Taorui Guan on The Law of AI Knowledge Distillation (ABLJ)

"The Law of AI Knowledge Distillation"
Taorui Guan

American Business Law Journal 

Published online: September 2026

Abstract: Knowledge distillation—the practice of training a compact student model on the outputs of a larger teacher model—has emerged as the fastest-growing technique for replicating and disseminating frontier artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. Because distillers can achieve near-parity with incumbents at a fraction of the cost, the practice simultaneously promises dramatic gains in competition and efficiency, while threatening to upend the incentive structure that finances multibillion-dollar AI research. Existing U.S. law offers only fragmentary guidance: copyright might not protect AI outputs at all; patent law offers limited, implementation-specific protection; trade-secret doctrine is pierced by the reverse-engineering exception; contract law's reach is powerful but uneven; and antitrust principles loom in the background yet remain doctrinally underdeveloped. As a result, both developers and distillers confront a haze of uncertainty that chills beneficial innovation, invites strategic litigation, and leaves core normative questions unanswered. This Article provides the first comprehensive treatment of the law of AI knowledge distillation. It begins by mapping the terrain across copyright, patent, trade-secret, contract, and antitrust doctrines, exposing the fault lines and unresolved conflicts that make distillation litigation unpredictable. It then draws on utilitarian, deontological, Lockean, and Rawlsian theories to evaluate whose interests the law ought to protect and why. Building on these positive and normative insights, the Article then proposes a balanced, modular framework that (1) classifies distillation into authorized, independent, and illicit forms; (2) legalizes good-faith reverse-engineering of publicly available model outputs; (3) imposes a time-limited compulsory-licensing regime on direct commercial cloning; (4) preserves broad exemptions for research, accountability, and transformative use; and (5) augments these rules with transparency, privacy, and safety safeguards. By articulating clear, principled boundaries around permissible and impermissible distillation, the Article charts a path that rewards foundational innovation without entrenching monopolies, facilitates robust competition and oversight, and ensures the more equitable distribution of the social surplus that AI generates.

Taorui Guan on Contracting Liability for Generative AI (University of Richmond Law Review)

"Contracting Liability for Generative AI"
Taorui Guan
University of Richmond Law Review
Published online: February 2026

Abstract: Generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) is straining the boundaries of long-established secondary liability doctrines in copyright law—including contributory infringement, vicarious liability, inducement, and statutory safe harbors. Courts and policymakers have yet to adapt these doctrines to the challenges that AI’s massive scale, decentralized development network, and opaque “black box” architectures pose, creating considerable legal uncertainty. In response, leading AI providers increasingly rely on contractual solutions—embedding warranties, indemnifications, liability caps, and other provisions into user agreements—seeking to allocate infringement risks preemptively. These evolving contractual approaches both draw upon and diverge from classic doctrines, offering novel insight into how the pressure of generative AI is causing companies to recalibrate their liability rules.

This Article provides a structured analysis of how emerging contractual liability arrangements grapple with generative AI’s unique challenges...(Please read full article here)

New book by Yahong Li on Intellectual Property and Technology: International Legal Framework, Policy and Practice (LexisNexis)

Intellectual Property and Technology: International Legal Framework, Policy and Practice
Yahong Li
LexisNexis
Published in June 2026

The major breakthroughs in cutting-age technologies in the last two decades have fundamentally changed the world, so as the intellectual property (IP) law, which is closely connected with, and constantly affected by, the technological advancement from its birth. This new edition of the book, on one hand, follows the basic structure of the first edition to systematically introduce the international framework such as TRIPS Agreement within which IP law operates, the enforcement and WTO dispute settlement mechanism concerning international IP disputes, the overall implications of international IP protection for global competition between developed and developing countries in an integrated world market, as well as major national differences in IP protection, focusing on three major jurisdictions: the US, the EU and China. On the other hand, the new edition devoted more content on the interaction between IP and cutting-age technologies such as digital, Internet, software, AI, and life sciences based on the subject areas of IP law, and increased the weight on China’s IP laws and practices because China has become the world leader in some key technologies, and as a result started to lead in IP law and practices. The new edition is intended not only to fill the void in IP law between the past and the present, but also to bridge the gap of understanding of IP systems between the east and the west.

