Its success rate isn't stellar - it has won at most 60 percent of its cases; but in a country where rule of law is still a work in progress and calling for democracy is often treated as a crime against the state, Yitong and other human rights firms have spoken out for people who otherwise would have been silenced.

Those days may be over.

Since the beginning of 2009 - a sensitive year filled with anniversaries of uprisings - the Chinese government has been forcing human rights law firms such as Yitong to shut down.

Formally, there is no crackdown; no police are swooping in to seize files or send attorneys en masse to labor camps. Instead, Beijing is simply using its administrative procedures for licensing lawyers and law firms, declining to renew the annual registrations, which expired May 31, of those it deems troublemakers. Human rights groups say dozens of China's best defense attorneys have effectively been disbarred.