School of Law — One of Only Three PCLL-Authorised Schools, with a Chinese Law Tradition

Module: 01 Academics · Sub-file: School of Law and PCLL In Hong Kong, only three institutions are legally authorised to award the qualification that opens the door to legal practice. The School of Law at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) is one of them — and that status is the school's most formidable calling card. This article traces its history, the dual-pathway degree structure, the PCLL threshold, its Chinese law tradition and its international mooting record, drawing on public sources. For an overview of the University's colleges and schools, see colleges-and-schools.md.

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# 1. History: from a Department of Law to a School of Law

According to an open overview^※, the development of CityUHK's law school falls into several stages:

The School's core mission is to support and enhance legal education and training in Hong Kong, pursued through teaching, research, international publications and dedicated programmes. The fact that a law department was set up while CityU was still a young polytechnic-style institution shows how early legal education was written into the University's plan to "serve Hong Kong's professional manpower needs".

Its place in the order of things is worth a moment. CityUHK's law department was the second law school in Hong Kong^※. Before that, the University of Hong Kong had long enjoyed a monopoly on legal education in the territory; CityU's entry in 1987 broke that exclusive arrangement and opened a second route for training local legal talent. Seen in context, the move was no small matter — the mid-to-late 1980s were precisely the years when Hong Kong's future was being settled and demand for locally trained lawyers was surging. An additional law school meant more capacity to keep professional training on home soil rather than shipping students off to Britain or Australia. With 60 students admitted in 1988 and the first LLB graduates emerging in 1991, the school's "first batch" was out of the furnace.

The sequencing is worth noting: CityU set up its undergraduate law programme first in 1987, took in that first cohort of 60 in 1988 and produced its first LLB graduates in 1991 (per the overview^※), and only then, in 1992, created a dedicated Department of Professional Legal Education to take on the vocational-training side. In other words, the academic and professional tracks were built separately and merged in 1993 — a structure that maps directly onto the "LLB/JD academic starting point" and "PCLL professional exit" discussed below. In terms of size, the School currently has roughly 1,074 students and 31 academic staff^※, according to the Wikipedia overview, with the current Dean being Professor Lin Feng^※ — a lean scale among Hong Kong's three law schools, consistent with CityU's overall "small but excellent" ethos. For the School's intersections with the Department of Public and International Affairs, see deepdive-liberal-arts-socsci.md.

The School's leadership has long been drawn from scholars with international academic backgrounds, which in itself reflects its self-image of "common law as the body, internationalisation as the function". Former Dean Geraint Howells, Chair Professor of Commercial Law, previously held chairs at Sheffield, Lancaster and Manchester in the UK, heading the law schools at the latter two (per an interview with the Hong Kong Lawyer^※); the current Dean Lin Feng is a Chair Professor of Basic Law whose research has long centred on the Hong Kong Basic Law and Chinese constitutional law (overview^※). The succession from a British authority on consumer and commercial law to a Basic Law scholar neatly refracts the School's two parallel academic bloodlines — the common law commercial tradition and Chinese law/Basic Law research.

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# 2. Hong Kong's "single-plank bridge" to practice: the PCLL

To grasp the weight of CityUHK's law school, one first needs to understand how qualification for legal practice works in Hong Kong.

The PCLL is a one-year full-time programme covering civil procedure, criminal procedure, commercial practice, conveyancing, professional accounts and professional conduct. Core courses include: Interlocutory Advocacy and Interviewing, Trial Advocacy, Mediation and Negotiation, Conveyancing Practice, Wills and Probate, Corporate and Commercial Practice, Civil Litigation Practice, Criminal Litigation Practice, and Professional Conduct and Practice (per the CityUHK PCLL page^※).

To apply for CityUHK's PCLL, one must hold an LLB or JD from a local university, or an equivalent qualification from a recognised institution in a common law jurisdiction (CityUHK PCLL page^※).

# How do overseas law degrees connect to Hong Kong practice? The Conversion Examination

For applicants holding non-Hong Kong law degrees (for example, an LLB from the UK or Australia), there is a further "localisation" hurdle. The three law schools require applicants to first top up their knowledge of Hong Kong-specific law before they can enrol in the PCLL: they must demonstrate competence in nine core subjects and three top-up subjects, the latter being Hong Kong Constitutional Law, the Hong Kong Legal System, and Hong Kong Land Law (PCLL Conversion Examination information^※). These competencies can be acquired subject by subject through the Hong Kong PCLL Conversion Examination, held twice a year (PCLL Conversion Examination information^※). The purpose of this arrangement is to ensure that those trained in other jurisdictions acquire the "local knowledge" of Hong Kong as a distinct common law jurisdiction before entering professional training.

