The personal computer that disappeared from the defense bench

Ask AI · How do courts balance courtroom order with lawyers’ needs for digital casework?

Byline | Li Yiming

Edited by | Xueli Wang

Lawyer Li Renhuo’s computer was not approved to be brought into the courtroom.

On the morning of March 16, at the courtroom scene of the Echeng District People’s Court of Ezhou City in Hubei Province, he and four other lawyers fell into a standoff at the security checkpoint with court staff over insisting on bringing their personal laptop computers to court. Over the previous more than two months, Li Renhuo had raised objections to the court several times about whether the computer could enter the courtroom, but his requests were not approved.

Taking a laptop computer to court has, for many years, been the default working method among lawyers. After all, the computer contains nearly all materials needed for case handling: an evidence index, legal research, hundreds of volumes of case files, and tens of thousands of words in defense submissions and outlines. Today, with legal research software and even artificial intelligence (AI) assistive tools being widely used, this kind of digital office workflow is no longer unusual—it is also increasingly important.

But in the past two years, some lawyers have found that this long-standing default practice has been abruptly interrupted in certain courts.

Those who kept personal computers out of the courtroom are typically citing a document that local courts showed them—an order issued by the Supreme People’s Court in 2020: “Notice on Further Regulating Courtroom Order and Safeguarding Litigation Rights” (hereinafter abbreviated as the “Notice on Regulating Courtroom Order”). Article 7 of that notice states, “For major sensitive cases and cases that are lawfully tried in a non-public manner, the People’s Courts shall prohibit the bringing of electronic devices into the courtroom, and take necessary technical measures such as shielding network signals to prevent information about courtroom proceedings from being inappropriately disseminated. If there is truly a need to use such devices, approval from the People’s Court is required.”

A conflict arose from this.

In the court’s management logic, restricting electronic devices from entering the courtroom is a safety measure to prevent illegal recording and ensure that case information is not leaked; while in the lawyers’ view, given that in today’s world case materials can easily reach millions of Chinese characters and technological means have already deeply assisted in case handling, not being allowed to bring a personal computer indeed creates difficulties for their work. The dispute over “tools” is evolving into a new conflict between advocacy and adjudication.

When technology is already deeply embedded in legal practice, how should restrictions and use of it be kept appropriate? Regarding this dispute, reporters from Phoenix Weekly interviewed multiple lawyers, scholars, and court workers who had experienced similar situations, seeking to clarify the logic behind how this phenomenon arises—and also to further explore, in the context of technological change, how courtroom order and practitioners’ rights should adapt and rebuild trust.

Conflict

The computer of lawyer Li Renhuo of Beijing Zhongdun Law Firm was blocked by a notice.

On January 9, 2026, he received an electronic version of a summons-to-court notice sent by the Echeng District People’s Court of Ezhou City, Hubei Province. The footer text was particularly conspicuous: “This case is a major sensitive matter. According to relevant regulations, personal laptops, mobile phones, and other electronic devices are prohibited from entering the courtroom. If a computer must be used, this court will uniformly provide a dedicated computer and a USB flash drive.”

The day before the notice was received, during the recess of a pre-trial meeting held on January 8, the presiding judge had shown defense counsel a paper document. After the lawyers later searched it, they found that the document was the “Notice on Regulating Courtroom Order,” issued by the Supreme People’s Court.

The courthouse building of the Echeng District. The case was originally scheduled for a hearing on March 16.

Li Renhuo remembered that the presiding judge at the time clearly pointed out that Article 7 of the regulation was the basis for not allowing lawyers to use personal computers during the trial.

As described earlier, beyond the principle of generally allowing electronic devices such as phones and computers to be carried into the courtroom, the provision draws a red line barring entry for “major sensitive cases.” The focus of the dispute thus emerged. It is understood that this case does not fall within the scope of “lawfully tried in a non-public manner,” so does it qualify as a “major sensitive case”?

According to the guiding opinion issued by the Supreme Court in 2023, “major sensitive” typically includes situations involving national interests, cases with a first-case effect, or cases involving national security and religion, among others. In the notice sent by the Echeng District People’s Court, the case was explicitly marked as a “major sensitive case.” The Echeng District People’s Court’s summons-to-court notice for the lawyers of this case explicitly stated that this case falls under a major sensitive matter.

The court summons notice.

