Relationship First, Business Later
“From my perspective, I think to get the very interest and attention from a Chinese client is, you need to know the Chinese culture first, because we have a relationship first, business later. So it’s totally different between China and Europe. And Chinese clients want to know who you are before what you can do.”
Steven Shi‘s statement captures the fundamental sequencing that confounds Western law firms in Chinese markets. As founder of SLLS Global and former KPMG Law practitioner, he bridges East and West daily—and what he’s learned challenges everything international firms assume about business development.
The Western model: demonstrate competence, prove capabilities, win engagement, then build relationship through quality delivery. The Chinese model: build relationship, establish trust in character, only then evaluate competence, finally consider engagement. Reversing this sequence—leading with credentials before establishing personal connection—signals transactional mentality that Chinese clients instinctively distrust.
The October 31 LexChina roundtable provided Shi a platform to articulate why “relationship first, business later” isn’t cultural nicety but market requirement. His insights reveal what international firms must fundamentally change about their China strategies—and why most won’t make these changes, ensuring continued failure.
Who You Are Before What You Can Do
“Chinese clients want to know who you are before what you can do.” This statement deserves unpacking because it contradicts Western professional services orthodoxy.
Western firms assume technical competence creates relationship foundation. Show impressive credentials, demonstrate sophisticated analysis, present compelling solutions—this builds trust that yields engagement. The relationship follows from proven professional capability.
Shi describes opposite logic: “From my personal behavior, I would like to show respect first and then stay patient. And I would like to try to give my strict intention that I would like to maintain a long-term relationship with you whether or not you would like to give me any task or projects to do.”
Notice the radical decoupling: relationship commitment independent of immediate business. Shi signals he wants long-term connection regardless of whether any work materializes. This tells Chinese clients you’re not extracting transactions but building something durable.
“So what I mean is I would like to appreciate this chance for me to be a friend first and to introduce myself and then to try to solve any problem that may be happening during our communication.”
Friend first. This language makes Western lawyers uncomfortable—professional service relationships aren’t friendships, they’re commercial arrangements governed by engagement letters and fiduciary duties. But Shi understands that Chinese business culture doesn’t separate personal and professional relationships the way Western culture does. Chinese clients want lawyers who become trusted personal advisors, not vendors who provide technical services transactionally.
The practical implication: first meetings with Chinese prospects shouldn’t focus on firm capabilities, practice area rankings, or technical sophistication. They should focus on personal connection—understanding the person, their background, their challenges, their aspirations. Demonstrating genuine interest in them as individuals, not just as potential revenue sources.
The Details That Signal Respect
If Western lawyers accept that relationship precedes business, the next question becomes: how do you build that relationship? Shi identifies seemingly minor details that carry major significance:
“Another one is like, I would like to mention, it’s about like details, signal respect. So sometimes some of the small gestures may reflect that your personality, at the same time, the Chinese client would like to see if you are in the same way with them. So for example, business card order or seat order, if you would like to have dinner, which is a big honor for us, the internal dinner.”
Business card exchange. Seating arrangements. These perplex Western lawyers trained to focus on substantive legal issues. Why does the order of business card presentation matter? Why does dinner seating require careful attention?
Because Chinese business culture reads these details as evidence of cultural investment. Have you learned basic Chinese professional etiquette? Do you understand hierarchical protocols? Have you bothered studying how Chinese meetings and meals work?
Getting these details wrong doesn’t just create awkwardness—it signals to Chinese clients that you haven’t done cultural homework. And if you haven’t invested in understanding Chinese business protocols, why should they trust you’ll invest in understanding their business needs?
The business card ritual: present with both hands, text facing recipient, slight bow, receive opponent’s card with both hands, examine it respectfully before carefully storing. Simple. But Western lawyers who casually hand over cards one-handed while continuing conversation signal disrespect through ignorance.
Dinner seating: most senior Chinese executives in positions of honor, careful attention to hierarchy and status, proper toasting protocol, appropriate drinking participation without excess. Complex. But Western lawyers who treat business dinners as casual networking rather than formal relationship-building ceremonies miss crucial trust-building opportunities.
Shi‘s point: these details matter not because Chinese clients are rigidly formal, but because they’re testing whether you’ve invested time learning their business culture. Pass the test, and they’ll believe you’ll invest similarly in understanding their legal needs. Fail, and they’ll doubt your commitment regardless of technical capabilities.
Listen More Than Talk
Shi offers guidance that directly contradicts Western business development training: “What is more important for me is to try to listen more than talk and to just pick up, point out any problems that the client may have. So it is what we need to remember all the time. So try to be modest and like build an immediate goodwill.”
Western lawyers learn to demonstrate expertise through articulate presentation. Pitch meetings showcase sophisticated analysis, comprehensive solutions, impressive technical knowledge. The assumption: demonstrating competence builds confidence that yields engagement.
