Abstract: In the era of misdemeanor calling for the transformation of criminal governance, misdemeanor governance came into being. Misdemeanor governance does not shake the status and value of defense in criminal proceedings, but causes significant changes in the defense patterns of lawyers, including the advancement of defense stage, the change of defense focus and the adjustment of defense strategy. On the other hand, misdemeanor governance causes practical difficulties for lawyers’pretrial defense, reducing effectiveness of lawyers’defense, causing insufficient protection of lawyers’defense rights, and reducing lawyers’defense to a mere formality. In order to effectively deal with this challenge, efforts must be made in the future to improve lawyers’professional competence, to protect lawyers’defense rights and to strengthen defense lawyers’ability to participate in substantive consultation, so that equal negotiation between the prosecution and the defended is ensured and lawyers’potential motivated, and hence high-quality development of pretrial defense in misdemeanor cases is realized.

Key words: misdemeanor governance, pretrial defense, defense pattern, prosecution and defense negotiation, possibility of defense, duty counsel