Developments in Hong Kong Legal Education

Introduction

While less than 50 years old, legal education in Hong Kong has benefitted from the heritage of a system tested and refined over many more years; one that remains intact today in England and Wales. Bearing in mind this alliance of values, the continuity of the English model for legal education seems likely to remain into the future. This is not to say legal education in Hong Kong has been frozen in time; rather it has shown itself to have capacity for self-reflection and become intuitive to the needs of the wider community. The purpose of this article will be to take stock of the development of legal education in Hong Kong. An historical account of the various reforms to date serves as a timely opportunity to reflect upon the curious lineage of legal education in Hong Kong. By chartings its origins through to its modern day configuration, it will be possible to further reflect upon its relevance to the needs of the territory in the twenty-first century.

This article begins by informing our understanding of where the journey began, providing an historical account of legal education in Hong Kong from humble beginnings in 1969. Hong Kong is unique in itself having undergone constitutional resettlement in 1997. The article discusses the influence that this has had upon legal education. It then provides an account of an important juncture in the development of legal education, following a critical appraisal of a system undertaken by two education experts via a far-ranging report, known as Redmond–Roper, itself triggered by an increasingly held perception that the system was suffering from stagnation.

The extent to which the consultant’s recommendations have been implemented is gauged in the following section by surveying curriculum developments in the undergraduate programme post-Redmond–Roper. Special emphasis will be placed on the Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree—the programme seeing the most reform in recent years—at the three law schools. Conversely, space precludes examination of the postgraduate Juris Doctor (JD) degree, which also provides a route into the legal profession for those who have already graduated in another discipline. It will be seen that, in recent years, legal education has spurred itself along to the tune of the consultants’ report by enhancing the law curriculum in a way that is more responsive to the needs of both student and legal market.

Yet until now, there has been little substantive appraisal measuring how far legal education reforms have gone in addressing the needs of Hong Kong’s society and economy. ² Some 10 years following the publication of Redmond–Roper, an opportunity in this regard now presents itself. A further review of legal education and training will take place under the auspices of Hong Kong’s Standing Committee on Legal Education and Training (‘SCLET’). Carried out by three consultants (The Hon. Mr Justice Woo, Professor Julian Webb and Professor Tony Smith), the ‘Comprehensive Review on Legal Education and Training in Hong Kong’ (‘Woo Review’) is currently under way and aims to provide a major critical review of the legal education structures in place in the territory. ³ It is hoped that the account of legal education in Hong Kong presented here can serve in part as a contextual guide for the Woo Review and other interested stakeholders seeking to ensure a vibrant legal sector flourishes in the future.

The Origins of Hong Kong

The history of modern Hong Kong can be traced to 1842. On 29 August of that year, the First Anglo-Chinese War—known more popularly in contemporary times as the First Opium War—came to an end with the Treaty of Nanking, which had China’s ruling Qing court cede Hong Kong Island to British possession in perpetuity. At the time, the area was home to fewer than 7,500 Chinese residents, most of who made their living in fishing and farming. ⁴

During the remainder of the nineteenth century, the British continued to expand their foothold in southern China. In the Convention of Peking, 1860, the British acquired a small area of the Kowloon peninsula, inaugurating their presence on the Chinese mainland. With the Second Convention of Peking—signed on 9 June 1898 and taking effect on 1 July of the same year—the British obtained a 99-year lease to additional territory in the north of the peninsula, as well as numerous outlying islands, which together became known as the New Territories. ⁵

The 150-plus years that Britain exercised sovereignty over Hong Kong saw the territory transform from ‘…a group of sleepy fishing villages into a crossroads of international trade’. ⁶ At the same time, Hong Kong had to create the systems and institutions necessary to maintain its growth and development, and adapt and reform those institutions to meet evolving needs. It is in this light that Hong Kong’s modern legal system was created, and, with it, the need to educate a legal profession uniquely situated to uphold it.