HKU Law Welcomes Prof. Yu Fan

Welcome to Prof. Yu Fan, who joins the Faculty of Law as an Assistant Professor.

Yu is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Data, AI & Law at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law and School of Computing and Data Science. He is also a PhD candidate in Legal AI at ETH Zurich and an associated researcher at the ETH AI Center. His research lies at the intersection of law, computational social science, machine learning, natural language processing, and data science. His work has been published at leading AI and NLP venues, including the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), and Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL). Yu holds a Master of Arts in Sociology from Freie Universität Berlin, with a focus on computational social science; a Professional Certificate in Artificial Intelligence from Stanford University; and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and Sociology from Universität Bielefeld, with a focus on theoretical philosophy.

Research Areas:

• Legal AI
• Natural language processing
• Computational social science
• AI for social good

Adrian Mak and Wilson Lui on Agentic AI and International Arbitration: A Three-Tier Taxonomy and Model Agentic AI Protocol (Journal of AI Law and Regulation)

“Agentic AI and International Arbitration: A Three-Tier Taxonomy and Model Agentic AI Protocol”
Adrian Mak (BSocSc(Govt&Laws)&LLB 2019; PCLL 2020) and Wilson Lui (Research Fellow, Centre for Private Law)
Journal of AI Law and Regulation, Volume 3, Issue 2, pp. 138–151
Published online: June 2026

Abstract: The rapid evolution from generative to agentic artificial intelligence (AI) presents both transformative opportunities and novel enforcement risks for international arbitration. Whereas ordinary prompt-response use of generative AI is largely reactive, agentic AI combines generative models with planning, persistent memory, tool use, and autonomous task execution, operating through multi-step workflows with minimal human oversight at each step. This article introduces a three-tier taxonomy: (1) Agent-Assisted, (2) Agent-Supported, and (3) Agent-Decided—to classify the deployment of agentic AI across the arbitral lifecycle, from conflict checks and procedural administration to deliberation and award drafting. It maps the principal enforcement risks under the United Nations Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards 1958 (the New York Convention), particularly Articles V(1)(b), V(1)(d), and V(2)(b), and analyses the regulatory implications of the EU AI Act for high-risk AI systems deployed in dispute resolution. It situates the taxonomy against the principal existing AI-in-arbitration instruments—the SVAMC Guidelines and the CIArb Guideline—and argues that agentic AI requires a more granular, autonomy-based governance model than general AI guidance provides. To address the governance gap, the article proposes a Model Agentic AI Protocol structured around three pillars: (1) Disclosure, (2) Trajectory Logging, and (3) Human Certification—complemented by a technical toolkit comprising arbitration-specific benchmarks, mechanistic interpretability, adversarial robustness testing, and cognitive calibration techniques.

Welcome the new Global Academic Fellow Dr Marianne Von Blomberg!

Welcome to Dr Marianne Von Blomberg who joined the Faculty of Law as a Global Academic Fellow. Marianne von Blomberg is a Global Academic Fellow (postdoctoral researcher) at the Law and Technology Centre of the University of Hong Kong. She also participates in a research project on corporate social responsibility regimes and techno-regulation in Europe and China at the Bern University of Applied Sciences. Her work uses qualitative empirical methods to examine how public regulation of and through digital technologies evolves across China and the European Union.

Her research focuses on social credit systems and related forms of assessment-based governance in China and beyond, as well as on techno-orientalism in media and policy discourse. In her current work, she expands her work on regulation and governance to include processes of technical standardization as key sites where regulatory logics are developed and negotiated.

She completed her PhD at the University of Cologne, funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. The project investigated how evolving social credit systems strengthen, weaken and transform the law in China and is grounded in three years of fieldwork and analyses of official documents.  Her focus on modes of public regulation and their transformation has led her to observe the processes and fora of technical standardization in her postdoctoral work.

Beyond research, Marianne contributes to public and policy-facing engagement on PRC law in Europe through advising EU officials, teaching, and serving as the editor of the blog of the European Chinese Law Studies Association (ecls.eu), and co-organizing its conferences and summer schools. Marianne holds an LL.M. from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou and a BA in Communication and Cultural Studies from Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen. She has been a visiting scholar at the City University of Hong Kong School of Law and has professional experience with several news outlets, the Jingling Law Firm (criminal defense), the Volkswagen Group, and the German Embassy in Ottawa.

