“…The 1996 Criminal Procedure Law endowed lawyers with more procedural rights at the trial stage and permitted lawyers to participate, albeit in limited ways, in the investigation and prosecution stages of the criminal process. In practice, these provisions were severely compromised by procurators and police officers (|Liu & Halliday, 2009, 2011 who prevented lawyers from meeting their clients, accessing case files and collecting evidence, practices commonly known as the 'Three Difficulties' (Halliday & Liu, 2007;Michelson, 2007). Meanwhile, the 1997 Criminal Law revision added the crime of lawyer's perjury (Article 306), which soon became a powerful weapon used by the procuracy to threaten and retaliate against criminal defense lawyers (Halliday & Liu, 2007;Liu et al, 2014).…”