SCIA Arbitration Lawyer in China: Counsel for Foreign Companies

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A foreign company’s China contract provides for arbitration before the Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration (SCIA). A dispute has arisen, the in-house counsel handling the matter starts searching for a Chinese lawyer, and the company’s foreign law firm is looking for a local team. The search results are a mixed bag: arbitrator rosters, institutional events, training certificates, lawyer rankings, and every variety of “international arbitration experience.” What management really needs to confirm comes down to one question: is there a Chinese lawyer who knows SCIA procedure and can take responsibility for the case?

There is — but “who takes responsibility” cannot be read off a single line of a résumé. At a minimum, it means a lawyer who can identify the applicable rules and current deadlines, build the jurisdiction and merits strategy, organise evidence in Chinese and English, handle arbitrator selection, hearings, and preservation applications, and keep explaining risk, budget, and next steps to overseas management or the legal team.

The term “SCIA lawyer” in this article is not a credential issued by SCIA; it is a description of service capability. So the analysis should not start with the lawyer’s self-introduction; it should start with what the company needs counsel to take on. First define what “taking responsibility” means and why the case needs a Chinese lawyer familiar with SCIA; then verify a candidate’s genuine counsel experience and settle on a working model — full carriage, co-counsel, or limited-scope support — testing capability against the lawyer’s first round of procedural work; and only then apply the same standards to a specific lawyer.

Before comparing candidates, define what “taking responsibility” means

What a foreign company needs is usually not a lawyer who signs off at key moments or shows up for one hearing. Taking full responsibility for an SCIA case starts with establishing its procedural position: verifying the institution, seat , rules, language, governing law, and tribunal composition under the contract, fixing the actual date of service, and then placing the response, counterclaims, jurisdiction objections, arbitrator selection, and evidence submissions into one schedule that works backward from every deadline.

The second layer is taking over the case theory. The lawyer has to organise the contract, payments, performance, and the course of the dispute into provable facts, distinguishing what is admitted, what can be denied, what still needs investigation, and what requires expert explanation. Only then can management decide whether to mount a full defence, bring counterclaims, seek preservation, push for settlement, or refer a threshold issue to the tribunal first.

The third layer is taking over the China-side work. When the main evidence is in China, the contract is governed by Chinese law, the counterparty’s assets are in the Mainland, or arbitration runs in parallel with court proceedings, translation, evidence, preservation, and PRC law opinions cannot be run as separate silos. The lawyer in charge has to keep the Chinese source materials, the English reporting to management, and the positions submitted to the tribunal consistent with one another.

So “fit” cannot be judged from abstract rankings; it has to be judged against a concrete scope of responsibility. Before engaging, a company should at least get clear answers: who handles day-to-day communication, who drafts the major submissions, who organises evidence and witnesses, who appears at hearings, who handles Mainland court proceedings, and who makes the first-round call when something urgent comes up.

Only once that job is defined does the next question arise: why these responsibilities call for a Chinese lawyer who knows SCIA procedure.

Why these cases need a China lawyer familiar with SCIA procedure

SCIA proceedings are driven forward by the institution and the tribunal, but case preparation often has to run along three tracks at once: inside the company, at the China business operation, and in the Mainland courts. A lawyer must do more than read the rules; PRC law analysis, Chinese-language evidence, witness communication, asset leads, and court proceedings all have to be integrated into a single arbitration strategy. For a foreign company, the person who can bind those tracks together is a Chinese lawyer familiar with SCIA procedure.

Chinese counsel involvement matters especially in several situations: the dispute is governed by Chinese law; key contractual, financial, and correspondence evidence is primarily in Chinese; fact witnesses or technical personnel are in China; property, conduct, or evidence preservation is needed; or proceedings over the validity of the arbitration agreement, set-aside, or enforcement are in play. An overseas team also needs someone who can coordinate SCIA, the tribunal, and China-side business personnel directly, so that procedure, merits, and evidence do not drift onto separate tracks.

As a matter of formal eligibility, Article 24 of the current SCIA Arbitration Rules⁠ allows parties to appoint as their arbitration representatives lawyers from Mainland China or abroad — and others besides lawyers , and SCIA’s official FAQs⁠ place no restriction on a representative’s status or number. The PRC Arbitration Law effective March 1, 2026 likewise provides that parties may appoint lawyers and other representatives to participate in arbitration, submitting a power of attorney to the arbitration institution. Article 40 of the Arbitration Law⁠

This openness answers only who may take part in the proceedings — not who is better placed to run the case. A foreign company can keep its existing foreign counsel on foreign law, group reporting, and global strategy, while a Chinese lawyer takes primary responsibility for the SCIA proceedings, PRC law, Chinese-language evidence, and Mainland court work.