Benjamin Chen et al on Mitigating the Judicial Human–AI Fairness Gap (Journal of Legal Analysis)

"Mitigating the judicial human–AI fairness gap"
Benjamin Chen, Yoan Hermstrüwer, Pascal Langenbach, Alexander Stremitzer, Kevin Tobia
Journal of Legal Analysis, Volume 18, Issue 1, 2026, Pages 207–242
Published online: July 2026

Abstract: Machine adjudication is perceived as less fair than human judging. We study whether hybrid procedures, in which a human consults an algorithmic recommendation but retains final authority, mitigate this human-AI fairness gap. In two experiments (⁠N = 7,651⁠), participants evaluate sentencing, bail, and arbitration decisions made by a human, an algorithm, or a human reviewing an algorithmic recommendation. The hybrid procedure eliminates the gap even when human scrutiny is minimal. The effect is complete among White and conservative participants but partial among Black liberals. Insensitivity to review intensity raises the risk of human-washing: nominal oversight may legitimize substantively flawed algorithmic processes.

Ryan Whalen et al on Measuring Human Contribution in AI-Assisted Content Generation

"Measuring Human Contribution in AI-Assisted Content Generation"
Yueqi Xie, Tao Qi, Jingwei Yi, Xiyuan Yang, Ryan Whalen, Junming Huang, Qian Ding, Yu Xie, Xing Xie, Fangzhao Wu
ACL Anthology
Published online: July 2026

Abstract: With the growing prevalence of generative AI, an increasing amount of content is no longer exclusively generated by humans but by generative AI models with human guidance. This shift presents notable challenges for the delineation of originality due to the varying degrees of human contribution in AI-assisted works. This study raises the research question of measuring human contribution in AI-assisted content generation and introduces a framework to address this question that is grounded in information theory. By calculating mutual information between human input and AI-assisted output relative to self-information of AI-assisted output, we quantify the proportional information contribution of humans in content generation. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed measure effectively discriminates between varying degrees of human contribution across multiple creative domains. To further enhance real-world applicability, we extend the framework to estimate the minimal necessary human contribution for any text without requiring human input and validate its effectiveness. We hope that this work lays a foundation for measuring human contributions in AI-assisted content generation in the era of generative AI.

Benjamin Chen and Xinyu Xie on The Alignment Target Problem: Divergent Moral Judgments of Humans, AI Systems, and Their Designers (FAccT '26)

"The Alignment Target Problem: Divergent Moral Judgments of Humans, AI Systems, and Their Designers"
Benjamin Chen, Xinyu Xie (PhD Candidate)
ACM FAccT '26
Published online: June 2026

Abstract: The project of aligning machine behavior with human values raises a basic problem: whose moral expectations should guide AI decision-making? Much alignment research assumes that the appropriate benchmark is how humans themselves would act in a given situation. Studies of agent-type value forks challenge this assumption by showing that people do not always judge humans and AI systems identically. This paper extends that challenge by examining two further possibilities: first, that evaluations of AI behavior change when its human origins are made visible; and second, that people judge the humans who program AI systems differently from either the machines or the human actors they are compared against. An experiment with 1,002 U.S. adults measured moral judgments in a runaway mine train scenario, varying the subject of evaluation across four conditions: a repairman, a repair robot, a repair robot programmed by company engineers, and company engineers programming a repair robot. We find no significant difference in evaluations of the repairman and the robot. However, judgments shifted substantially when the robot's actions were described as the product of human design. Participants exhibited markedly more deontological, rule-based reasoning when evaluating either the programmed robot or the engineers who programmed it, suggesting that rendering human agency visible activates heightened moral constraints. These findings indicate that people may evaluate humans, AI systems acting in the same situation, and the humans who design them in meaningfully different ways. The fact that these evaluations do not necessarily converge gives rise to the alignment target problem: which normative target should guide the development of artificial moral agents in high-stakes domains, and whether these plural judgments can be reconciled within a coherent account of value alignment.

