Research suggests that cause lawyers are a diverse group. Death penalty lawyers with attachment to political institutions and a strong commitment to procedurals tend to have a unique path to professional identification, participation in the legal process and acquiring the ability to affect case outcomes. Borrowing from Hilbink's typologies and Liu and Halliday's analytical framework, this study examines in detail the practices of proceduralist and progressive elite lawyers. It uses a high-profile capital case, the Nian Bin case, as a case study to analyse the motivation and strategies of the lead defence lawyer in the context of progressive proceduralist cause lawyers. Relevant theoretical and policy implications as well as suggestions for future studies are discussed.
