As has often been pointed out, “China's major problem is still the rural problem, and one of the most important tasks of the modernization of Chinese society is the modernization of rural society; anyone who is really concerned about the happiness and sorrow of the Chinese people is certainly concerned about the life of those people at the bottom of the society.” China's growing gaps between urban and rural areas and between rich and poor continue to challenge China's legal reforms. Whether China becomes a rule of law state will depend on whether legal reforms can reach deep into the rural population.

This chapter examines “grassroots” legal services in China's rural areas. “Grassroots level” refers to cities and districts at the county level, township, town, and subdistrict offices, and the so-called “detached judicial tribunals.” “Legal services” include a range of activities from legal representation in litigation to the handling of nonlitigation legal matters, mediation of disputes, assistance in notarization and testimony, legal consultancy, and assistance in the writing of legal documents. Grassroots legal-services offices provide legal services to a wide range of clients from governmental agencies, self-governed mass organizations, government-sponsored institutions and enterprises, social entities, and individual businessmen, partnerships, and citizens within the jurisdiction.

In analyzing grassroots legal services, we find a complex relationship between these offices and other state administrative organs (local justice offices – the sifabu), state judicial organs (grassroots people's courts), self-governing mass organizations (people's mediation commissions), and other legal-services institutions (legal aid and law firms).