Protecting Human Creativity from AI’s Grip (Haochen Sun Profiled in HKU Bulletin)

"Protecting Human Creativity from AI’s Grip"

Haochen Sun

HKU Bulletin
Published in May 2026

Professor Haochen Sun of the Faculty of Law has been looking at the threats to human creativity from AI, and possible legal and ethical remedies.

Every big AI platform has faced lawsuits for using existing creative works to train their models without permission or compensation, with plaintiffs ranging from Hollywood studios to media outlets to individual artists and authors. For Professor Haochen Sun, Founding Director of HKU’s Programme on Artificial Intelligence and the Law and an expert in technology law and policy, this use of creative works is a legal and ethical problem for both creators and society.

“These works are the foundation of our human civilisation. They embody human thought, from philosophy to literature, music and art, and they should be highly valued. When they’re used in the AI training process, it demeans their value by transforming them into tokens. What would be the implications, then, for the future of human creativity?” he asked.

Using content without permission is problematic on several fronts, he said. First, whoever controls the inputs to the AI training process can shape how AI develops and makes decisions, so the creators who provide that input could be excluded.

Second, there is the possibility that copyright protection could extend to AI-generated material, knowingly or not. While most jurisdictions do not allow this (apart from one judge in the Chinese Mainland who decided that an AI prompt was creative input), Professor Sun believes there is little to stop humans from presenting AI content as their own.

“It’s so easy to conceal this content and pretend it was made by a human,” he said. “I can foresee that an enormous amount of AI-generated content, ranging from text answers to images and videos, could end up being protected by copyright law because the threshold as the law stands – called the ‘originality requirement’ – is extremely low.”

In awe of AI

In such a scenario, ‘AI copyright trolls’ may be incited to launch lawsuits to see what they could extract. Most importantly, content flows to the public domain would be restricted, ultimately harming human creativity......

Click here to read the full text.

Angus Young and Grace Li on Technological Disruption as an Agent of Change in Legal Education? Surprises, Disappointments and Experimentations in Australia and Hong Kong (The Law Teacher)

"Technological disruption as an agent of change in legal education? Surprises, disappointments and experimentations in Australia and Hong Kong"
Grace Li and Angus Young
The Law Teacher
Published online: January 2026

Abstract: This article explores how law schools in Australia and Hong Kong address digital disruption, particularly legaltech, and whether curricula equip graduates to manage structural and business-model shifts in legal services. Using a systematic survey of course handbooks identified through keyword searches and coded by inclusion and exclusion criteria, the study maps documented legaltech education. Course descriptions were cross-checked with faculty webpages where possible, though reliance on published handbooks is noted as a limitation. Findings reveal that while legaltech offerings are growing, they remain uneven and fragmented. This gap supports the central argument: law schools must move beyond isolated technology modules to fostering adaptability and change management skills. Practical barriers—such as high software costs and limited staff expertise—further constrain reform despite pedagogical intent. By situating these challenges within broader debates on hybrid legal roles and regulatory disruption, the article underscores the need for legal education to evolve beyond technical knowledge toward preparing graduates for dynamic professional models.

LITE Lab@HKU and Brian Tang's work on LawTech and education in 2025

LITE Lab@HKU’s Brian Tang impacting AI’s role in legaltech development and education in 2025

Brian Tang, the Founding executive director of Law, Innovation, Technology & Entrepreneurship Lab at HKU’s Faculty of Law (LITE Lab@HKU), has had an impactful year in 2025 as the third year since ChatGPT’s launch passes.

Appointment by Hong Kong Department of Justice to develop lawtech in Hong Kong

At the beginning of 2025, Brian was appointed and joined the inaugural meeting of Hong Kong Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Consultation Group on Lawtech Development for the term of January 13, 2025 to January 12, 2028. At the first of a series of the DOJ’s LexGoTech Roundtables (June), Brian was the keynote speaker and then also served as a facilitator for the roundtable comprising legal professionals from the Law Society of Hong Kong and the Small and Medium Law Firms Association of Hong Kong. Brian was later also invited to present at Hong Kong Legal Week 2025 Lawtech Week’s  Insight Stage (November), at which the LexGoTech Roundtables Report was also released.

