. Huh? Why is this argument so similar to the rhetoric of toxic bosses who like to first label young people as strawberry generations, bitterly scold them for being unmotivated, and then tell young people earning 22K under responsibility systems that they should go pursue further education after getting off work?

I wonder what other senior colleagues think?

Go to the Forum to Discuss!