The Faculty's position paper on a third law school in Hong Kong submitted to the Legislative Council
1. The Chinese University of Hong Kong has recently announced its firm decision to open a new law school in the year 2006. From an education point of view, we believe a larger community of legal scholars and healthy competition among quality law schools would, subject to the availability of sufficient resources, certainly enhance the standard and quality of legal education in Hong Kong. We also look forward to collaborating with the Chinese University of Hong Kong on various academic endeavours.
2. We do however have concerns about the apparent lack of consultation and studies on the resources need. If there is a perceived need for establishing a third law school, it is of vital importance that the Government should ensure that more government resources should be made available to all law schools so as to foster excellence and quality education. There will be little efficiency gain if the same resources for the existing two law schools are to be divided by three.
3. From a resource point of view, in the light of shrinking public resources, there is a policy issue as to whether it is more appropriate to concentrate scarce resources to build up excellence rather than to spread the resources, including in particular human resources, thinly among three different institutions.
4. We believe there may also be a distinction between academic programmes and professional qualification. In regard to the PCLL, which is a professional qualification, the larger the number of providers, the more difficult it becomes to maintain a consistent standard, let alone the lack of human resources in providing the necessary practical training. We also have some reservation on the introduction of the 3rd PCLL at the time when there is no fresh LLB graduates because of the transition from a 3? year to a 4-year LLB programme.
5. Irrespective of the number of local law schools, we are already competing globally and our primary duty is to ensure that our teaching and research excel in the international academic arena, and that the quality of our graduates is comparable to that of the best international law schools. As a well-established law school with a strong history, foundation, performance and alumni network, we are consolidating our strengths to provide a Quality Education Programme. We will continue to adopt a global perspective, and to pursue academic excellence against the highest international standard. Our vision is to place our law school on the global map and to become one of the best law schools in the Region and the world.
May 20, 2005
