Abstract: With the empire-wide sharp increase in cases that resulted from the Jiaqing emperor lifting the prohibition on direct appeals to Beijing, the longstanding scarcity of governmental resources in the Qing dynasty went from bad to worse. In order to mitigate this embarrassing situation, provincial governors drew upon resources from the traditional judicial administrative system and instituted temporary, informal Legal Investigative Bureaus (Fashenju) . Because the Legal Investigative Bureaus proved to be superior in relieving the backlog of cases, and their internal staff and adjudicative procedures steadily developed and matured, the Legal Investigative Bureaus evolved into a specialized branch of the traditional judicial system. The development of Legal Investigative Bureaus reveals that, although the late Qing judicial reforms transplanted many elements of the Western legal system, the process of legal reform also drew upon resources from the traditional system.