Thought leadership on AI in the legal profession

Brian has continued to speak at numerous industry and academic this past year: HKU Law’s Regulating AI in the Public Interest (February), vlex AI Legal Focus Group – Hong Kong (February), HKU Law’s Hong Kong Lawtech Startup Ecosystem (March), ALB Hong Kong Regulatory and Anti-Corruption Compliance Summit (March), LexisNexis’ Legal Minds, Digital Tools: Partnering with AI for Better Outcomes (April), ALITA x LITE Lab@HKU Evolutions in legal practice: how AI is transforming law firm and legal department operating models (May), 6th Lawtech Summit Asia 2025 in Singapore (May), Future Law 2025 in Tallinn (May), ALITA-ELTA Asia-Pacific – European Legal Innovation & Tech Dialogue and Curated Pitches in London (June), LegalTechTalk 2025 in London (June), Legal Innovation Festival x ALITA Roundtable (September), SMU Law’s Computational Legal Studies Workshop 2025 in Singapore (September), TechLawFest 2025 in Singapore (September), Hong Kong In-House Community Congress 2025 (October), and Hong Kong Law Society Practice Management Committee “Legal AI: Ethics, Opportunities & Risks” Seminar” (November).  

In addition, Brian has been invited to be a judge for FT Innovative Lawyers APAC and was quoted in “Law firm training highlights business relationships and tech skills” (May). And in augmenting  his leadership role as  Asia-Pacific Legal Innovation & Technology Association (ALITA) co-chair, Brian served as chief editor for ALITA State of Legal Innovation in Asia-Pacific 2025 (which publication was covered in industry publications such as Artificial Lawyer, Law.com and Law Gazette), and led ALITA’s response to Singapore Ministry of Law’s Public Consultation on Guide for Using Generative AI in the Legal Sector (September).

Thought leadership on AI in broader society

Brian has also been appointed a founding member of Fintech Association of Hong Kong AI Strategic Council and hosted the inaugural panel on AI Regulation and Opportunities in Financial Services (January), and has spoken at Asia Financial Forum 2025 on Regtech Revolution (January), Cyberport AI in Finance Solution Day (March) and Hong Kong Data Summit 2025 (June). He was one of the few invitees from Asia-Pacific to attend International Association for Safe and Ethical Artificial Intelligence (IASEAI)  Conference 2025 in Paris (February).

Thought leadership on AI in Education and specifically at Law Schools

Brian continues to support HKU’s initiatives on incorporating AI ethically in teaching and learning. He spoke at HKU TALIC AI Ethics in Teaching and Learning Symposium (April) and was invited to present a TALIC video on Examples of How Colleagues at HKU Integrate AI and Manage Associated Risks (July), as well as at Inter-University Generative AI Hackathon for SDGs 2025 Workshop (September), at which a LITE Lab team won with a chatbot to assist Hong Kong migrant workers with their legal rights (November).

Specifically, Brian has been invited to present on his LITE Lab@HKU interdisciplinary and experiential pedagogy, including at PolyU’s Transformation of Higher Education in the AI Era: Innovation, Best Practices, and Impact together with a LITE Lab@HKU student (May), at International Future of Law Association Conference 2025 in collaboration with the Association of Law Teachers on Generative AI and the Future of Legal Education & Research at London South Bank University and Kings College (July), and at Global Alliance of Impact Lawyers (GAIL) Annual Summit 2025 hosting a JusticeTech Student AI Workshop with up to 60 students in Mexico (October).

Thought leadership on fintech and digital assets

In addition to AI, Brian continues to be invited by industry to share insights on fintech and digital assets, He joined the HKMA and SFC to present at ADB Digital Bond Forum as part of 42nd ASEAN+3 Bond Market Forum (February); presented at Australia Chamber of Commerce Finance, Legal & Tax Committee (August); at ICMA Innovation in Capital Markets during Hong Kong Fintech Week 2025 (Oct); at Citi x Bloomberg GBA Fintech Initiative (November). and was quoted by SCMP on PBOC’s announcement on digital assets (December).