Chinese clients interpret this assertiveness differently—as potentially aggressive, potentially arrogant, potentially dismissive of their own knowledge. Why are you talking so much? Are you trying to impress me or understand me? Do you care about my actual problems or just want to display your capabilities?
Shi advocates opposite approach: modest listening that identifies client problems through attentive observation rather than dominating conversation with firm capabilities. This builds “immediate goodwill” because it signals genuine interest in understanding client needs rather than transactional focus on winning engagement.
The challenge for Western lawyers: this requires confidence to stay quiet. Junior lawyers especially feel pressure to prove their worth through verbal contribution. But Shi suggests silence demonstrates greater confidence than speech in Chinese business contexts. You’re secure enough not to fill every pause with self-promotion. You value understanding the client more than impressing them.
This doesn’t mean never speaking about capabilities—it means sequencing matters. First understand the client through listening. Then, when you’ve identified genuine problems, offer targeted insights demonstrating how you can help. The contrast to aggressive self-promotion builds trust that credentials alone never create.
The Bamboo Growth Timeline
Shi‘s most powerful metaphor addresses the timeline challenge that defeats many Western firms: “Working with Chinese client is not just about understanding the law, it’s about understanding the rhythm of the trust. My always belief is to stay patient. In China, relationships grow like bamboo, slowly, then suddenly strong and lasting. So you don’t win trust by being the loudest or the smartest, especially in the meeting in front of the CEO, but by being consistent, respectful and patient.”
Bamboo spends years growing roots underground before shooting upward rapidly. During those underground years, nothing visible happens. Observers might think bamboo isn’t growing at all. Then suddenly—over weeks, not months—bamboo shoots up meters, achieving rapid vertical growth only possible because of extensive root development.
Chinese business relationships follow this pattern. Extensive cultivation period with no visible results. Multiple meetings generating no engagement. Sustained communication producing no billable work. Western firms watching this investment think nothing is happening, lose patience, redirect resources to opportunities showing faster return.
Then suddenly—after months or years—the relationship yields substantial sustained work. The Chinese client who showed interest but never committed now becomes major client source, introducing matters across multiple practice areas, maintaining loyalty through relationship quality rather than matter-by-matter evaluation.
The challenge: Western law firm economics demand quarterly business development results. Partners must justify their non-billable time investment. Business development professionals must show conversion metrics. Firm management requires predictable revenue pipeline.
Bamboo growth contradicts all of this. How do you justify six months of cultivation with no engagement? How do you explain to management that promising Chinese prospect still hasn’t converted after year of meetings? How do you maintain partner commitment to relationships showing no immediate return?
Shi‘s answer: accept that Chinese business development operates on fundamentally different timeline, or accept you’ll never access the opportunity. “Stay patient.” Chinese clients will move at their pace regardless of your urgency. Trying to accelerate the process signals exactly the transactional mentality that Chinese clients distrust.
The Three Collaboration Models
When discussing how international and Chinese firms should work together, Shi identified three distinct models: “I think there are two questions I need, I would like to combine them to answer that from my personal thinking. I think what we are talking about is like more about business model, right?”
Model One—General Contract: “The first one is general model, right? We have a general contract and for example, if I face a client directly, if I have a case in Indonesia, I would like to try to subcontract to Indonesia lawyer for this restructuring project. So most of the time, the client needs Chinese lawyer, American lawyer, Indonesian lawyer together to do that stuff. So it’s very easy to share your profit, right? Because you do, you earn what you did, right? So it’s simple.”
This model works for complex cross-border transactions where multiple jurisdictions are clearly required and client understands need for distributed expertise. Each firm handles distinct work, profit-sharing is straightforward based on actual contribution.
Model Two—Referral Exchange: “Second is like, it’s a referral perspective. So most of the jurisdiction, as I know, we cannot share profits. And that’s some of the jurisdiction can share between lawyers. And I think in Hong Kong, we just refer. Most of the time, we refer to another lawyer for exchanging, because it’s a kind gesture. Next time we know each other, I’m famous for intellectual property. He’s for family matters. So I’m looking forward to be referred back. So it’s kind of like a social asset.”
But Shi acknowledges limitation: “In Hong Kong, it’s more than in the mainland, actually.” Reciprocal referral model works better in Hong Kong’s Western-oriented market than mainland China, where referrals without ongoing relationship maintenance don’t reliably generate reciprocal opportunities.
Model Three—Alliance Structure: “To solve this problem in Mainland, it’s like, I think you have a foreseeing to establish alliance, right? So it is the internal circle, like it’s a community that we know each other and we know who referred to whom, and the next time you can be referred back from the same person because we know each other.”