Zuo Deqi, a professor and doctoral supervisor at the Law School of Shenzhen University and a standing executive member of the Chinese Society of Criminal Procedure Law Studies, has been following the incident. In his view, Article 7 gives courts broad discretionary power to control electronic devices. He wrote in a commentary in the Shanghai Legal News that if the dissemination of trial information lacks regulation, it is easy to be misinterpreted by cherry-picking, and it may even lead to false public opinion, interfering with the normal trial of a case. Therefore, there are reasonable starting points for courts to strengthen control over the “outflow” of information.

But Zuo Deqi also pointed out that in judicial practice, the application of this regulation shows deviations. Because the rules on electronic device management for major sensitive cases that are tried in public are vague, they are likely to trigger public doubts: “Since it’s a public trial, why is the use of electronic devices prohibited?”

Zhu Kai previously worked for 10 years in the criminal trial courtroom of a court in Zhejiang Province. He served as a criminal trial judge and also participated in the handling of many criminal cases. In his view, the “Rules of the People’s Courts for Trial Courtrooms of the People’s Republic of China” explicitly provides that it is prohibited to privately record or photograph during trial proceedings, and it is also not allowed to privately disseminate trial proceedings via the internet. The prohibited targets certainly include lawyers. This is a common understanding with no dispute. Those prohibitions necessarily have reasonable grounds—for example, protecting the privacy of parties, state secrets, and avoiding negative impacts, and so on.

As for Article 7 of the “Notice on Regulating Courtroom Order,” its purpose is also to prevent anyone from privately recording audio, recording video, photographing, and disseminating trial activities. The underlying reason is that there are currently many types of electronic devices with diverse functions, and it is difficult for courtroom staff to confirm one by one whether each device is turned on with hidden recording or live-streaming functions.

Therefore, for major sensitive cases or cases tried in a non-public manner, courts adopt a source-level approach to block risks.

Dilemma

However, in the lawyers’ view, restricting lawyers from bringing personal computers into the courtroom indeed creates real, practical difficulties for them.

Lawyer Jin Hongwei of Beijing Hua Yi Law Firm said that before the “Notice on Regulating Courtroom Order” was issued, he had encountered similar situations in multiple places including Hunan, Hubei, and Guangxi. At that time, courts relied on Article 15 of the Supreme People’s Court’s “Several Provisions on Recording and Video Recording by People’s Courts”: without permission from the People’s Court, no one may record audio or video of trial proceedings, nor may they record, copy, delete, or transfer trial audio or video recordings. If someone carries out the actions in the preceding paragraph, corresponding liability shall be pursued in accordance with the regulations.

“Forbidding recording and video recording means just keeping all those devices out of the courtroom,” he said.

In Jin Hongwei’s view, this approach infringes upon lawyers’ full exercise of the right of defense. Regarding the situation faced by lawyers such as Li Renhuo recently, he believes this is an expanded and overly broad understanding of the relevant documents. “First, the ‘Notice on Regulating Courtroom Order’ only states that for major sensitive cases, as a matter of principle, lawyers are prohibited from carrying personal computers. But the Echeng District People’s Court ‘blanketly’ and comprehensively prohibits it. Second, the so-called ‘major sensitive’ is not serious ‘legalese’ and does not provide a clear boundary.”

“If a local court uses ‘major sensitive cases’ as the reason to ban lawyers from using personal computers in any event that could potentially trigger public opinion. Then that could lead to a certain trend,” Jin Hongwei told Phoenix Weekly, and he said that this is what he is most worried about.

Zhu Kai also believes that the relevant provisions in the “Notice on Regulating Courtroom Order” have “the appearance of overcorrecting.” “It is often necessary for lawyers, during trial proceedings, to use computers and other electronic devices as part of their work,” he pointed out. “Especially in complex cases involving organized crime and evil forces, case file materials can easily run into thousands or tens of thousands of pages. Some electronic data needs to be displayed on the spot. Using paper materials is obviously inconvenient, and in some cases simply not workable.”

Outside the Echeng District People’s Court.

But in the view of Peng Fu, an instructor at the School of Law of the Hubei University of Economics and a partner at Tianda Gonghe Law Firm, the “Notice on Regulating Courtroom Order” does have binding effect within the court system. However, the document deprives citizens of the right to defense—Article 14 of the Criminal Procedure Law of the People’s Republic of China provides that “People’s Courts, People’s Procuratorates, and public security organs shall safeguard, according to law, the defense rights and other litigation rights enjoyed by criminal suspects, defendants, and other litigation participants.”

