Anhui makes unremitting efforts to improve primary-level legal services

East China's Anhui province has been making persistent efforts to ensure convenient, efficient, equal and inclusive public legal services at the grassroots level.

Since 2007, Anhui's judicial department has published a series of guidelines on mobilizing lawyers to provide legal services in villages and communities.

As a result, communities across the province have all been covered by lawyers' services. In 2020, 691 law firms across Anhui served a total of 7,417 communities, advising people 100,595 times, distributing 293,129 copies of materials about legal knowledge, mediating 5,080 disputes, holding 4,356 lectures, putting forward 9,337 legal suggestions on community affairs, handling 10,361 legal aid cases, and visiting 20,412 families.

In recent years, the department has also been actively promoting the legal counsel system in villages and communities across Anhui.

Currently, 6,057 lawyers are serving as legal counsels for all the 17,542 villages and communities.

As a major step in improving the primary-level legal counsel system, the department unveiled comprehensive guidance last November that specifies the service standards of legal counsels for villages and communities.