Shilun Zhou on Whether chatbot-generated opinion can be trusted (International Journal of Evidence and Proof)

"Whether chatbot-generated opinion can be trusted: Application of the hearsay rule of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and inspiration for China's evidence law reform"
Shilun Zhou (PhD Candidate)
International Journal of Evidence and Proof
Published online: December 2025

Abstract: As part of its criminal justice reform, the UK Ministry of Justice issued a policy paper on the use of software-generated evidence in criminal proceedings. In response, this article consistently uses the term “chatbot-generated opinion,” while employing “chatbot testimony” metaphorically to compare chatbot responses in court to human testimony given in answer to a judge's questions. The article explores whether chatbot-generated opinion evidence can be trusted, focusing on the hearsay rule under the UK Criminal Justice Act 2003 and its implications for reforming China's evidence law. Contrary to prevailing views that exclude such evidence due to the lack of cross-examination, the article argues that chatbot opinions should not be directly accepted as testimony. It further explains that virtue jurisprudence offers an appropriate framework for identifying indicators of justified belief. Since a chatbot is incapable of having a moral motivation, this prevents judges from justifiably believing a chatbot's statement qua testimony. Introducing such an evidence analysis approach in China is significant. China's Confucian ethics and virtue jurisprudence highlight moral responsibility and motivation, providing a valuable foundation for the ongoing reform of China's evidence law and overcoming the limitations of its predominant objectivist approach to proof.

Shilun Zhou on Deconstructing ‘Responsible AI’: An Examination of Legal and Ethical Accountability Through Virtue Jurisprudence (Int J Semiot Law)

"Deconstructing ‘Responsible AI’: An Examination of Legal and Ethical Accountability Through Virtue Jurisprudence"
Shilun Zhou (PhD Candidate)
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law
Published online: November 2025

Abstract: This article deconstructs the legal semiotic of “Responsible AI” through the lens of virtue jurisprudence, addressing ethical dilemmas in technology-driven knowledge creation within the humanities. It critiques the misleading anthropomorphisation of AI, arguing that “Responsible AI” should be understood as “responsible in name only” and “accountable in reality”. By distinguishing between moral agency and legal accountability, it highlights AI’s dual legal attributes, including its anthropomorphic intelligent dimension and its distinct artificial nature. While the terms of reliability and AI could be semantically related at first glance, the virtue jurisprudence approach could distinguish the semiotic implications of “responsible AI” and “accountable AI”, by highlighting humans’ unique moral assessment capacity, which AI lacks, making AI accountable but not responsible. Emphasising such moral capacity not only justifies human’s refusal to be treated like machines but also provides a theoretical basis for a human-centred AI framework and guides the development of accountability AI in current legal practice. By examining the interplay between human virtue and technological systems, it calls for a renewed focus on human-centric ethical principles in the age of AI-driven knowledge production.

Brian Tang spoke at the seminar "Legal AI: Ethics, Opportunities & Risks" organized by the Law Society of Hong Kong's Practice Management Committee

Pictured (from left to right): Mr. Simon Chan, Mr. Brian Tang, and Mr. Alan Chiu 

On 18 November 2025, the Law Society of Hong Kong's Practice Management Committee, hosted the seminar "Legal AI: Ethics, Opportunities & Risks" which brought together Hong Kong law firm leaders to explore how AI is transforming the way lawyers work, and also the ethical, operational, and professional considerations that come with it. Mr. Brian Tang, the Executive Director of Law, Innovation, Technology & Entrepreneurship Lab (LITE Lab@HKU), has been invited to speak at this eminent event.

The seminar featured the managing and senior partners of prominent Hong Kong and international law firms Gallant, EllaLAN and Dorsey & Whitney and discussed the emerging trends, practical challenges, and how law firms can responsibly integrate AI into their practices. It also provided the opportunity to experience the latest advancements in Legal AI technology through live demonstrations and free trial sessions by Microsoft, Thomson Reuters and Lawplus, showcasing how innovative AI tools are being applied in real-world legal settings.

Brian shared how AI is changing the technological and market landscape for skillsets and mindsets required of lawyers to thrive, and highlighted the duty of practice supervision and management that partners had over their human staff lawyers using AI and the growing number of AI agents. For more details, click here to view Brian's LinkedIn post.

