E-book of HKU Law Conference on Experiential Learning and Innovations in Legal Education

The Conference on Experiential Learning and Innovations in Legal Education 2019 was a major teaching and learning conference held at the University of Hong Kong from 18-19 October 2019 as part of the HKU Law's golden jubilee celebrations.  The edited transcripts of the conference proceedings are now available for download from the conference website. They can be accessed here and below.  

Session 1 & 2 – Clinical Legal Education
If you build it, will they come? Innovation and Sustainability in Clinical Legal Education
by Professor Jeff Giddings, Monash University
Current and Future Challenges for Clinical Legal Education
by Professor Peter Joy, Washington University
Experiential Learning in China: A Case Study of Clinical Legal Education
by Dr Pan Xuanming, Sun Yat-sen University
The CLE Programme at HKU: Any room for an Inter-professional Approach?
by Ms Julienne Jen, The University of Hong Kong
Strathclyde Law Clinic: Plugging the Gaps in Access to Justice in Our Community
by Ms Kathleen Laverty, University of Strathclyde Law Clinic
Professionalism in an Age of Dynamic Change? Teaching New Skills via Clinical Legal Education
by Professor Tania Leiman, Flinders University
Advancing Human Rights through Experiential Learning
by Ms Lindsay Ernst, The University of Hong Kong

Session 3 – Simulations in Legal Education
‘Complicitous and Contestatory’: The Hermeneutics of Legal Education and Our Sisyphean Future
by Professor Paul Maharg, York University
Legal Design & Laboratory Models as Next-Gen Experiential Legal Education
by Mr Dan Jackson, NuLawLab, Northeastern University
Online Simulations and Inclusivity – Troubling “Authenticity” in Online Practice-Based Legal Education
by Dr Kristoffer Greaves, UNSW
Simulated Clients are “Live” Clients too! Integrating Standardized Clients into Law Clinic at HKU
by Mr Wilson Chow & Dr Michael Ng, The University of Hong Kong

Session 4 – Technology and Innovations in Legal Education
New Technologies and the Disruption of Legal Education
by Professor Daniel Rodriguez, Northwestern University
中國內地法學實驗教學活動的回顧與展望
by Professor Yang Jianguang, Sun Yat-sen University
The Integration of Technology into Clinical Legal Education: An Exploration of the ‘Virtual’ Law Clinic
by Ms Francine Ryan, The Open University
Using Technology and the Media to Cultivate Authentic Problem-solving Skills in Undergraduate Law Students
by Professor Rick Glofcheski, The University of Hong Kong
LITE Lab@HKU – Future Lawyering to Serve Hong Kong’s Tech Startups, Social Entrepreneurs and Access to Justice
by Mr Brian W Tang, The University of Hong Kong

Session 5 – Experiential Learning and Innovations in Professional Education
An International, Interdisciplinary, Innovative Discussion Platform for Real Estate & Legal Education in HK
by Ms Alice Lee & Dr L H Li, The University of Hong Kong
Experiential Learning and Innovations in Professional Education – Interdisciplinary Roundtable (Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine)
by Professor C S Lau, The University of Hong Kong
Experiential Learning and Innovations in Professional Education – Social Work Practice Laboratory
by Dr Elsie Chien, The University of Hong Kong
Experiential Learning and Innovations in Professional Education – Interdisciplinary Roundtable (Faculty of Education)
by Dr Gary Harfitt & Ms Jessie Chow, The University of Hong Kong
Experiential Learning and Innovations in Professional Education – Interdisciplinary Roundtable (Faculty of Dentistry)
by Professor Michael Botelho, The University of Hong Kong

Senior Lecturer Alison Cole Joins HKU Law's Human Rights Experiential Learning Team

Welcome to Alison Anitawaru Cole who joins the Department of Law as Senior Lecturer, working closely with the Human Rights Experiential Learning programme. Ms Cole will contribute to the Faculty of Law's practitioner-based research through her experience working in climate litigation and war crimes investigations with the United Nations. She will begin her work at HKU co-teaching the course entitled Human Rights in Practice. 

  Whilst working as a legal practitioner, Alison was also an adjunct professor at New York University Law School and most recently at Victoria University Wellington in her home country of New Zealand. She has written a wide variety of academic and media publications, including front-page coverage for The Guardian on international criminal law. Alison holds a first-class honours BA in law from Cambridge University, and participated in the European Erasmus exchange at Utrecht University. She obtained her LLM degree from Harvard Law School and is currently completing a PhD at Amsterdam University. Alison is a registered New York attorney, and is also admitted to the Lincoln’s Inns of Court in London. 

   Alison is one of the few people in the world who has worked at all the United Nations international criminal tribunals, covering a range of responsibilities. She first worked in prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, before transferring to investigations at the International Criminal Court and at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia. She has also worked for the appeals judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and for the Registry at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. Following these positions with the UN tribunals, Alison worked on policy development as the Open Society Justice Initiative in New York, where she developed human rights and international justice strategies with local partners around the world. Most recently she worked as the human rights advisor on the national inquiry into allegations of war crimes regarding New Zealand troops. Her current focus is on litigation for climate change solutions in partnership with practitioners and academics in the Pacific and South East Asia through the student-led organisation the Asia Pacific Solidarity Network. 

     Her photographs in this post show her with her Maori cultural heritage from her grandparents (the indigenous population of New Zealand) and her dog.