The alliance addresses trust deficit making ad-hoc referrals unreliable: “Global has learned this from you, to establish an alliance, just for the easy referral for each other, not to take time, because sometimes, why I refer, I also want to share profits from the foreign law firms, but it takes a lot of time to figure out how I would like to share profits with you, 10%, 40%, 50% something, I don’t want to negotiate or something. So an internal alliance can solve that problem.”
Pre-negotiated referral terms and profit-sharing frameworks eliminate transaction friction while building trust foundation that makes Chinese lawyers confident referring matters to international firms. The alliance creates ongoing relationship infrastructure transcending individual transactions.
The Chinese Creative Model
Shi described innovative approach some Chinese firms use that international firms should understand: “The third creative Chinese model is like, I met some of the managing partners in local law firms. I asked them what they are doing for the Chinese companies going abroad, like Chinese law firm going abroad.”
The model: “We all know that if we are going to do the foreign legal matters, we need to be only the project manager, right? We cannot practice laws in local jurisdictions. So the project manager is the first step. The second step is like, for some of these special legal areas, we cannot do, for example, dispute resolution, especially in the arbitration, right? You are the arbitrator.”
Here’s the innovation: “Some of them engage barristers in Hong Kong to hear about their expert opinions by hourly. They will do all this study. For example, procedures, how to do the discovery and et cetera. And then when it comes to represent the clients in UK arbitration centers, or later in the UK Supreme Court, they will ask this barrister to represent them.”
Benefits: “It is a very creative model to save cost for a client, expose themselves better for the client, and then the barrister and it’s a kind of, also share profits.”
This hybrid model—Chinese firm as project manager, strategic use of foreign counsel for specific high-value components—reveals Chinese firms learning to disaggregate international legal work. They identify which components truly require foreign expertise versus which can be handled domestically or with limited foreign guidance.
For international firms, this represents both competition and opportunity. Competition because Chinese firms are reducing dependence on foreign counsel by handling more work internally. Opportunity because it creates demand for specialized foreign expertise on specific high-value matters rather than full-service engagement.
The practical lesson: international firms should position for specialized, high-value components where foreign expertise is genuinely required, rather than expecting to handle entire cross-border engagements as they might have historically.
The One-Stop Service Advantage
Drawing on KPMG experience, Shi explained why integrated service models succeed with Chinese clients: “When I was working for KPMG Law, we, the KPMG, everybody knows like the big four are trying to occupy all the legal markets, audit markets, tax market, and et cetera. So the one source, services was created by the big four by collaborating between tax advisors, legal practitioners, auditors, and like industrial structures and et cetera.”
The client appeal: “Why is that? It’s because you know the clients especially CEOs or managing directors would like to save time, save efforts, at the same time they need a giant to take the responsibilities of them.”
Specific example: “One of KPMG or PW say, okay, hey, so you’re going to have the tax structure rearrangement, right? So we have our lawyers. So we will take the responsibility for the legitimate structure review by engaging our PWC or KPMG lawyers. And then the client would like to say, okay, so we will not, we will save our time to get another law firm. And we also do not need to negotiate again or send them proposals, et cetera, et cetera.”
The business case: “It will surely save cost from the client side. At the same time, the one-stop service can have better profit because they integrate another professional services.”
Chinese clients value convenience and responsibility consolidation. Rather than coordinating multiple advisors across tax, legal, audit, consulting domains, they prefer single firm handling everything. This reduces client’s coordination burden, simplifies approvals internally, and creates single point of accountability if things go wrong.
For international law firms, this suggests opportunity for deeper collaboration with accounting firms, consultancies, and other professional service providers serving Chinese clients. The challenge: whether law firms’ regulatory and cultural constraints allow integrated service delivery Chinese clients increasingly expect.
The Trust Rhythm
Shi‘s central message challenges international firms to reconceptualize what they’re doing in China: “Working with Chinese client is not just about understanding the law, it’s about understanding the rhythm of the trust.”
Western legal markets operate on competence trust: demonstrate technical capability, deliver quality work, earn continued engagement. The rhythm is transactional—prove yourself matter by matter.
Chinese legal markets operate on character trust: demonstrate personal reliability, consistent presence, genuine relationship commitment. The rhythm is cumulative—each interaction builds or diminishes trust foundation that eventually determines whether business flows.
International firms struggle with this rhythm because it contradicts their training and incentive structures. They’re optimized for demonstrating competence quickly, not building character slowly. They measure success in engagements won, not relationships deepened. They rotate lawyers based on technical expertise, not relationship continuity.
But as Shi emphasizes: “Stay patient.” Chinese clients move at their own pace. Attempting acceleration signals transactional focus that triggers distrust.