First as a Crown Colony of the British Empire and now as a Special Administrative Region (‘SAR’) of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Hong Kong has continually striven to define the distinctive character of its own legal system within the sovereignty of outside power. It is this struggle to develop a system of law appropriate for its own particular situation that has served as the backdrop for the development of legal education in Hong Kong since the mid-twentieth century, when the movement to establish the territory’s first law school gained traction and took off.

Hong Kong’s First Law School

In Hong Kong’s early colonial years, all lawyers—whether in government service or private practice—were expatriates; the majority trained in LLB programmes in England. When a local Hong Kong resident wished to enter the legal profession as either barrister or solicitor permitted to practice in Hong Kong, he would be required to first study and acquire professional credentials in the UK, a career path realistically available only to the local families of wealth. ⁷

However, as Hong Kong entered its second century under British rule, Hong Kong’s localized needs dictated significant change towards this ‘traditional’ approach to legal education. The rapidly growing economy demanded lawyers trained for practice in Hong Kong and, specifically, for Hong Kong. In the early 1960s, leading figures in Hong Kong’s society—most prominently, Vice Chancellor Sir Lindsay Ride of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) ⁸ and President P. A. L. Vine of The Law Society of Hong Kong ⁹ —increasingly voiced their support for a local law curriculum. There was growing dissatisfaction with the expense and inefficiency of the existing methods of legal qualification, shipping the best and brightest away to learn how to practice law in a jurisdiction markedly different from Hong Kong. ¹⁰

As a result of the mounting concerns from both the public and private sectors—most prominently academia, the legal profession and government—the Department of Extra-Mural Studies at the HKU began offering evening courses for the University of London’s External Degree of LLB (‘External Degree’) in 1964. The three-year pilot programme ¹¹ would allow External Degree recipient’s exemption from Part 1 of the English Bar examinations, providing the privileges of a UK law degree at greatly reduced expense. ¹² Although a significant intermediate step, the External Degree was but a temporary solution to the lack of a local legal education system. The programme’s ability to secure the necessary resources, including faculty staff, was limited. ¹³ Moreover, whilst External Degree graduates wishing to qualify as solicitors could meet the requirements for admission to practice in Hong Kong, locally, those wishing to seek admission as barristers would still need to travel to England to sit for the Final Bar examinations. ¹⁴ Finally, the External Degree was ultimately designed to meet English needs, not the unique needs and conditions of Hong Kong. ¹⁵ The External Degree did however draw further attention to the need for a holistic and a local pathway into the Hong Kong legal profession.

So, it was in September 1966—two years after HKU began offering the External Degree—that Hong Kong’s Chief Justice Sir Michael Hogan appointed the First Working Party on Legal Education (‘First Working Party’) to consider long-term solutions to the question of a local legal education. The First Working Party—chaired by the senior puisne judge and including representatives from the attorney-general, the Hong Kong Bar Association, the Law Society of Hong Kong, the HKU and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)—spent nearly a year in consideration before issuing its report and recommendations in June 1967.

Principal among its observations, the First Working Party unanimously favoured:

the introduction in Hong Kong of a system of teaching and training in legal subjects, which would enable candidates to qualify for admission, whether as a barrister or a solicitor, entitled to practice in Hong Kong without the necessity of proceeding overseas in order to obtain any further qualification. ¹⁶

In addition to cutting out the rigmarole and expense of overseas qualifications, the goal was to eliminate subjects of English law not relevant to Hong Kong, whilst also creating the flexibility to include subjects of more practical importance in the Hong Kong context, such as Chinese Customary Law. ¹⁷ The law needed to meet the needs of the community, and courses ‘…designed to qualify a man to practice law in Hong Kong must also educate him in Hong Kong practi[c]e’. ¹⁸ The Working Party concluded that the establishment of a Department of Law at HKU offering an honours degree in law would be better suited for meeting the needs of the legal community. ¹⁹ HKU embraced the recommendations of the report, and in 1968, the University Grants Committee (‘UGC’)—the administrative body coordinating government funding to higher education institutions in Hong Kong—approved HKU’s plans to develop a new three-year full-time course, leading to an honours degree in law.