“Exercising the right of defense is not just saying things out loud or reading from paper and calling that defense,” Peng Fu said. “The right of defense needs to be exercised effectively. If it is to be exercised effectively, using a computer should be a basic safeguard. We are in an information age, and I cannot imagine any work in today’s society that can be done completely without the internet and without computers—that’s impossible. If it were like that, wouldn’t it mean going back to the era of hoe farming and fire-making?”

He also pointed out that in the “Notice on Effectively Safeguarding Lawyers’ Litigation Rights” issued by the Supreme People’s Court in 2020, it emphasized that “lawyers shall not be restricted from bringing into court necessary devices for casework such as computers.” “Seen this way, the two ‘notices’ are in a ‘front-and-back contradictory’ state.”

“Of course, during the course of case hearing, there are also situations where lawyers publicly disclose trial transcripts to the outside. This kind of situation typically creates public opinion and puts pressure on the court,” Peng Fu analyzed for Phoenix Weekly. “Worry about triggering public opinion is one of the main motivations for courts to prohibit lawyers from bringing personal computers into the courtroom. But that does not mean lawyers should therefore be prohibited from bringing computers. That is a guilty-premise approach, and it is ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater.’”

From the perspective of legal economics, Peng Fu believes that the costs of what the court is doing and its benefits are not proportional. “The court’s purpose is to ensure that both the prosecution and the defense sides can fully present their opinions, and then for the court to render a ruling in the middle. If the court prohibits personal computers and prevents the prosecution and defense sides from fully presenting their views, then it would run counter to the original purpose of finding facts and making fair rulings.”

“Under this logic, sacrificing the court’s original purpose to prevent lawyers from secretly recording the case hearing process is not worth it,” he said.

On this issue, Phoenix Weekly interviewed Professor Yi Yanyou, director of the Center for Evidence Law Studies at the Law School of Tsinghua University. In his view, the “Notice on Regulating Courtroom Order” is not a judicial interpretation; it can only regulate the court’s work and cannot restrict the rights of defense lawyers. “To involve lawyers’ rights, at a minimum, it would need to be a judicial interpretation at the level of effectiveness.”

He further emphasized that what the court is doing amounts to depriving or restricting lawyers’ right of defense. “That is creating a defense-versus-adjudication conflict artificially, ‘meaninglessly.’ If courtroom discipline has strict rules that prohibit violations such as recording audio and video, then if a lawyer violates courtroom discipline, accountability can be pursued afterward in accordance with courtroom discipline. You cannot, out of worry that someone might violate the rules, preemptively deprive everyone of the right to do normal work.”

Consensus

In response to lawyers’ questions, the court proposed an alternative: allowing lawyers to use a computer provided by the court to attend hearings. But in lawyers’ view, this measure does not really “solve the problem.”

In August 2025, when lawyer Cao Zongwen of Beijing Cailiang Law Firm participated in a hearing for a case of duty embezzlement and abuse of power, he encountered a similar experience. The case was heard in the Echeng District by the Ezhou City Intermediate People’s Court. At that time, at the courthouse entrance there was a notice board displaying relevant content from Article 7 of the “Notice on Regulating Courtroom Order.”

A notice board placed at the entrance of a certain court.

As an alternative, the court provided a Windows-system laptop computer. Cao Zongwen had to copy his work files from his personal computer to the USB flash drive provided by the court, then connect it to this dedicated device and use it during the hearing. After each day’s hearing ended, the court would seal the computer.

Over six days of hearings, Cao Zongwen had been adjusting to the computer.

“The operating system is completely different from what I’m used to. The system is very slow, and besides Word and WPS, there are no other built-in applications,” Cao Zongwen said, adding that this greatly reduced his work efficiency.

Peng Fu compared this alternative to a table tennis match: it is like requiring a table tennis player on the court to give up the racket they have been accustomed to for years, and instead use an alternative of different specifications uniformly issued by the organizing committee. “Differences in the computer’s system and interface, as well as the different locations where files are stored, will all affect the results of use.”

Peng Fu said that during the hearing, he often opened many windows—for example, paid professional case-viewing software, a regulation database, and a case database—and its efficiency was far higher than the software on the court-provided computer. In addition, the computer also had his familiar shortcut commands, mind maps, and more. Several other lawyers also said that once these familiar tools are stripped away, case-handling efficiency drops significantly.

From the court’s perspective, however, this action may be a reluctant “insurance” move.