The path forward isn’t abandoning professional standards—it’s recognizing relationship building is itself professional discipline requiring strategy, investment, and patience. Firms mastering this rhythm won’t just access Chinese clients—they’ll build competitive advantages rivals cannot easily replicate.
Why You Don’t Win by Being Smartest
Shi offers counterintuitive guidance: “You don’t win trust by being the loudest or the smartest, especially in the meeting in front of the CEO, but by being consistent, respectful and patient.”
Western lawyers instinctively try impressing senior executives through sophisticated analysis and impressive knowledge. The assumption: demonstrating intellectual horsepower builds confidence in capabilities.
Shi suggests this backfires with Chinese CEOs. Being “loudest” or “smartest” in meetings signals arrogance rather than competence. Chinese business culture values humility, deference to authority, and recognition of others’ wisdom over individual intellectual display.
What wins trust? “Consistent, respectful and patient.” Showing up repeatedly. Demonstrating respect for Chinese business culture and client status. Accepting timelines without pushing for acceleration. These behaviors signal genuine commitment that impresses Chinese executives more than intellectual pyrotechnics.
The practical advice for lawyers pitching Chinese CEOs: resist temptation to dominate conversation with sophisticated analysis. Ask thoughtful questions. Listen carefully to responses. Offer insights targeted to specific expressed concerns rather than showcasing general expertise. Let the CEO conclude you’re smart through your questions and responses rather than telling them through monologue.
The Relationship-First Imperative
Shi‘s closing captured his philosophy: “Working with Chinese clients is not just about understanding the law, it’s about understanding the rhythm of the trust. In China, relationships grow like bamboo, slowly, then suddenly strong and lasting.”
For international law firms, this presents uncomfortable choice: fundamentally restructure China business development around relationship-first principles, or accept marginal market access limited to Chinese companies already comfortable with Western approaches.
The restructuring required:
Timeline acceptance: Budget for 6-18 months of cultivation before potential engagement. Measure relationship depth, not just conversion. Reward lawyers for sustained relationship building regardless of immediate revenue.
Sequencing discipline: Invest in personal connection before discussing firm capabilities. Understand who client is before explaining what you can do. Build friendship before pursuing business.
Cultural investment: Learn business card protocol, seating etiquette, drinking customs, gift-giving norms. Study these seriously, not superficially, because Chinese clients evaluate your cultural homework.
Listening priority: Train lawyers to listen more than speak in Chinese client meetings. Identify problems through attentive silence rather than demonstrating expertise through verbose presentation.
Patience commitment: Accept bamboo growth timeline without attempting acceleration. Trust the process even when nothing appears to be happening. Persist through months or years of cultivation.
Consistent presence: Show up repeatedly without expecting immediate return. Maintain contact between matters. Demonstrate long-term commitment regardless of current engagement status.
Relationship attribution: Recognize that relationships belong to introducers perpetually. Honor ongoing obligations to Chinese partners who make introductions even after establishing direct client contact.
Most international firms won’t make these changes. The economics seem wrong, the timeline unacceptable, the approach too foreign to Western professional services models. They’ll continue leading with credentials, expecting quarterly conversions, rotating lawyers based on technical expertise rather than relationship continuity.
And they’ll continue failing to access China’s legal market at scale, securing only occasional matters from Westernized Chinese companies already comfortable with foreign approaches.
The firms that succeed—those willing to embrace relationship first, business later—will build competitive advantages that credentials and rankings cannot replicate. They’ll cultivate relationships that yield sustained work once trust is established. They’ll become trusted personal advisors to Chinese executives rather than transactional service providers evaluated matter by matter.
As Shi makes clear: there are no shortcuts. Bamboo growth takes as long as it takes. But the strength and durability of relationships built through patient cultivation compensate for extended timelines—if firms possess patience to wait for harvest.
Steven Shi is the Founder of SLLS Global, an international legal alliance spanning 30+ countries specializing in cross-border legal collaborations and Chinese market entry strategies. With extensive experience at KPMG Law Firm in Hong Kong, he brings deep expertise in structuring international-Chinese law firm partnerships, navigating complex multi-jurisdictional transactions, and designing service delivery models that bridge Eastern and Western legal cultures. His practice emphasizes the practical mechanics of how international and Chinese legal teams can work effectively together—avoiding overlapping responsibilities, managing client attribution arrangements, and maintaining long-term relationships beyond individual transactions. As a contributor to LexChina Forum discussions, Shi provides frontline insights into the cultural nuances, timeline realities, and strategic frameworks that determine whether international firms successfully build sustainable practices in China’s legal market. His perspective combines deep understanding of Chinese business culture with practical knowledge of how Western professional service firms operate, offering international practitioners actionable guidance for relationship-first market development that accepts bamboo growth timelines and prioritizes character trust over competence demonstration.