The Department of Law at HKU welcomed its first LLB students in 1969. Mandatory subjects were undertaken in the first two years, with the final year mostly open to student elective courses. In the first year, students were introduced to the Legal System in Hong Kong, Legal Method and Reasoning, as well as the Law of Contract, the Law of Property and Constitutional Law. The second year consisted of additional core courses, including Criminal Law, the Law of Evidence, Tort and additional coursework in the Law of Property, as well as requiring students to write a dissertation on a legal topic of their choice. During their final year, students enrolled in one compulsory course—Jurisprudence—as well as four optional subjects, choices of which included Administration of Trusts and Estates, Mercantile Law, Business Association, Family Law and Conflict of Law. In addition to coursework and dissertation requirements, students were required to participate in a moot programme, intended to better prepare them for the rigours of oral argument in a court of law. ²⁰

As to the delivery of its coursework, HKU’s Department of Law put a strong emphasis on the methodology of learning law, to which the dissertation and moot programme requirements bear testament. Moreover, the department distinguished between the instructional styles of lectures and tutorials: the former was a one-way delivery of information, the theory being that the student will ‘absorb’ the knowledge of their instructor, and the latter functioned both ways and emphasized a dialectic conversation on the law between teacher and student. ²¹

Around the time HKU’s Department of Law opened its doors, the legal community returned to the First Working Party’s report, which included recommendations on adequate professional qualifications for solicitors and barristers. The remaining questions primarily concerned local examinations for admission to practice as a barrister or solicitor in Hong Kong, as well as whether local qualifications were to be reciprocally recognized by The Law Society of England as valid qualifications to practice in the UK. ²² To resolve these myriad issues, which had been left unaddressed from the 1967 report, the Hong Kong chief justice and the vice chancellor of HKU appointed a Second Working Party in 1969, consisting of representatives from the legal profession, the government and HKU. ²³

The question of reciprocity was answered quickly with The Law Society of England agreeing to recognize HKU’s LLB. ²⁴ HKU’s curriculum met with approval from key stakeholders of the Hong Kong legal profession—The Law Society of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Bar Association—who had satisfied themselves that both the LLB syllabus and the academic standards to which the Department of Law would hold its students were adequate. ²⁵ The issue of local examinations was more complicated. The Second Working Party’s report noted that the division of the legal profession into two branches—barrister and solicitor—required a degree of specialization at an early stage of a lawyer’s career. They concluded that it was essential that law graduates receive a period of additional education and training after receiving their LLB, before becoming eligible to practise as a full-fledged member of the legal profession. ²⁶

The result of the Second Working Party report was the creation of the Postgraduate Certificate in Laws (‘PCLL’), a one-year full-time course providing professional legal training. ²⁷ Inaugurated in 1972, the PCLL was developed within the HKU’s Department of Law, rather than a separate body controlled by the legal profession. ²⁸ However, the profession did have the expectation that the examination leading to the PCLL would at least match the rigour of the Bar Final examination of the English Bar. With this expectation satisfied, the PCLL was accepted by both, The Law Society of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Bar Association, and the necessary curricular requirements were completed by the applicants for admission to legal profession as a formal validation. The applicants could then proceed to pupillage or clerkship as the final step towards admission as barrister or solicitor. ²⁹ Finally, the Second Working Party’s report led to the establishment of the Advisory Committee on Legal Education in 1971, a result of an amendment to the Legal Practitioners Ordinance (Cap. 159). The Advisory Committee would become an invaluable forum for discussion surrounding legal education in Hong Kong in the years to follow.

The Sino-British Joint Declaration and Hong Kong’s Second Law School

Upon its establishment, the HKU administration placed the Department of Law into the Faculty of Social Sciences with the expectation that the LLB curriculum would be interdisciplinary. However, the interdisciplinary approach never materialized, and in 1984, the Department of Law converted into a fully autonomous faculty with greater representation in the university’s decision-making bodies. ³⁰ Legal education in Hong Kong had, by now, reached a level of maturity within higher education, as well as within the contours of the British Commonwealth. However, a turnaround was on the horizon: the 99-year lease of the New Territories would expire before the shift into the millennium, and arrangements were being made that would radically alter Hong Kong’s political sphere. That same year, on 19 December in Beijing, the Chinese and British governments signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the question of Hong Kong (‘Joint Declaration’). With the Joint Declaration, a new political fact emerged: The UK was ceding sovereignty over Hong Kong to the PRC on 1 July 1997 (‘the handover’), at which point Hong Kong would become a SAR directly under the authority of China’s Central People’s Government.

