China's membership of the World Trade Organization will usher in a new era for the legal world, according to an international forum held in Beijing at the weekend.

At the 21st-Century Forum for the Reform and Development of Legal Education on Saturday, Minister of Justice Zhang Fusen said that the nation urgently needs to train advanced legal professionals who are not only acquainted with WTO regulations and domestic laws but also know how to deal with transnational legal issues.

Xiao Yang, president of the Supreme People's Court of China, said law schools must not only enlarge students' legal knowledge and improve their abilities but also, more importantly, foster their loyalty to the law and their sense of ethics.

Only by doing this will law schools be able to train qualified lawyers, judges and prosecutors, he added.

Co-operation between the judiciary and the legal education sector will not only provide the judiciary and government departments with a large number of law graduates but also improve the level of legal education in China, Xiao added.

The minister said: "Starting in 2002, all those who want to be judges, prosecutors and lawyers in China must take a uniform legal examination. This is an important step, the expectation being to greatly improve the quality of Chinese legal professionals as a whole."

Law schools in China should train advanced legal professionals and thus more comprehensively study WTO practice and the country's WTO agreements, he said.

According to Xinhua News Agency, nearly 100 senior judges from the Supreme People's Court had returned home by October after studying abroad.

Zeng Xianyi, president of Renmin University law school, said that Asian countries, with their common legal tradition and similar judicial reforms, have a lot in common regarding the reform and development of legal education and can learn from each other.

The forum was hosted by Renmin University and attracted more than 150 law-school presidents and legal experts from 12 countries and regions in Asia. Its aim was to solicit diverse opinions on topics such as traditional culture, the training of legal personnel, the reform of legal education and exchange programmes for this sector in Asia.