Jan 22

Thanks China Law Blog! And Beyond a Single Story of Creativity and Chinese Lawyers.

Creativity, Cross-Cultural Perspectives Add Comment (1)

First of all, thank you China Law Blog!

Dan Harris reacted here to my post about creativity in Chinese legal work. He pointed to an article he’d written about working with Chinese and Korean lawyers, and suggested that lawyers’ creativity could be correlated with the distinction between common law and civil law countries.  It’s great to see this newborn blog inspiring comments from the China-focused blogging community.

Update: More Thoughts on Chinese Lawyers and Creativity

Today I spoke with a different attorney from the same firm, and asked, “Do you think you are creative?” His response? “Definitely.” He often deals with lawsuits, and he needs to analyze information from many sources and assemble it in a way that will help meet his clients’ goals. He’s also constantly dealing with people from other countries and needs to be creative to communicate in a way that resonates with them. And he mentioned the need to be creative in motivating his staff.

I mention this because I want to avoid presenting a single story of Chinese lawyers and creativity.

My personal blog is called “Beyond China’s Single Story.” The title comes from Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s brilliant TED Talk about the importance of recognizing many stories about a given place.

I first learned of this TED Talk and how it relates to China from this excellent post from All Roads Lead to China.

-Leslie