One nice exception that I can point to is a China Vortex and CLB discussion about use of lawyers by PRC companies. Good topic about a business practice that has changed quite a lot over the years. The following rambling opinions cost me my lunch hour today:
All business owners look at legal fees as a necessary evil. If the system was perfect, I suppose, we wouldn't need lawyers at all. Therefore having to use one is a second-best choice. There's your initial bias.
A business owner probably looks at legal services from both a legal requirement and cost-benefit perspective. In other words, 1) do I need a lawyer to help my company comply with the law in some way; or 2) will using a lawyer help me save money sometime in the future.
In the real world, of course, even regulatory requirements are looked at from a cost-benefit perspective. If the cost of compliance is too high, the company may decide not to bother.
Aside from compliance issues, there are a zillion other instances where a lawyer might provide services to a company. The most fundamental, perhaps, is to draft an agreement between the company and a third party such as a customer.
Why have an agreement in the first place? Agreements are put into place between parties that may not have a close relationship. In a modern economy, you never know who you might want to do business with, and having that agreement eliminates some of that risk of doing business with a stranger.
However, if the company has no faith that the agreement is practically enforceable in the courts, then there is no motivation for hiring a lawyer to draft the agreement in the first place – it's a waste of time and money. This was the situation for a long time in China. A written agreement might be useful as a record of what the two parties agreed to at the beginning of a relationship, but as a formal document that could be used in a dispute, forget about it.
That's why you saw so many short and vague agreements for so many years that resembled Memoranda of Understanding or Letters of Intent more than full-fledged contracts. Didn't make sense to go further because you never knew what would happen if you tried to resolve the dispute through formal proceedings. And when those Chinese companies started doing business abroad, that mindset was carried along.
Has anything changed? I believe that dispute resolution options are a lot better than they were 20 years ago, and more companies are realizing that enforceability is possible. It might not always be easy, but it is possible. Moreover, it is much easier now to predict what will happen when a transaction involving the government is attempted.
As the probability of enforcement goes up, the cost of using a lawyer to draft an agreement looks like a more reasonable expenditure. Another way to look at this: as the Rule of Law strengthens in a country, and with it predictability, it is easier to make that cost-benefit analysis regarding legal fees. It still might be the case that the legal fees are not worthwhile for a given transaction, but at least a company can make that calculation now with a little more confidence. A few years ago, it would have been complete guesswork.
Another factor is the increased sophistication of the legal system here. Let's face it, there are a lot more laws on the books now then there were a few years ago, and it has gotten much more difficult to navigate the legal/regulatory environment, even for domestic companies. As the laws proliferate and regulations are pumped out by the agencies with increased frequency, the role of lawyers will continue to expand.
Now take a look at the experience of Chinese companies overseas. A company doing business in the U.S., for example, might be able to get away with minimal use of a lawyer for a while, but after that first employment lawsuit or tax problem, the cost of getting that initial legal advice doesn't seem all that high.
One should also keep in mind that many companies here have a lot of experience with cross-border transactions. As Chinese companies have done more and more deals with foreign enterprises, their familiarity with foreign contracts (and lawyers) has increased dramatically. Just compare a typical 4-page JV Contract from 15 years ago with the 40-page detailed agreements you see today, and you get the picture.
Put all this together and you begin to see why your typical large Chinese company now has an in-house legal department. Moreover, because that large company probably has substantial dealings with foreign suppliers and customers, and may have overseas operations, it's no surprise that many of those in-house guys are graduates of foreign law programs.
This topic dovetails quite well with the convergence of international commercial legal practice (not necessarily the law, but legal practice). But that's a topic for another day.