No.6012,shennan Ave
Futian
Shenzhen P.R.China 518034
Tel: (86)(755) 33966277
Fax: (86)(755) 33966277
E-mail: shenzhen@lehmanlaw.com
It was only less than a year after the 1992 southern tour of China when Primer Deng Xiao Ping uttered "to be rich is glorious" that the law firm's founders followed the call and LEHMAN, LEE & XU's Shenzhen office was established in October 1993, as the first branch office of a Chinese law firm in Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. At that time of establishment, LEHMAN, LEE & XU had a modest office located on 11th floor of News Building, Shennan Zhong Lu Road, steps away from the Shenzhen governmental offices. The space was a mere 300 square meters, 3 partners and 16 fee earners and five legal trainees, making it the largest law firm (foreign or domestic) in the city at the time. With Shenzhen's Special economic Zone status, China had discovered that the combination of lower-cost labor and low corporate profit taxes stimulate economic growth faster than anyone might have ever imagined possible. In 1980, Deng Xiao Ping selected the then-little town of Shenzhen as a test case for future capitalistic-oriented Chinese economic development policy as China's very first indigenous low-tax capitalist city transforming the then-little fishing town of 70,000 people surrounded by rice fields into an economic miracle.
The success of Shenzhen and the SEZ program has been spectacular. There is no perfect historical analogue to Shenzhen's growth. Law firm managing director's Edward Lehman's hometown of Chicago’s may be the closest. The American Midwestern city took 50 years to record its millionth resident. Shenzhen took less than a decade, and after only a quarter of a century Shenzhen is a city of seven million people (larger than the entire Chicago metropolitan population) and the fourth largest city economy in China. Per capita, its economic output is among the highest in the country. As grew the economy, so grew the practice of law and many hundreds of lawyers and law offices flocked to the area. LEHMAN, LEE & XU has managed to remain at the top tier of all the law firms in Shenzhen at that time, providing practical solutions to what seems to be complex issues.
In early 2005, LEHMAN, LEE & XU was moved to the 8th floor of Times Finance Center again just steps from the new Shenzhen governmental offices and courts with easy access to all areas of the Pearl River Delta area where the lawyers serve a wide range of domestic and foreign clients.
