Programme Introduction
Pursue a career in Law
Being the first local university qualifications to be recognized for admission to legal practice in Hong Kong, our 4-year Bachelor of Laws curriculum has a number of characteristic features to ensure the competitiveness of our graduates, which include:
- Solid foundation in legal knowledge, transferable critical and analytical skills, and broadening of intellectual horizons;
- Systematic honing of professional skills such as critical thinking, analytical and problem solving skills, research and writing skills, and bilingual language proficiency; and
- Integrated experiential learning and capstone experience through an integrated sequence of legal research and writing, mooting, internship and clinical legal education.
The LLB programme includes a professional core to establish a solid foundation of legal knowledge. It also offers the possibility of specializing in a particular area of law such as commercial law, Chinese law, international trade and economic law, so that our graduates would have an edge over law graduates elsewhere with general legal training. Students are also allowed to do a minor in a non-law discipline offered in the University.
Opt-in to our enriching double degree programmes offered in partnership with the Faculty of Arts, the HKU Business School, the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Faculty of Science. You will earn two degrees from two faculties over five years of study.
Alternatively, consider our exclusive dual degree programmes with the University College London (UCL) in the UK or Peking University (PKU) in Mainland China. You will obtain two LLB degrees from two top-ranking law schools and put yourself on track to earn legal qualifications in both jurisdictions.
Students are provided with extensive opportunities for exchange and international experience. They may also opt for a second degree through the pathway programmes, which may enable them to practice law in both countries after the completion of the two degrees.
To practise law in Hong Kong, LLB graduates must pass the Postgraduate Certificate in Laws (PCLL). The Department of Professional Legal Education of the Faculty of Law at HKU offers a one-year full-time or two-year part-time certificate course. Thereafter, to become a solicitor, a graduate must spend two years as a trainee solicitor in a law firm, or in the Department of Justice, while prospective barristers must undertake 12 months of pupillage. Admission to the PCLL offered by the Faculty of Law is open to law graduates from the University and other approved universities and similar institutions in Hong Kong, and also to holders of other recognised law qualifications acceptable to the PCLL providers who can demonstrate competence in the required core subjects. Admission is competitive: the selection criteria include the standard and origin of the applicant's first degree in law.
Our LLB degree is recognised by professional bodies and universities overseas. The Law Society of England grants exemptions from part 1 of the Common Professional Examination (CPE) and certain papers in part 1 of the Bar Professional Training Course for LLB graduates.
Graduates have also gone on to pursue higher degrees at prestigious universities abroad, including Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, University College London, and Yale.
Hong Kong is a fascinating, stimulating environment for the study and practice of law because of its position as an international centre of trade and finance. Under the Basic Law, the existing law of Hong Kong will remain fundamentally unchanged for 50 years from 1997, which means that the Common Law, based on the English system, continues to apply. Hong Kong lawyers are playing a larger role in the modernisation of China, as well as in the constitutional and legal questions associated with the change of sovereignty – so Chinese law is also relevant. International trade and humanitarian law are becoming increasingly important, too.
Many graduates of the Faculty of Law are now serving the Hong Kong community as solicitors, barristers, magistrates and judges, corporate counsel and government lawyers. Others are teaching law in Hong Kong's three law schools. Our alumni have served as chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association, Permanent Judge of the Court of Appeal and Judges of the High Court. Many have also been appointed Senior Counsel or joined the governing bodies of the legal profession in Hong Kong, the Bar Council of the Hong Kong Bar Association and the Council of the Law Society of Hong Kong.
Faculty graduates can also be found pursuing a wide range of careers that at first sight might seem to have little to do with law. Some of our graduates become senior figures serving the business sector, political leaders, chairpersons of statutory bodies, and senior civil servants and journalists.