The China representative offices of foreign law firms must also mind the boundaries of their own permitted China work. The current Regulations on the Administration of Representative Offices of Foreign Law Firms⁠ permit a representative office to retain a Chinese law firm on behalf of a foreign client for Chinese legal affairs, and the Ministry of Justice’s implementing provisions⁠ go further, treating advocacy in arbitration on the application of Chinese law — or on facts involving Chinese law — as Chinese legal affairs. That restriction targets the China representative offices of foreign firms and their representatives; it should not be exaggerated into “no foreign lawyer may participate in an SCIA arbitration.” But it is enough to show that eligibility to appear, the legal opinions one may give, and the capability a case requires are three different questions.

Precisely because a Chinese lawyer may carry core responsibilities — PRC law, Chinese-language evidence, Mainland court coordination, and the day-to-day conduct of the SCIA case — the screening bar should not be lowered. The company’s next step is to verify the candidate’s SCIA experience and confirm whether they have genuinely carried the responsibilities described above.

Real SCIA experience starts with the lawyer’s role in the case

The arbitration world is full of SCIA-related experience: counsel, arbitrator, case manager, tribunal secretary, mediator, expert witness, training instructor or trainee. All of it can be valuable, but each proves a different capability.

Actually handling SCIA cases as counsel for a party is the most direct form of counsel experience. It means answering for the client’s position, setting strategy, drafting and filing submissions, organising evidence, dealing with arbitrator selection and procedural decisions, attending hearings, and explaining cost and outcome risk to the client.

Having sat as an arbitrator or been admitted to an arbitrator roster proves an adjudicative role or institutional appointment eligibility; it does not, by itself, prove that the lawyer has represented parties in SCIA cases. A case manager knows institutional administration, tribunal constitution, hearings, and how awards take shape, but the role is procedural management, not advocacy for one side. Tribunal secretary, mediation, and training experience should likewise keep their original labels; they cannot be rewritten into a count of cases handled as counsel.

So when vetting a candidate, do not stop at “are you familiar with SCIA?” Keep asking:

have you personally handled SCIA cases as counsel;
were you lead counsel, co-counsel, or a supporting team member;
which submissions, evidence, hearings, or court work were you personally responsible for;
which set of rules applied, and what procedural issues arose;
who will be the day-to-day lead on this case, and who will draft the main documents; and
can you take full carriage directly, rather than handing the work after signing to a team that was not part of the interview.

This verification method is more useful than “has handled a lot of arbitration.” It does not devalue institutional experience, arbitrator credentials, or training; it simply avoids blending different roles into one unverifiable total.

Once a candidate’s actual counsel role checks out, there is no need to rush the engagement. The next thing to settle is the working model: who carries which responsibilities.

Once experience is verified, decide how to work together

The working model depends on the complexity of the case, whether the company already has foreign counsel, and how much of the matter turns on PRC law, Chinese-language evidence, and Mainland court work. Whichever model is chosen, the point is not to add layers to the team; it is to make sure every piece of critical work has exactly one clearly accountable owner.

The first model is a Chinese lawyer acting as lead counsel with full carriage of the case. This is the model this article focuses on. A complete SCIA mandate typically begins with analysis of the arbitration clause and the claims, and extends through overall strategy, the request for arbitration or the defence, counterclaims, jurisdiction objections, arbitrator selection, procedural orders, and each round of written submissions.

Evidence work is not a matter of translating every Chinese document into English. The lawyer first determines which facts support each claim, then builds the evidentiary chain from contracts, supplemental agreements, payments, invoices, meeting minutes, emails, WeChat records , technical materials, and financial documents, arranging witnesses, legal experts, technical experts, forensic examination, audits, or site investigations where necessary. Translation should serve a single case theory, not produce two different sets of facts in two languages.

The hearing stage covers the pre-hearing issues list, evidence exchange, witness and expert preparation, oral submissions, examination, and post-hearing briefs. Where Mainland court proceedings are involved, the scope of the mandate should also state whether it covers preservation, arbitration-agreement validity, set-aside, enforcement, or non-enforcement proceedings. Negotiation and mediation can run alongside the arbitration, but a settlement has to address payment, performance, security, costs, release of preservation, confidentiality, and the consequences of default — it cannot stop at a single lump-sum figure.

The second model is a Chinese lawyer acting as co-counsel with foreign counsel. Foreign counsel can retain group reporting, foreign law, and global strategy, while the Chinese lawyer handles the SCIA proceedings, PRC law, Chinese-language evidence, the Mainland courts, and day-to-day case progress. Even in a co-counsel arrangement, it should be clear who is the primary point of contact with SCIA, who consolidates the final submissions, and who decides when deadlines or strategy diverge.

