Lawyer witnessing business is a type of legal service with higher risks in practice. Its practice risks mainly refer to the risks caused by lax verification during witnessing and non-standard witnessing procedures. Lawyer witnessing refers to an activity in which a lawyer, at the request of a client, certifies the authenticity and legality of specific legal facts or legal actions in the name of the law firm based on what the witnessing lawyer has personally seen. This issue of lawyer practice risk warnings will focus on “witness business”. 01 Case reproduction *Case excerpts from the websites of Shenzhen Lawyers Association and Foshan Lawyers Association. Shenzhen Lawyers Association disciplinary cases: Lawyers failed to fulfill their duty of prudence and violated regulations. On March 28, 2014, the complainant Cai Mou complained about a law firm and a lawyer named Z. Witness violations. The complainant complained that: The respondent made illegal witnesses for the property in the complainant’s name without the complainant’s authorization and knowledge, thus infringing upon the complainant’s property rights. At the same time, the materials in the testimony were false, and the respondent testified without seeing the originals. The facts ascertained by the Shenzhen Lawyers Association are as follows: On July 11, 2013, the law firm signed an "Agency Contract" with Chen Moumou (the complainant's mother, hereinafter referred to as the "client"), and appointed lawyer Z as the client. Providing legal services, including assisting him and his three sons (Cai X, Cai X, and Cai III) to resolve disputes through a family separation plan, drafting family separation decisions or meeting minutes, coordinating the signing of family separation documents, and Apply for lawyer's witness certificate, etc. After the contract was signed, the client paid the lawyer's fee of 20,000 yuan as agreed in the contract, and the law firm issued an invoice for the lawyer's fee. The process is not repeated here. After investigation, the Shenzhen Lawyers Association determined that: When providing testimony, Lawyer Z failed to produce relevant transcripts of the conversation as required, and the content of the "Decision on Property Separation and Property Analysis" he witnessed clearly involved the ownership of farmers' houses and the distribution of collective land use rights. On the premise that the relevant documents of the real estate involved recorded the rights holders, and without the consent of the relevant rights holders, Lawyer Z issued a "Lawyer's Witness Certificate" for the "Decision on Property Separation and Property Analysis", which constituted a violation. Lawyer Z's law firm neglected management and provided convenience for sealing the above-mentioned "Lawyer's Witness Certificate", which constituted a violation. In the end, the Shenzhen Lawyers Association gave the complained law firm and lawyer a disciplinary sanction. Foshan Lawyers Association Disciplinary Case: Industry Disciplinary Punishment in which Lawyers Were Publicly Reprimanded for Witnessing Lawyers in Violation of Regulations On August 12, 2018, the Lawyers Association of Foshan City, Guangdong Province received a complaint stating that Lawyer H of a law firm had committed witnessing violations and charged illegal fees for case collection. behavior. After investigation, it was determined that Lawyer H witnessed the signing of power of attorney for five parties in 2017 and 2018, and issued witness certificates, and all five witness certificates were signed by only one person, Lawyer H, and were stamped. Official seal of the law firm. Regarding the aforementioned witness business, Lawyer H only signed an agency contract with one client and did not issue a bill for lawyer services to the client. In addition, when handling the witness business, Lawyer H was negligent and failed to identify the signatures of others on the power of attorney. As a result, the documents signed by the parties in the witness were all forged by others. The Foshan Lawyers Association gave Lawyer H an industry disciplinary sanction that was publicly condemned. 02 Risk warning 1. Practice risks The practice risks witnessed by lawyers mainly refer to the risks caused by lax verification during witnessing and non-standard witnessing procedures. Lawyers' lax verification mainly includes lax verification of the identity of the parties and lax verification of the facts or behaviors witnessed. The parties generally include the client who entrusts the lawyer to conduct the lawyer's witness and other persons other than the client who have an interest in the witness matter. The client must have an interest in the facts to be witnessed or the subject of the act to be witnessed when entrusting the client, otherwise the lawyer shall not accept his entrustment to witness. In addition to the client, the lawyer must also carefully verify the identity of other persons who have an interest in the witness matter when witnessing, otherwise the lawyer will bear the risk of witnessing negligence. The risk caused by non-standard lawyer witnessing procedures refers to the risk caused by the lawyer's witness not following certain procedures, resulting in the lawyer's witness being found to be invalid. 2. Validity risk The validity risk of a lawyer’s testimony first comes from the legality of the matters witnessed. The lawyer's testimony is valid only if the facts or actions witnessed are legal. This requires lawyers to have a clear understanding of the laws involved in witnessing facts or actions. For example, in the process of witnessing a house sales contract, in addition to witnessing the signing of the contract, the lawyer must also investigate the nature of the land where the house is located, whether it is residential land or industrial land, and whether a sales license has been obtained to avoid being prohibited from building land according to law. Public sales or the inability to obtain a house ownership certificate will render the house sales contract witnessed invalid, and the witnessing lawyer will be held accountable. Secondly, the effectiveness risk also comes from forced notarization. Compulsory notarization, also known as statutory notarization, refers to legal acts that must be established or changed in the form of notarization according to laws and administrative regulations, or facts and documents that need to be certified by notarization. In notarization practice, foreign-related legal matters must be notarized in accordance with the laws of our country before they can be used in the country of use. If a lawyer witnesses it or proves it by other means, our country will not recognize it. Therefore, for such compulsory notarization matters, law firms If you accept the entrustment for lawyer witnessing, the parties will be unable to achieve their goals, which will bring huge risks to the lawyer.

Finally, when a lawyer witnesses a certificate as evidence, there is still a risk of evidence validity. Since lawyer's testimony is general evidence, the validity of the lawyer's testimony cannot be determined until it is heard by the court. Therefore, the effectiveness of lawyer's testimony as evidence is uncertain. When a lawyer witnesses, it is not only to prove the authenticity and legality of the matters witnessed, but more importantly, to conduct due diligence on the witness materials and use the lawyer's professional knowledge to eliminate legal flaws in the matters witnessed, so that the lawyer can Witnessing serves the purpose of preventing legal disputes. This requires lawyers who carry out witnessing business not only to have professional legal knowledge, but also to have rich industry experience. I would also like to remind all lawyers to pay attention to the risks in the witnessing process and act with caution.