Claudia Tam (LLB 2019) on Measuring Law Students’ Attitudes Towards and Experiences of Clinical Legal Education at HKU (Int'l J Clinical Legal Ed)

"Measuring Law Students’ Attitudes Towards and Experiences of Clinical Legal Education at The University of Hong Kong"
Claudia Man-yiu Tam (LLB 2019)
International Journal of Clinical Legal Education

2020, Volume 27, Issue 1

Abstract: As law schools in Hong Kong begin to integrate experiential learning into their educational models, clinical legal education (CLE) has symbiotically gained traction as an effective way for students to apply their legal knowledge in a skills-based and client-centered environment. This empirical study is the first of its kind to evaluate the impacts of CLE at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) over the past ten years, by analyzing the survey responses provided by 125 law students regarding their attitudes towards and experiences of CLE. The article traces the birth and development of CLE at HKU, turning first to its theoretical basis to make the case for its importance, and placing emphasis on the ability of CLE’s teaching-service pedagogy to alleviate the public interest law deficit and supplement passive learning as an engaging instructional method in the Hong Kong context. The survey results are then discussed in light of the doctrinal analysis to illustrate that clinic and non-clinic students alike are generally satisfied that HKU’s CLE program has achieved its skills, cognitive, and civic aims, and notably, that clinic students had a statistically significant higher intention to participate in pro bono work after graduation than non-clinic students or students engaged in volunteering.

Eric Cheung Interviewed on Obstacles to Lawyers Providing Pro Bono Advice in Hong Kong (SCMP)

"Hong Kong urged to catch up with regional neighbours and remove obstacles to lawyers providing free legal advice"

South China Morning Post
Alvin Lum
5 January 2019

Hong Kong authorities have been urged to catch up with regional competitors in encouraging free legal advice by investing public money and setting up service platforms, according to local and Australian legal experts.

     They said Australia and Singapore have launched reforms to give NGOs, and ordinary citizens, greater access to legal services needed for their daily lives, such as settling disputes with landlords and employers, or even with the police.

     To provide legal advice in Hong Kong, voluntary or not, qualified lawyers must first get their law firms to buy professional indemnity insurance for them, in case their clients sue them for making a wrong call in the legal process.

     In Hong Kong, lawyers can only be insured collectively as part of a law firm. This means that lawyers cannot provide legal advice to NGOs or underprivileged people, unless they get permission and financial support from their employers.

...

     Principal law lecturer at the University of Hong Kong, Eric Cheung Tat-ming, who runs one of the city’s few clinics providing free legal advice, has his volunteer lawyers insured by the publicly funded Duty Lawyers Service scheme.

   Cheung believes the Hong Kong government should either consider revising local laws on professional indemnity, or bulk purchase of insurance for pro bono lawyers.

     “For each year, it may involve a few hundred thousand dollars, but it could help many lawyers provide free legal services. The government could absolutely afford it.”

     Cheung, who also served on the governing council of the Law Society, said that without revising the law, the existing legal framework was not conducive to pro bono work. He said many lawyers offering free legal advice – including those under the government’s duty lawyer scheme to give legal advice at district offices – run the risk of violating the professional code, which requires lawyers to be covered by professional indemnity.

     “This is a genuine ticking time bomb, because it’s a compulsory requirement,” he said. Click here to read the full text.

Wilson Chow & Michael Ng on Using E-Simulation Platforms in PCLL (EJLT)

"Disintermediator or another intermediary? E-simulation platform for professional legal education at University of Hong Kong"

Wilson Chow & Michael Ng
European Journal of Law and Technology
2016, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 1-21

Abstract: Education has been undergoing significant changes in the past decade. Some universities have been taking advantage of information technology in order to enhance the interactivity and the degree of realism in their experiential learning environment. More recent legal education and training reviews and current scholarship, including the latest discourse on disintermediation of legal education, readily assume the tech-enablement of students’ learning experience via the use of technology. This article argues, through a reflective and empirical study of the adoption and adaptation of an e-learning platform by the Department of Professional Legal Education of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) in its Postgraduate Certificate in Laws programme (“HKUPCLL”), that the use of technology can possibly turn out to be another unwelcomed intermediary in the disintermediation process if it is not adaptive to the students’ needs and expectations which may be shaped by their evolving e-behaviour, different background and cultural particularities. It further proposes to modify the disintermediation discourse by embracing this possibility of inhibition, so that it can become a suitable model to assess the effectiveness of use of technology in legal education.  Click here to download the full article.

Legal Clinic Programme Wins HKU Faculty Knowledge Exchange Award 2015

Congratulations to Eric Cheung, Edmond Lam and Edward Chan for winning this year's Faculty Knowledge Exchange Award.  They are recognised for their work in the HKU Law Faculty's Clinical Legal Education (CLE) Programme, which is the first of its kind in Hong Kong.  Since its introduction in January 2010, 

• more than 600 clients have received free legal advice and given positive feedback to students;
• miscarriage of justice was rectified in more than 10 successful appeals or legal aid applications upon free legal representation through the CLE programme;
• an erroneous approach to the merits test by the Legal Aid Department was rectified upon a successful case handled by the CLE programme; and
• wide media coverage (including in a TVB documentary series) and burgeoning demand from the public for CLE service has been received.

The programme's philosophy is to equip law students not only with competent lawyering skills and legal knowledge, but also with a heart to serve the needy with professionalism and dedication.  This programme adopts a learning by doing as well as a discipleship approach, which serves to supplement a lacuna in traditional classroom teaching in law.  It provides a unique learning opportunity to students to experience first-hand how the legal principles and system operate in reality and to provide meaningful service to the public, thereby inculcating a pro bono culture in their hearts.  The programme was featured in a China Daily article in September 2014.   Click here for more information about the CLE programme.