The third model is limited-scope support. If the overseas team already has complete arbitration capability, a Chinese lawyer can be responsible only for PRC law opinions, Chinese-language evidence, preservation, or other Mainland court proceedings, or can provide support at specific procedural stages or hearings. But when a company is looking for “someone who can take full responsibility,” limited-scope support must not be presented as full carriage.

Whichever model is chosen, the formal engagement runs through the lawyer’s law firm: the firm accepts the mandate, signs a written engagement contract, and bills the fees. Article 25 of the Lawyers Law⁠ Once the model is settled, the firm on record, the specific team, the fee scope, third-party costs, the budget-update mechanism, and the limits of authority still have to be pinned down.

With responsibility boundaries clear, the adjectives on the résumé no longer matter. The company can move to the next step: use the candidate’s handling of the case’s first-round procedural questions to test whether they can really carry the agreed role.

Evidence WeChat and email as evidence

Articles 14 and 15⁠ of the SPC’s provisions on evidence in civil proceedings list emails, instant-messaging records, and transaction records as electronic data, for which the original — or a qualifying output derived directly from the original — should be produced. For WeChat records in particular, keep the original device rather than relying on screenshots alone.

Once the model is set, test procedural capability with the first round of action

A lawyer who genuinely knows SCIA procedure will not open by predicting victory or defeat. The first deliverable is a reliable list of issues and deadlines.

Step one is confirming the institution and the rules. SCIA also operates under the names “South China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission,” “Greater Bay Area International Arbitration Center,” and “Shenzhen Arbitration Commission,” and it administers arbitration clauses that use some of these former names. The general rules, the summary procedure, the special rules for financial loan disputes, the UNCITRAL Rules, or a procedure modified by the parties can each produce different answers. Seeing the four letters “SCIA” in a contract is not enough to apply one standard timetable.

Step two is protecting near-term procedural options. Under the 2025 SCIA general rules, a respondent’s defence and counterclaim should typically be filed within 30 days of receiving the notice of arbitration ; under the summary procedure, the corresponding deadlines are typically shortened to 10 days. For a standard three-member tribunal, the parties typically have 15 days to nominate their own arbitrator and jointly nominate the presiding arbitrator. All of these deadlines can be affected by special rules, party agreement, actual service, and case-specific decisions; they cannot be computed by mechanically adding days to the date of an email.

Step three is inventorying the rights that could be lost. Under the general procedure, a jurisdiction objection should in principle be raised in writing before the first hearing; documents-only cases carry more specific timing requirements, and raising the objection does not automatically halt the arbitration. Counterclaims, joinder of additional parties, consolidation, and arbitrator challenges each come with their own conditions and timing. The lawyer should preserve procedural positions while pushing merits and evidence preparation forward, not stake the entire defence on an objection that has not been ruled on.

One easily overlooked SCIA-specific risk: after the tribunal is constituted, if a party engages a new representative and that engagement itself creates grounds for challenging an arbitrator, that party may no longer be able to seek the challenge on those grounds . The other party’s right to challenge is unaffected, and the resulting delay and additional costs may be borne by the party that created the conflict. See Article 33, paragraph 6 of the SCIA Rules⁠. This makes counsel conflict checks not just an internal law-firm formality, but part of tribunal-constitution strategy.

Step four is assessing preservation in parallel. Where the seat is in Mainland China, pre-arbitration property, conduct, or evidence preservation is typically applied for directly by the party to the competent court; once the arbitration has commenced, SCIA forwards the application to the court. A wrongful application may also give rise to liability for compensation. Article 39 of the Arbitration Law⁠ sets out the pre-arbitration and mid-arbitration preservation routes. Whether to apply, to which court, with what security, and whether the asset leads are sufficient still require case-by-case judgment; see also the guide to asset preservation in China.

A competent first-round work product should be a deadline table, a procedural-issues table, an evidence-gap list, preservation and enforcement risk, a proposed division of labour within the team, and budget assumptions — not the sentence “the prospects look strong.”

This kind of test only means something if it is built on accurate materials. A company need not send its entire evidentiary record at first contact, but it should provide, in two steps, enough information for a conflict check and a preliminary assessment.

Statute Where the 30/10/15-day deadlines come from

These deadlines come from the 2025 SCIA Arbitration Rules⁠: 30 days for the defence and counterclaim under the general procedure, shortened to 10 days under the summary procedure, and 15 days for arbitrator nominations in a three-member tribunal. Deadlines generally run from the date of actual service; in each case the institution’s written notice governs.