The political slogan accompanying the Joint Declaration was ‘one country, two systems’: until at least 2047, Hong Kong would maintain a high degree of autonomy; it would be largely self-governing, and the laws and the legal system in which it operated would remain essentially unchanged. The major exception would be that the written constitution would be entirely replaced with a Basic Law specifically tailored to Hong Kong and its relationship to the mainland. ³¹ With the dawn of the handover came a new fundamental assumption that China’s sovereignty would underlie Hong Kong’s legal system. Hong Kong thus entered a new era in the development of its legal education system—preparing students to practice law in post-handover Hong Kong. As one scholar observed at the time, ‘[t]hese are the crucial and central facts of political life which must now mould the future form of legal education’. ³²

Primarily, the government was concerned about supply. From the perspective of commerce, a scarce supply of barristers and solicitors in private practice could have a substantial negative impact on Hong Kong’s ability to sustain and expand its status as a finance centre. From a public law perspective, the government and judiciary still relied heavily on expatriate legal expertise and feared an exodus in the legal profession as 1997 approached. From an equality perspective, the low lawyer-to-population ratio—about 34 lawyers per 100,000 residents (0.03 per cent)—was complicating the principle of equal protection, inflating the cost of private sector legal services beyond the means of a majority of the population. Lastly, from an education perspective, there was a need to attract legal talent to the field of teaching and research, in order to educate successive generations of the legal profession. ³³

In 1986, the University and Polytechnic Grants Commission (‘UPGC’, formerly the UGC) invited Hong Kong’s various institutions of higher education to submit proposals for the expansion of legal education. At the time, HKU was the only tertiary institution offering a law curriculum and although it was continuing to respond to Hong Kong’s growing legal needs—introducing a master’s degree in law that same year—, it became evident that it could no longer meet those needs alone. The HKU’s Faculty of Law offered a modest increase in its LLB programme from 125 to 150 places, but the increase fell considerably below the government’s goal. The only viable option to meet the difference was to establish a second law curriculum at another of Hong Kong’s tertiary institutions. ³⁴

After evaluating initial proposals and considering the available options, the UPGC selected the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong (‘City Polytechnic’)—Hong Kong’s newest tertiary institution, being only two years old at the time—and asked its leadership to prepare a detailed proposal for the establishment of a Department of Law during the 1988–91 triennium (‘three-year funding cycle’). ³⁵ At the same time, the UPGC asked HKU to expand the size of its PCLL course to accommodate the City Polytechnic’s LLB graduates who would start graduating from 1991. ³⁶ In developing its LLB curriculum, the City Polytechnic faculty wanted to promote understanding of law as it fits into the society which it serves. ³⁷ To that end, the curriculum would require:

a strong core of traditional common law subjects, with a focus on those areas of law most relevant to Hong Kong’s future needs in both the public and private spheres; ³⁸

Whilst the full-time and part-time LLB was to be the new flagship programme of the department, other programmes would be introduced during the three-year funding cycle in response to perceived unmet needs in Hong Kong legal training: a Higher Diploma in Legal Studies, a Postgraduate Diploma in Commercial Arbitration and a Postgraduate Diploma in Language and Law. ⁴² In 1987, when HKU increased its LLB class size to 150 students, the City Polytechnic formally established its Department of Law. ⁴³ Its full-time LLB programme launched with 60 students enrolling the following year. ⁴⁴

The Basic Law and Post-handover Climate

On 4 April 1990, during the City Polytechnic Department of Law’s first triennium, the Seventh National People’s Congress of the PRC adopted the Basic Law of Hong Kong, which would come into effect upon the handover of Hong Kong to the PRC on 1 July 1997. The Basic Law enshrined Hong Kong’s status as a SAR within the PRC, which would grant it a high degree of autonomy, including an independent judiciary with the power of final adjudication. ⁴⁵ Moreover, Article 8 of the Basic Law guaranteed:

