No one today can avoid dealing with law. Even if we never go to court, daily life is surrounded and shaped by legal institutions and events.

How, then, do people who work in law understand it themselves? For us, this is more than an abstract academic question; it is a distinctive way of understanding contemporary everyday life.

I am therefore delighted to introduce Thinking Like a Lawyer. Its presenter is Zhan Qingyun, whom many of you will already know and who is now widely recognized in China. I am very glad to know her, and I greatly admire the sharpness of her language, the rigor of her logic, and the breadth of her learning.

Her professional experience makes her especially well suited to this series: she is herself a practising lawyer with an unusual background.

A Chinese citizen who earned a doctorate from Harvard Law School in the United States and now practises in Tokyo, Japan, she brings a remarkably broad international perspective.

Her introduction to law is unlike the usual legal programs. It does not merely discuss abstract doctrine, nor is it simply a practical guide to resolving the legal problems of daily life.

Instead, she explores a distinctive method of reasoning: how do legal professionals think about law?

By following her, we can learn a special way into society—viewing it through law and jurisprudence, and through the eyes of a lawyer or a judge.