Statute Article 33(6): the cost of changing counsel after constitution

The logic of the rule is to stop parties from manufacturing challenge grounds — and delaying the proceedings — by hiring a lawyer who has a relationship with an arbitrator. So if Chinese counsel is changed after the tribunal is constituted, the new lawyer’s existing relationships may lock out that party’s own right to challenge; the timing of the engagement is itself a strategic question.

To run this test, provide conflict-check and assessment materials first

The first contact should not be a dump of the entire evidence library. Start with the legal names of the claimant, the respondent, major affiliates, and known counsel, plus a one-sentence summary of the dispute, the notice of arbitration or arbitration clause, the amount in dispute, and the most urgent known deadlines. This information is used to determine whether a conflict of interest exists and whether the case falls within the scope that can be accepted.

This round is also a chance to test responsiveness: once complete preliminary party information has been received, a responsible lawyer should in principle give an initial reply within 24 hours, stating whether the assessment can proceed, what further materials are needed, and the next steps. That reply is not a guarantee of the substantive outcome, nor is it a formal legal opinion issued on incomplete materials.

Once the conflict check clears, provide:

the notice of arbitration, the request for arbitration, and all attachments;
the main contract, supplemental agreements, and the complete arbitration clause;
the actual date and method of receipt of documents, with the original email or courier records;
the amount in dispute, the claims, potential counterclaims, and the core timeline;
key evidence in Chinese and English, witnesses, and responsible business personnel;
the agreed seat, language of proceedings, governing law, and number of arbitrators;
the counterparty’s assets, preservation needs, and any related court documents; and
existing foreign counsel, internal decision-makers, and the preferred reporting format.

The purpose of the preliminary assessment is to frame the case as a manageable scope of work: fix the near-term deadlines and irreversible choices, list the missing documents, and propose a counsel model, team, budget, and first-round strategy. It is not a promise of results made after hearing one side’s brief account.

Kelly Zhang’s SCIA counsel experience and mandate scope

Kelly Zhang has acted as lead counsel with full responsibility for an SCIA equity-transfer dispute arbitration. The case grew out of a dispute over supplementary tax payments following the closing of an M&A transaction, and spawned two parallel court actions over shareholder liability for harm to the company’s interests. For confidentiality and client-information reasons, this article does not disclose the client’s name, the amount in dispute, or the outcome.

Kelly Zhang is also a certified tribunal secretary of the Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration . The combined experience of acting as counsel and serving as a tribunal secretary gives her hands-on insight into SCIA’s arbitration rules and procedural practice.

Before entering private practice, Kelly Zhang spent many years at the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC), where she was a member of the leadership team of its South China Sub-Commission, working in Chinese and English: over seven years she worked on more than 400 complex commercial arbitrations spanning construction and real estate, finance, private equity and venture capital, international trade, and precision-equipment quality disputes, and was responsible for award review and scrutiny, case-filing approval, and arbitrator liaison and training — an insider’s understanding of how an arbitration institution runs its cases.

Representative matters include an insurance-indemnity dispute of approximately RMB 600 million governed by Hong Kong law and conducted in English, involving a foreign arbitrator, procedural orders, and court proceedings to confirm the validity of the arbitration agreement; an exploration-rights dispute governed by Madagascar law, involving local legal expert witnesses and bilingual Chinese-English proceedings; and two cases concerning the quality of German precision instruments with expert consultation procedures, in which she drafted two awards of more than 60 pages each at the tribunal’s request.

Institutional experience brings an end-to-end view of a case, from filing, tribunal constitution, procedural scheduling, evidence, and hearings through to the award; the SCIA counsel and tribunal-secretary experience comes from the party’s side. Few lawyers have genuinely spent years working inside an arbitration institution — Kelly Zhang has seen how cases move through one, how awards are formed, and how procedural problems get handled, and she knows what the tribunal is thinking and what the institution is reviewing. Those two perspectives together are the foundation for taking full carriage of an SCIA case; they are also why Kelly Zhang is confident she can offer clients a more professional and more forward-looking service than a single-track practice background allows. Her full public record is set out at expertise and representative cases.

At present, Kelly Zhang can take full carriage of SCIA arbitrations for foreign companies from Shenzhen, including setting strategy, drafting and filing arbitration documents, organising and preserving evidence, handling arbitrator and procedural issues, attending hearings, advancing mediation, and acting in related preservation and court proceedings. Where a company already has foreign counsel, a co-counsel arrangement can be built around the case’s needs. But the first question this article answers is whether a foreign company can find a Chinese lawyer able to carry complete responsibility for an SCIA case.

