She has established herself in defending human rights in China by providing legal aid to persecuted groups such as Falun Gong practitioners and victims of forced eviction.

[2] She then worked as a legal consultant at China International Trading Corporation while being simultaneously employed as an attorney at Justice Law Firm.

[9][10] Ni was again arrested in September that year while petitioning the Beijing National People's Congress Standing Committee about her having been beaten in police custody.

[6] In August 2008, Ni was arrested when her own home was forcibly demolished, and was sentenced to two years in prison for “obstructing official business”, the same crime as her first conviction.

Additionally, according to Ni, she was denied access to the toilet along with having a limited water supply because authorities said that it was punishment for her denial of guilt.

[12] Ni described multiple instances of abuse during her detention, including once when an officer urinated on her face, and another taking her crutches away and forcing her to crawl from her cell to the prison workshop.

Owing to mistreatment during Ni's detention, she was in poor health upon her appearance in court and was propped up on a makeshift bed with an oxygen mask tied to her face.

[15] Since Ni Yulan's release in 2013, she and her family have experienced ongoing human rights abuses, including fraud, surveillance, being followed, and unexpected evictions from their residences by authorities and property managers.

[17] Ni speculated that it was because authorities had gotten infuriated by her efforts at drawing social media attention to the cause of detained human rights lawyers in 2015.

[17] Soon after the Chinese government's denial of Ni's passport application, on 2 April 2016, a group of around twenty people forcibly removed her from her home in Beijing and assaulted her husband.

Subsequently, the company managing the property told Ni that it had faced pressure from the government's security forces to evict her.

Her outspokenness has led her to imprisonment, during which she was beaten so badly that she became paralyzed from the waist down, but that hasn't stopped her [...] She continues to defend the property rights of Beijing residents whose homes have been slated for demolition.