This is a study of the inchoate, highly diverse, and under-studied Chinese legal profession. It seeks to understand the political origins and political consequences of the emergence and development of lawyers in post-Mao China. The theoretical motivation is to identify the conditions that contribute towards or undermine the autonomy of legal professions and the establishment of restraints on state authority. Through a combination of in-depth interviews with lawyers, judges, and government officials and a random-sample survey of lawyers in Beijing, I will evaluate the effects of the structure and organization of legal practice, formal and informal associational life in the bar, integration into global networks of lawyers, and the ideological orientations of lawyers on their interests and capacities with respect to reshaping the relationship between the individual and the state, and therefore the very parameters of state governance.