The Public Interest Clinic in its current form combines the work of three earlier clinics at HKU Faculty of Law: the Refugee and Human Trafficking Clinic, the Disability Clinic, and the Human Rights in Practice Clinic. The alumni listed below came through one or more of these predecessor programmes; together they reflect the lineage of public interest legal education at HKU that the present clinic now carries forward.
Predecessor clinics now combined under the Public Interest Clinic
- Refugee and Human Trafficking Clinic — non-refoulement claims, anti-trafficking casework, comparative law research
- Disability Clinic — Mental Health Review Tribunal representation, Conditional Discharge work, statutory safeguards
- Human Rights in Practice Clinic — strategic litigation and applied human rights research
The Public Interest Clinic does not aim to produce a particular kind of lawyer. It aims to produce thoughtful ones — students who, whatever they go on to practise, carry with them an understanding that legal skill alone is rarely enough to serve people well.
Many of our alumni have gone on to public-interest careers, in NGOs, government, international organisations and at independent practices that take public-interest cases seriously. Others practise commercial law and bring the same care and rigour to their work there. The cases they handled here continue to shape how they read a brief, how they listen to a client, and how they think about what the law is for.
The alumni below have shared reflections on what they took from their time at the clinic. We are grateful to them — and to many others, not yet listed here, whose work in the years since has continued to make this kind of education worthwhile.