For the coming Hong Kong Legal Week 2025, Brian will also speak at the Hong Kong LawTech Fest on 5 December 2025 for the topic "Lawyers & AI - the evolving roles and skillsets for success". Interested parties can register to attend for free here: https://www.legalweek.hk/en/law-tech

Felix Chan et al on Bringing legal knowledge to the public by constructing a legal question bank using large-scale pre-trained language model (Artificial Intelligence and Law)

"Bringing legal knowledge to the public by constructing a legal question bank using large-scale pre-trained language model"
Mingruo Yuan, Ben Kao, Tien-Hsuan Wu, Michael Cheung, Henry Chan, Anne Cheung, Felix Chan, Yongxi Chen
Artificial Intelligence and Law
Published online: July 2023

Abstract: Access to legal information is fundamental to access to justice. Yet accessibility refers not only to making legal documents available to the public, but also rendering legal information comprehensible to them. A vexing problem in bringing legal information to the public is how to turn formal legal documents such as legislation and judgments, which are often highly technical, to easily navigable and comprehensible knowledge to those without legal education. In this study, we formulate a three-step approach for bringing legal knowledge to laypersons, tackling the issues of navigability and comprehensibility. First, we translate selected sections of the law into snippets (called CLIC-pages), each being a small piece of article that focuses on explaining certain technical legal concept in layperson’s terms. Second, we construct a Legal Question Bank, which is a collection of legal questions whose answers can be found in the CLIC-pages. Third, we design an interactive CLIC Recommender. Given a user’s verbal description of a legal situation that requires a legal solution, CRec interprets the user’s input and shortlists questions from the question bank that are most likely relevant to the given legal situation and recommends their corresponding CLIC pages where relevant legal knowledge can be found. In this paper we focus on the technical aspects of creating an LQB. We show how large-scale pre-trained language models, such as GPT-3, can be used to generate legal questions. We compare machine-generated questions against human-composed questions and find that MGQs are more scalable, cost-effective, and more diversified, while HCQs are more precise. We also show a prototype of CRec and illustrate through an example how our 3-step approach effectively brings relevant legal knowledge to the public.

Technology in the Courtroom (John Liu Profiled in HKU Bulletin)

"Technology in the Courtroom"
John Liu
HKU Bulletin
Published in May 2025

How do live broadcasts affect behaviour in the courtroom? What happens when judges use AI? And what can data analytics tell us about the factors that favour litigants in court? Professor John Liu has been investigating.

Live broadcasts of court proceedings have become more common around the world, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. In China, they are also part of an effort to encourage judicial transparency.

But sentiment about such broadcasts is divided. Some fear that judges and lawyers play to the cameras and that decisions will be badly affected. Others fear that all parties involved will be very nervous with livestreaming. In the US, David Souter, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, once famously said “the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it’s going to roll over my dead body.”

Professor John Liu in the Faculty of Law, however, has been sceptical about such risks, which he calls ‘folklore’. Recently, he decided to test the matter in a randomised control trial involving 85 cases in China, including civil, criminal and administrative (suing the government) cases. Some cases were assigned to be broadcast live and all participants in the trials were told of this; the others were not broadcast. The language and behaviours of everyone involved were analysed using a combination of AI audio recognition tools and manual review.

“What we found out is that some of the folklore is just not true. Judges and lawyers do not play to the cameras or change their behaviour. These repeat players are not influenced or affected in a bad way by live streaming,” he said.

“On the other hand, the parties – the litigants – are somewhat influenced. They appear to be nervous, and they speak at a slow speed and convey less information in trials that are broadcast live.”

Detecting trends

While this may affect litigants’ perceptions of the judicial process – a matter that still needs to be studied more closely – Professor Liu said it demonstrates that judges may be too conservative about the risks of a tool that enhances transparency in the courtroom......

Click here to read the full text.

Welcome the new Global Academic Fellow Dr Pangyue Cheng!

Welcome to Dr Pangyue Cheng who joined the Faculty of Law as a Global Academic Fellow. Dr. Pangyue Cheng is a legal scholar focusing on corporate law, financial regulation, and AI governance. Her research interests encompass institutional stewardship, corporate governance, sustainability, and AI regulation. Pangyue’s work explores the legal challenges companies face in a rapidly changing global environment, particularly how shifts in investor roles, technological advancements, and increasing sustainability demands shape corporate governance and regulatory practices. Her research has been published in international law reviews and peer-reviewed journals such as the Columbia Business Law Review and the European Business Law Review.