[t]he laws previously in force in Hong Kong, that is, the common law, rules of equity, ordinances, subordinate legislation and customary law shall be maintained, except for any that contravene this Law, and subject to any amendment by the legislature of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. ⁴⁶

At least in principle, Hong Kong’s legal system would continue largely unchanged, with the exception of the omission of new Commonwealth precedents and the new written constitution in the form of the Basic Law.

While Hong Kong residents adjusted to the handover, the legal profession was evaluating the Hong Kong legal system so as to ensure its long-term preservation. Within the educational sphere, the profession wanted to standardize its fundamental entry requirement, the PCLL. In 1998, the Advisory Committee on Legal Education established a sub-committee to explore the implementation of a common examination system for Hong Kong’s PCLL. The sub-committee consisted of representatives from the two universities that offered the PCLL—HKU and City University of Hong Kong (‘CityU’, formerly City Polytechnic)—alongside representatives from The Law Society of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Bar Association and the judiciary. ⁴⁷ Whilst the legal profession unanimously supported the measure, the two universities opposed it. ⁴⁸ The university delegation contended that the PCLL curricula were not well suited to common examinations which require that a common course of study be designed first. ⁴⁹ However, this very fact highlighted the widespread concern in the legal profession by the late 1990s that the absence of standardization in legal education did not ensure that graduates from the two schools were equally prepared for their careers, and that the quality of new entrants to the profession was inadequate. ⁵⁰

This conflict between the universities—as PCLL providers—and the profession was symptomatic of a much larger problem affecting legal education: the division of legal education into two separate and distinct stages, academic and practical. Stephen Nathanson, then serving as an associate professor in the Department of Professional Legal Education at HKU, observed that ‘…[t]his divided structure isolates academic teachers from lawyers, compelling lawyers to focus their educational-policy objectives on professional programs over which they have power’. The result was conflict, pitting the policy-makers in the legal profession against the educators charged with implementing that policy. ⁵¹ In light of these challenges and the shortcomings in legal education exposed by the academic/professional divide, Hong Kong’s Advisory Committee on Legal Education decided in July 1999 to suspend the push for common PCLL examinations, pending a thorough review of the general state of legal education in Hong Kong. ⁵²

Redmond–Roper: A Review of Legal Education and Training in Hong Kong

In November 1999, on the recommendation of the Advisory Committee on Legal Education, the government established an ad hoc Advisory Steering Committee on the Review of Legal Education and Training in Hong Kong (‘Steering Committee’) to oversee a comprehensive and independent review of legal education and training in the territory. The Steering Committee agreed to carry out the review in two stages: a consultancy stage followed by a further study by a review panel. ⁵³

The consultancy comprised of two independent overseas education specialists: Paul Redmond, the then dean of the Faculty of Law at The University of New South Wales, Australia, and Christopher Roper, the inaugural director of the Centre for Legal Education, Australia. Redmond and Roper spent nearly two years assessing Hong Kong’s legal education system before publishing their findings in August 2001. Such reviews are not without precedent—nor are criticisms of legal education. The first major review of English legal education, published in 1846, was condemnatory, describing the system as ‘extremely unsatisfactory and incomplete’. ⁵⁴ The consultant’s report, Legal Education and Training in Hong Kong: Preliminary Review (‘Redmond–Roper’) ⁵⁵ was equally candid, containing total 160 individual recommendations, which in aggregate highlighted several major concerns:

The domination of a black-letter approach to law, and a need to move away from a strict doctrinal approach and incorporate subjects on liberal education into the legal curriculum

The importance of Redmond–Roper was that it sought to underscore the need of legal education to integrate theory with practice, contribute towards a broader liberal education and promote professional and ethical responsibility in a particular societal context. ⁵⁷ The Steering Committee largely agreed with both the findings of the report and its suggested remedies. In response to the structural issues that the report exposed, they extended the LLB programme from three to four years, allowing law students increased accessibility to non-law courses and the development of a liberal education. The extension commenced with the 2004–05 academic year. ⁵⁸

They also recommended the creation of a statutory body—which would replace the current Advisory Committee on Legal Education—with sufficient power to oversee the implementation of the reform of legal education and training and to monitor legal education’s future developments. ⁵⁹ While Redmond–Roper called this body, The Legal Qualifying Council was eventually named The Standing Committee on Legal Education and Training (‘Standing Committee’) at its establishment in 2004.

