ABSTRACT
The year 2012 marked the fortieth anniversary of professional legal education in Hong Kong with the one-year Postgraduate Certificate in Laws (PCLL) curriculum first started at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). In most cases, successful completion of the PCLL is a prerequisite to becoming a legal practitioner in Hong Kong.2 Like the Legal Practice Course and the Bar Professional Training Course in England, the PCLL aims to bridge the gap between the liberal law degree (LLB) and legal practice in the real world. Prompted by the first comprehensive review on legal education in the history of contemporary Hong Kong, the HKU PCLL had undergone major reform since September 2002. It took its current form (the new PCLL) in 2008, having taken into account students’ responses to the interim PCLL in 2006. Another informal survey conducted in 2009 revealed that in general students still encountered difficulties in making the transition from the undergraduate to the professional stage of study. Specifically, students find it difficult to practically apply the legal knowledge which they have learnt from their undergraduate studies to solve legal problems. The transition requires a change of their mindset from studying about the law to applying the law in practice. To make the HKU PCLL more akin to real-life legal practice and hence enriching and enhancing students’ learning experience, a team of teachers and supporting staff
1 Part of the content of this chapter in relation to the operation and preliminary evaluation of the pilot project mentioned herein has been recently presented by the author and Dr Michael Ng at a conference on technology in professional legal education at Chicago. The pilot project would not have been possible without the funding support of the University Teaching and Development Grant and the Teaching Fellowship Exchange Scheme. The author would like to specifically thank Professor Johannes Chan, Mr Malcolm Merry and Professor Michael Wilkinson for their support, and Dr Michael Ng, Ms Julienne Jen, Mrs Cecilia Chan, Mr Terry Ng and Miss Taki Chan for the teamwork and their assistance throughout the project. The author also thanks Dr Michael Ng for his contribution to the revision of this chapter after review.