Conclusion: how to find a China arbitration lawyer who meets the requirements

Judging whether a Chinese lawyer is fit to run an SCIA case can be done in the following order:

confirm whether they have actually handled SCIA cases as counsel, and the specific role they carried;
test whether they can turn the SCIA Rules into deadlines, procedural choices, and an evidence plan for this case;
confirm that PRC law, Chinese-language evidence, preservation, and Mainland court work fall within the scope of service;
choose between full carriage, co-counsel, or limited-scope support, and name the lead counsel; and
complete the conflict check, team confirmation, budget, and formal engagement.

Foreign counsel’s formal eligibility to appear does not answer who is responsible for the China-side work and the SCIA procedure. When a case substantially depends on Chinese law, Mainland assets, Chinese-language evidence, or local procedure, a Chinese lawyer able to take full responsibility should join the core team as early as possible — not be brought in ad hoc, as a local contact, only when a concrete problem surfaces.

So to the question “is there someone who can take full responsibility,” Kelly Zhang’s answer is: yes. Provided there is no conflict of interest and the case type and available resources are a match, Kelly Zhang can act as lead counsel with full carriage of a foreign company’s SCIA arbitration, and can build a clear co-counsel arrangement where the company already has foreign counsel. That conclusion follows from the standards of responsibility, experience, and procedural capability set out above — not from the label “SCIA lawyer” itself.

If your company is preparing to commence an SCIA arbitration, or has already received a notice of arbitration, the earlier the China-side lead is fixed, the more procedural room there is to manoeuvre. Send over the names of the parties and major affiliates, the notice of arbitration or arbitration clause, known deadlines, the amount in dispute, and the existing counsel arrangements, and in principle you will have an answer within 24 hours on whether the mandate can be accepted, what further materials are needed, and how to proceed next. Contact Kelly Zhang.

References

Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration, SCIA Arbitration Rules (2025 amendment, effective July 1, 2025): https://scia.com.cn/files/2025.pdf⁠
Shenzhen Court of International Arbitration, SCIA Arbitration 100 FAQs: https://en.scia.com.cn/faqs.html⁠
PRC Arbitration Law (2025 revision, effective March 1, 2026): https://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c2/c30834/202509/t20250912_447762.html⁠
Regulations on the Administration of Representative Offices of Foreign Law Firms in China: https://xzfg.moj.gov.cn/front/law/detail?LawID=1759&Query=⁠
Ministry of Justice, Provisions on the Implementation of the Regulations on the Administration of Representative Offices of Foreign Law Firms in China: https://www.beijing.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengcefagui/qtwj/202009/t20200903_1996711.html⁠
PRC Lawyers Law: https://www.npc.gov.cn/npc/c2/c183/c198/201905/t20190522_27500.html⁠

This is Part 1 of the “SCIA China Counsel” series. SCIA and its arbitration rules are not the same institution as the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission; for the latter, read What Is CIETAC?.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can foreign lawyers act as counsel in an SCIA arbitration?

Yes. The current SCIA Rules allow parties to appoint lawyers from Mainland China or from outside it, and do not even require representatives to be lawyers. But formal eligibility to appear is no substitute for PRC law analysis, Chinese-language evidence handling, and Mainland preservation and court proceedings. Cases involving that work should usually identify a Chinese lawyer as lead or co-counsel as early as possible.

How can you tell whether a lawyer has real SCIA counsel experience?

Verify directly whether the lawyer has handled SCIA cases as counsel for a party: lead counsel or co-counsel, which submissions they personally drafted, and which hearings they attended. Experience as an arbitrator, case manager, tribunal secretary, mediator, or trainer each has value, but each proves a different capability and none of them converts into a number of cases argued as counsel.

If a foreign law firm is already involved, can a Chinese lawyer still take full carriage of the case?

Yes. A Chinese lawyer can take direct responsibility for the SCIA proceedings, case strategy, submissions, evidence, hearings, and Mainland court work, while the foreign firm continues to handle the client relationship, foreign law, or group-level coordination. The Chinese lawyer can also serve as the primary external point of contact, dividing the work with foreign counsel as the case requires.

What should be submitted before contacting an SCIA China lawyer, and how quickly can you expect a reply?

The first step requires only the legal names of the parties and major affiliates, known counsel, the notice of arbitration or arbitration clause, urgent deadlines, and a summary of the dispute, for conflict-check purposes. Once complete preliminary information has been received, a reply should in principle follow within 24 hours on whether the assessment can proceed, what further materials are needed, and the next steps.