The Legal 500 China Awards was held on December 12, 2024 and saw Zhong Lun win six awards.

Real Estate and Construction: PRC Firms Firm of the Year

Corporate M&A: PRC Firms Firm of the Year

Labour and Employment: PRC Firms Lawyer of the Year – Haiyan Duan

Ms. Haiyan Duan specializes in the field of labor legal services and has cultivated over 20 years of extensive experience in labor law litigation and non-litigation matters. She has a comprehensive and profound understanding of the legislation, enforcement, and application of labor law. Her main practice encompasses solving challenging and complex labor management matters for enterprises, representing clients in arbitration and litigation over labor disputes, providing legal services related to employee equity incentives to enterprises, assisting enterprises in building labor compliance systems, identifying labor compliance risks, counselling on labor relations and economic layoffs in special circumstances such as restructuring, listing, mergers and acquisitions, reorganization, bankruptcy, dissolution, and closure. Ms. Duan’s clientele comprises Fortune 500 companies, large state-owned and central enterprises, well-known foreign-funded enterprises, prominent enterprises in the private sectors, as well as many small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups.

Fintech: PRC Firms Lawyer of the Year – Jeffrey Liu

Mr. Jeffrey Liu has been deeply involved in the fintech field for many years and brings a wealth of practical experience to his work. He is especially adept at the research, argumentation, and compliance management of financial innovative products. Mr. Liu stays on top of frontier fields such as artificial intelligence, cross-border payments, and e-commerce. His in-depth knowledge of various emerging business scenarios enables him to provide “one-stop” comprehensive legal services in relevant sectors that cater to enterprises’ operation strategies to clients including financial institutions, fintech companies, internet enterprises, and enterprises going global. Mr. Liu is one of the first members of the expert group for the development of the data compliance and security industry of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology. Meanwhile, he serves as consulting expert for the “Compliance Service Demonstration” in the artificial intelligence industry of the Shanghai Import and Export Fair Trade Workstation. He has been honored as one of the “Top 20 Lawyers Preferred by Clients” by ALB and as one of “Growth Drivers” in the legal field by China Business Law Journal’s A-List. He has been recommended by many international authoritative rating agencies for consecutive years.

Real Estate and Construction: PRC Firms Lawyer of the Year – Jihong Wang

Ms. Jihong Wang has been deeply engaged in the field of urban construction and development for more than 20 years. Specializing in fields such as domestic and overseas construction engineering, infrastructure, energy and natural resources, and cross-border investment and mergers and acquisitions, she has been exploring and leading cutting-edge legal services in line with the changes and demands of the market. The engineering projects Ms. Wang has undertaken cover multiple areas, such as nuclear power plants, thermal power plants, hydropower stations, wind power, photovoltaic power, power grids, biomass energy, minerals, petrochemicals, oil pipelines, natural gas, expressways, subways, high-speed railways, bridges, airports, ports, wharves, sewage and sludge treatment, reclamation from the sea, river regulation, stadiums, television stations, hotels, municipal works, schools, hospitals, as well as solid waste and hazardous waste disposal. She provides in-depth services for all aspects of projects including investment, financing, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, and project construction. Her flexible and practical legal services and unique insights into the industry have won the unwavering trust of clients.

Capital Markets: PRC Firms Lawyer of the Year – Anthony Zhao

Mr. Anthony Zhao, qualified to practice in China and the State of New York of the US, has been deeply involved in fields such as private equity and venture fund investment, capital markets, corporate matters, and mergers and acquisitions for a long time and is proficient with providing legal services that take into consideration legal concerns in both China and abroad. His practice spans across all major industries in China, with a special focus on the new economy, high-tech, and innovative industries. He has been playing a key role in the development of China’s private equity market and digital and intelligent industries. Mr. Zhao has won the honors of “National Outstanding Lawyer” and “Outstanding Lawyer in the East”. For nearly twenty years, he has consistently received top recommendations from many well-known legal rating agencies for various relevant practice areas. Mr. Zhao has spearheaded a great many milestone projects with significant international visibility. The representative mandates he has worked on in the capital markets include the overseas listings of Tencent, Meituan, JD.com, NetEase, and Haier, the STAR Market listing of GalaxyCore as a red-chip company, the major restructuring of InnoLight, and the leveraged privatization of previously Nasdaq-listed Focus Media.

*(in alphabetical order)

The Legal 500 China Awards are carefully selected based on independent research and through multi-dimensional evaluations. They aim to recognize the leading law firms and outstanding individual lawyers who have made significant contributions to the Chinese legal market in the past year.