Currently, Pangyue’s research focuses on the intersection of corporate governance, sustainability, and technological innovation. She examines how institutional investors foster corporate responsibility and long-term value creation through ESG integration. Additionally, her research on AI governance addresses the opportunities and legal challenges that emerging technologies pose to corporate systems and governance frameworks.

Pangyue holds a Bachelor of Laws from Beijing Normal University, an LLM in Corporate and Financial Services Law, and a PhD from the National University of Singapore, where she researched institutional stewardship in Chinese listed companies. Her work on ESG integration and corporate sustainability was fully funded by the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. She has been invited to share her research at esteemed institutions, including Yale University, Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the Edinburgh Centre for Commercial Law, the Society of Legal Scholars, and the American Society of Comparative Law.

Pangyue currently teaches China Company Law and Securities Regulation at the HKU Faculty of Law. She was a Fox International Fellow at Yale University and worked as a researcher on several projects at the National University of Singapore Law School. Before entering academia, she practiced law in mainland China and served as legal counsel for a listed AI company.

HKU Law Welcomes Prof. Adrian Kuenzler

Welcome to Prof. Adrian Kuenzler, who joins the Faculty of Law as an Associate Professor.

Adrian Kuenzler is Associate Professor at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law and Affiliate Fellow at the Information Society Project, Yale Law School. His research focuses on technology, innovation policy and competition, and examines problems in antitrust, intellectual property and consumer law from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective. Adrian graduated from the University of Zürich (M.A., Ph.D.) and from Yale Law School (LL.M., J.S.D.). He has served as a Professor in the Faculty of Law at Zürich University and has held visiting academic positions at New York University School of Law, the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Yale Law School, ETH Zürich, the European University Institute, the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society and Oxford University. Adrian has held visiting professorship positions at Universidad de San Andrés (Buenos Aires) and the University of Münster. He has also been a Robert S. Campbell Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Adrian’s research on technology and digital markets is regularly relied on by governments and international organizations in debates around the interplay of competition law and data privacy and his work on how the design of online platforms shapes users’ behavior has been drawn upon by policymakers, think tanks and news outlets in different jurisdictions.

Adrian has received a number of prizes for his teaching and research, including the Young Scholar Prize of the International Association for Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy and the University of Zürich Certificate of Distinction in Teaching. He has received major research grants and fellowships for his work from the Swiss National Science Foundation and Society in Science, among others. Adrian has also been invited to serve as an independent expert in international court proceedings.

New book by Angela Zhang: High Wire - How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy (Oxford University Press)

High Wire - How China Regulates Big Tech and Governs Its Economy
Angela Zhang
Oxford University Press
Published in April 2024
432 pp.

Description: In High Wire, Angela Huyue Zhang provides a comprehensive and sophisticated overview of how China regulates its enormous tech sector. By closely scrutinizing the incentives and interactions among the key players, Zhang introduces a dynamic pyramid model to analyze the structure, process, and outcome of China's unique regulatory system. She showcases the shrewd self-regulatory tactics employed by Chinese tech titans to survive and thrive in an institutional environment plagued by endemic fraud and corruption. She also reveals how the Chinese State has given a helping hand to digital platforms by offering them indispensable judicial support.

Through a robust analysis of the tumultuous 2020-2022 tech crackdown, Zhang explores the model's profound impact on three vital pillars of Chinese platform regulation, including antitrust, data, and labor enforcement. As Zhang demonstrates, the tech crackdown has led to the private sector's retreat and the state's advancement in the tech industry. These regulatory shifts have also steered investors from consumer tech businesses toward hardcore technologies that are essential for China's bid to overtake the United States in innovation.

More than just a study of China, Zhang offers a global perspective by comparing China's regulatory landscape with rapidly moving developments in the United States and the European Union. This comparative analysis reveals the shared regulatory challenges all face and sheds light on the future direction of Chinese tech regulation. Finally, she peers into the future of China's tech governance, specifically focusing on the burgeoning realm of generative artificial intelligence.

Providing an unparalleled deep dive into China's rapidly evolving digital economy, High Wire is a must-read for those interested in how the manifold ways in which China regulates and governs its economy.

Professor Angela Zhang’s “High Wire” Book Talk Series: Please click here for details.
Book Trailer: Please click here to view on YouTube.