However, while the identification of a problem may not have been in dispute, the Steering Committee did find itself at odds with some of the report’s recommendations, in particular, with regards to the PCLL. Redmond–Roper Report found the PCLL curricula offered by its two providers insufficient. In particular, the programmes were designed as the extensions of the law degree, focused predominantly on academic pursuits at the expense of skill development and practical training. ⁶⁰ They contended that the PCLL should be ‘training students in know-how rather than in knowing’ and should be ‘a problem-centered rather than a subject-centered program’. ⁶¹ Although Redmond–Roper recommended that the PCLL be replaced by a 16-week legal practice course administered by an institution independent from the legal education providers, the Steering Committee decided not to pursue it, opting instead to seek major reforms of the existing programmes. ⁶²

In addition to the PCLL curricula reforms, Redmond–Roper recommended developing a scheme—which the consultants referred to as a ‘conversion course’—through which persons with academic qualifications other than an LLB from a Hong Kong university could seek admission to a PCLL programme. The conversion course would ‘make up deficits measured against the statement of academic standards required for entry to the vocational basis’. ⁶³ In light of this recommendation, the Standing Committee, rather than creating a mandatory conversion course, established the PCLL Conversion Examination in 2008. Administered by the independent PCLL Conversion Examination and Administration Limited, the PCLL Conversion Examination requires candidates to demonstrate competence in select subjects in order to qualify for PCLL admission. ⁶⁴ Redmond–Roper therefore provided the impetus to initiate substantial, concrete improvements to Hong Kong’s legal education system. However, its various individual reforms would not be its most enduring legacy.

Hong Kong’s Third Law School

On 10 May 2004—nearly three years following the release of Redmond–Roper—, the CUHK announced that the UGC (now known by its original designation) had accepted its proposal to establish Hong Kong’s third law school during the 2005–08 triennium, with the intention to admit its first class of students for the 2006–07 academic year. ⁶⁵

In its announcement, CUHK cited the importance of meeting Hong Kong’s growing demand of the legal expertise necessary to maintain the city’s competitive advantage—the rule of law. ⁶⁶ It wanted to provide its law students with legal training that would help them to adapt to evolving societal circumstances; work in a variety of legal and non-legal contexts, including the business, finance, government and non-profit sectors and broaden their perspectives to incorporate a wider global awareness, with a particular focus on mainland China and Greater Asia. ⁶⁷

The influence of Redmond–Roper on the establishment and development of Hong Kong’s third law school appears significant. In describing the characteristics of its proposed School of Law, CUHK actively sought to address Redmond–Roper’s most significant concerns:

CUHK aims to provide quality legal education that will enhance the standards of legal practitioners, by means of recruiting the best students to be interested in law, making innovations in the teaching and learning of law, and leveraging on its strengths in the humanities and social sciences to enrich the study of law within the broad socio cultural context. The School of Law will establish its identity through its approach to the teaching and learning environment, its teaching [programmes] and its emphasis upon and orientation towards research. ⁶⁸

Redmond–Roper thus provided a blueprint for change ⁶⁹ from which CUHK gave birth to a new provider of legal education in Hong Kong. Yet, during the consultations in the two years between CUHK’s announcement and its inaugural LLB class, a number of concerns were raised by the stakeholders in Hong Kong’s legal education system. HKU was concerned about resource limitations among Hong Kong’s legal education providers. The Hong Kong Bar Association echoed these concerns and emphasized the need to maintain high quality legal education and training programmes given the limited capacities of the profession. ⁷⁰ However, despite this apprehension over resources, both HKU and CityU acknowledged that a larger community of legal scholars and healthy competition among quality law schools would enhance rather than dilute the quality of legal education in Hong Kong. ⁷¹