A law clerk from a mid-level People’s Court of a directly administered municipality told Phoenix Weekly that to some extent these measures are intended to “mitigate risk.” Although courtroom rules strictly prohibit recording audio and video, because modern recording methods are extremely covert, it is hard to fully eliminate it. Prohibiting all personal electronic devices from entering the courtroom may look like a “blanket ban,” but for courts, this way is indeed more secure and safer.

He further mentioned that there is courtroom recording and video recording for each formal hearing. After the parties apply, they can access and copy the audio and video. In that situation, recording it oneself is not only disruptive to courtroom order, but also unnecessary.

Zhu Kai observed that the “Notice on Regulating Courtroom Order” actually left “a gap”: “If there is truly a necessity for use, approval from the People’s Court is required.” In practice, courts should grant approval for computer and other casework needs when they are genuinely necessary based on the actual circumstances. And as lawyers, they should also consider the court’s interests—making every effort to use electronic devices without recording-and-video functions and without network dissemination functions, to remove the court’s concerns.

“This actually involves the issue of judicial openness,” Zhu Kai said. “People’s Courts have once strongly emphasized judicial openness, vigorously promoted uploading legal documents to the internet, and pushed for live-streaming of court hearings, and those efforts have achieved pretty good results.” In his view, judicial openness is a general trend, and courts should follow it.

The law clerk also discussed his observations. In his view, lawyers and the staff of procuratorates and courts are mostly educated within the same legal discipline system and have a common professional background. “But after they enter their respective working roles, they are often constrained by their job responsibilities, which makes it easy to fall into固有立场 brought by their profession—thus lacking mutual understanding.” He believed that within the legal community, more communication is still needed. “Hearing different views helps clarity; only then can we promote understanding and avoid ‘defense-versus-adjudication conflicts’ like this.”

This game specifically about computers ultimately reflects the delicate state of the relationship between advocacy and adjudication. Gao Guijun, former member of the Trial Committee and head of the Fifth Trial Division for Criminal Cases of the Supreme People’s Court, once said that a “defense-versus-adjudication conflict” should not happen in the first place. In criminal case trials, judges, prosecutors, and defense lawyers form an equilateral triangle relationship: judges adjudicate in the middle, while the opposing parties are the prosecution and the defense sides (i.e., prosecutors and defense lawyers). The judge should be a mediator, a neutral party. But now, judges and lawyers have become a pair of “estranged spouses,” generating disputes.

“This is a very abnormal phenomenon,” Gao Guijun said.

He believed that “both sides have certain responsibilities, but the main responsibility should still lie with judges,” because among the two sides in advocacy and adjudication, the judge is in a position of strength, while the lawyer is in a weaker position. “In this situation, if judges are more tolerant and inclusive, it may allow the problem to be resolved in a timely manner.”

In relation to the experiences of lawyers such as Li Renhuo, Zuo Deqi believed that it is necessary to clarify the statutory standards for recognizing what qualifies as “major sensitive cases,” distinguish between control rules for public and non-public trials, improve technical and institutional control measures, and establish a pre-trial notice, objection, and review mechanism for courtroom electronic device control. At the same time, it is necessary to abandon the simplistic thinking pattern of a “blanket ban” and replace “extensive prohibitions” with “fine-grained regulation.” By using technological measures and institutional design to dissolve the court’s reasonable concerns, it is also necessary to truly safeguard lawyers’ right to practice. “The progress of justice needs to continue optimizing institutional design through the balanced coordination of diverse interests and rights.”

This computer dispute ultimately ended with the trial being postponed.

During the final round of communication before the March 16 hearing, a court assistant called and said the court had already prepared dedicated computers. On the day of the hearing, after the security check lead, law clerk, and even the presiding judge took turns to communicate but to no avail, the presiding judge announced that the hearing in the case where Li Renhuo and others were serving as defense counsel would be postponed to the following day. On March 17, due to continued lack of resolution, the court announced a further delay and announced that the hearing time would be notified separately.

The lawyers did not stop. On the afternoon of the 16th, they went to the Ezhou Municipal People’s Procuratorate and the Ezhou Intermediate People’s Court to submit relevant materials and formally applied for legal supervision and correction of the Echeng District People’s Court’s related conduct. On March 17, Phoenix Weekly called the presiding judge of the Echeng District People’s Court, but the other party refused to respond to the matter.

Li Renhuo judged that the court may have been trying to pressure them by delaying the hearing so that they would ultimately accept going to court without personal computers. In fact, this strategy was working—on March 17, one of the five lawyers who had originally insisted on their position had accepted this outcome and agreed to enter the courtroom without bringing a personal computer.

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