Hubei keep public legal services available through hot line, online platform

The Central China province of Hubei has taken measures to keep its public legal services available after shutting down all the physical legal service facilities across the province due to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The public in Hubei can consult legal professionals through the 12348 public legal service hotline or on the province's legal service website or official Wechat account, all of which are operating in a 24/7 manner.

Between Jan 23 and Feb 2, on-duty legal staff including lawyers received 1950 calls through the hotline, with a connecting rate of 90.12 percent and a satisfaction rate of 96.80 percent.

Compared with the hot line, the legal service website has more advantages as on-duty lawyers can directly provide services by just logging onto the platform. During the above-mentioned period, the website had answered epidemic-related legal questions for 49 people, accounting for 12.8 of the overall consultation volume. 

As always, questions on marital and familial matters outnumbered that on other subjects on the website during that period with 115 questions focused on the subject, 30.1 percent of the total number of questions asked.

Contractual and labor disputes also stand out on the website as the epidemic has led to many contract breaches and disputes between employers and employees.