Led by Founding Dean, Mike McConville, CUHK’s School of Law started operations in 2006, admitting students to its inaugural LLB, JD and Master of Laws (LLM) classes. ⁷² Its first research postgraduate students joined in 2007, and its PCLL programme began operation in 2008—the same year the school became a faculty. ⁷³

The Bachelor of Laws (‘LLB’) Programme in Hong Kong

As a gateway to the legal profession, both LLB and JD programmes in Hong Kong play an instrumental role in inculcating strong academic and legal skills. As will be seen, the respective university institutions in Hong Kong have faced squarely up to that task, and it is a credit to those involved that legal education has undergone transformation from a fledgling degree programme to playing a prominent role in being ranked as world-class academic institutions. ⁷⁴ As a result of the aforementioned developments, three universities currently offer the LLB programme in Hong Kong: CUHK (with its first intakes in 2006), CityU (admitted its own LLB students in 1988) and HKU (enrolled its first students to its LLB programme in 1969).

At present, each of the three universities offer full-time UGC funded four-year LLB programmes (introduced in 2004). There are also other modes to studying the LLB programme. For example, CUHK offers three double degree options for LLB students:

LLB/Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) (5 years)

HKU offers three five-year double degree options for the LLB programme (note that externally awarded LLB degree courses are also offered through the ‘HKU SPACE’ programme): ⁷⁵

BA (Literacy Studies) and LLB

The double degree in Law and Literacy Studies was only recently introduced in 2011. The following year, the double degree option in Civil Engineering and Laws that had previously been offered was discontinued. ⁷⁶ HKU began offering LLB double degree programmes with overseas universities in 2009. That year, it began running a ‘Joint Legal Education Program’ with the University of British Columbia (‘UBC’). ⁷⁷ Under the programme, HKU students complete their first three years at HKU before continuing their studies at UBC for two years. Students ultimately earn two degrees in the two jurisdictions. In 2010, HKU and King’s College London (‘KCL’) established a ‘Double LLB Degree’. ⁷⁸ Similar to the UBC programme, students study for two law degrees. They first spend two years at KCL followed by three years at HKU. Recently, HKU has also introduced a joint LLB programme with the University of Zurich. ⁷⁹ CUHK and HKU do not offer the LLB programmes to applicants who have already completed a degree. On the other hand, CityU allows these applicants into their LLB programme. ⁸⁰

Conclusion

Space precluded a detailed consideration of all law degree programmes available in Hong Kong. Indeed, the number of postgraduate master’s degrees in law has expanded in recent years in a range of specialist subjects. These masters programmes have not only provided a route for local students to gain a more specialist understanding in a particular field, but have also proved popular with international and mainland Chinese students, with both groups seeing the benefit of furthering their legal study in Hong Kong. From the pre-1969 times when local students had to study law abroad, it is a testament to the quality of local legal education that international graduate students now regard Hong Kong as an attractive destination for specialist legal study.

The history of legal education in Hong Kong is a history of reform. The various inflection points along its story such as the establishment of each of the three law schools, the development of the PCLL, its role in the legal profession, the Redmond–Roper Report and its aftermath, all demonstrate an effort to develop a legal system appropriate for the specific and unique social and political context in which Hong Kong has consistently found itself for over 150 years. New challenges plainly await, not least those posed by the globalization of the legal services sector, the role of modern technology in pedagogical advances and also those pertaining to its unique geography including the neighbouring presence of mainland China which is continuing to open up its market for legal work. One theme remains prominent and unavoidable: Further debate needs to be had on how successful legal education has been in addressing the needs of Hong Kong’s society and economy. It is hoped that the forthcoming findings of the Woo Review, which will act as the first comprehensive opportunity to critically appraise the three law school’s response to Redmond–Roper, can guide the territory towards a stronger future, one from which it can provide lessons to others.