China’s leading law firms are riding the country’s emergence as a global power, increasingly asserting themselves against their foreign rivals. Alex Aldridge asks how far they can go

On Tuesday 4 May at 7:30am a car arrived to pick up former Lovells Beijing managing partner Robert Lewis from his house in the Shunyi district of the Chinese capital, a part of town popular with expats. As it weaved its way off the estate and onto the traffic-choked main road leading to the city centre, Lewis thought about what lay ahead for him at AllBright Law Offices, the Chinese law firm where he was about to start his first day’s work.