Abstract: This article explores the existence of specialized legal professions and legal ethics in Qing China through an analysis of muyous and their representative Wang Huizu. Muyous established professional autonomy within the centralized bureaucratic system through distinct identity markers and ethical codes. The exemplary muyou Wang Huizu regarded expertise as the foundation of muyou practice. Through his mastery of statutory law, Confucian classics, and local customs, he achieved an balance between moral principles and legal formalism in legal reasoning and application for individual cases. Guided by the concept of karmic retribution, he took procedural ethics as the core of muyou practice, advocating judicial prudence, evidence verification, and public hearings, while avoiding torture and collective punishment. Muyous promoted the professionalization process through the production and dissemination of legal knowledge, further expanding their influence and forming a consensus among legal actors. Their career path constituted a deviation from the upward mobility trajectory of “literati entering officialdom”. The study of muyous highlights the mediating role of non-official legal actors between state power and grassroots governance, as well as their long-undervalued role in shaping the judicial order of the Qing Dynasty and influencing the behavioral norms of officials. This provides an important reference for comparative studies on the trajectories of legal professionalization in different social and historical contexts.