The real bottleneck is not the threshold but the number of places. With only a limited number of PCLL places across the three schools and a large pool of applicants, competition has long been described as fierce — a common informal estimate is that only about half of local law graduates manage to secure a PCLL place (PCLL Conversion Examination information^※). In other words, earning an LLB or JD merely buys the right to queue; squeezing through the professional gate still comes down to grades and the contest for places. This is why CityU's possession of one of the three PCLL authorisations is its "strongest calling card". For a cross-comparison of CityU's admissions metrics and undergraduate intake, see undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

# After the PCLL: the two forks of solicitor and barrister

Completing the PCLL still does not mean entry to the profession. Hong Kong follows the common law system of England and Wales, dividing legal practice into solicitors and barristers, and the two branches each take their own path after the PCLL (overview of legal education in Hong Kong^※):

Stretch the chain out and the path for anyone wanting to practise in Hong Kong looks roughly like this: LLB or JD (academic degree) → PCLL (professional certificate, one year) → two-year training contract or one-year pupillage → full qualification. The academic starting point is supplied by institutions such as CityU; the PCLL stage is exclusive to the three schools; and the final practical training returns to the profession. CityUHK's law school matters precisely because it holds two links of the chain at once — the front end (LLB/JD) and the middle (PCLL authorisation) — and both are links that the overwhelming majority of applicants cannot bypass.

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# 3. Degree programmes: LLB / JD dual track / PCLL / LLM

Hong Kong's law degrees run on a "dual-track" system: the LLB (Bachelor of Laws, the undergraduate route) and the JD (Juris Doctor, the postgraduate route) run in parallel, and both can lead to the PCLL and into practice (StudyIn.HK^※).

According to public sources^※, CityU admits roughly 60–80 JD students each year, with admitted students typically holding an undergraduate degree at upper second-class honours or above.

# How hard is it to get into the LLB? A look at the JUPAS numbers

The threshold on the LLB side is similarly demanding. According to the official JUPAS programme page^※, CityU's Bachelor of Laws (programme code JS1061) offers 42 first-year places through the main JUPAS route each year; in 2025, roughly 1,064 applicants^※ applied to the programme through JUPAS, and only 47 offers^※ were made — an acceptance rate of roughly one in twenty-three. That intensity echoes the claim in the PCLL section above that "roughly half of local law graduates make it into the PCLL": in law, from the undergraduate entrance to the professional exit, every gate is narrow. For a cross-comparison of CityU's overall undergraduate admissions, see undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

On the research and professional doctorate front, the School's offerings are equally complete: in addition to the MPhil and PhD, it offers the Doctor of Juridical Science (JSD), designed for those with a solid grounding in law to pursue in-depth research (overview^※). For the overall coordination and degree framework at postgraduate level, see Chow Yei Ching School of Graduate Studies.

# How do undergraduates "go global"? G-LEAP and Oxford summer credit

The most distinctive initiative at undergraduate level is the Global Legal Education and Awareness Project (G-LEAP), launched in 2007: LLB students may spend a summer at Oxford University's University College Law Faculty taking credit-bearing law courses (official G-LEAP page^※). For a young law school that only started in 1987, being able to send undergraduates in organised fashion to earn credit at Oxford is one of the concrete ways it has raised its international quotient and burnished the LLB brand. The four-year LLB is the School's acknowledged flagship undergraduate programme (official LLB page^※), and G-LEAP grafts an overseas segment onto that undergraduate route. For a cross-comparison of undergraduate admissions, see undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.

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# 4. Asia's first master's in arbitration: the LLMArbDR

Beyond Chinese law, CityUHK's law school holds another card that is easy to overlook yet exceptionally valuable: arbitration and dispute resolution. According to the School, its Master of Laws in Arbitration and Dispute Resolution (LLMArbDR), launched in 1991, was the first master's programme in arbitration and dispute resolution in Asia (official LLMArbDR page^※). The programme blends academic and practical training, covering local and international arbitration and extending to mediation, adjudication, negotiation and other methods of dispute resolution (official LLMArbDR page^※).

This "first in Asia" status is no accident. Hong Kong is itself one of Asia-Pacific's leading international arbitration centres, and CityU bet on this direction as early as 1991 — years before the Greater Bay Area concept and years before Hong Kong's official positioning as an "Asia-Pacific centre for international legal and dispute resolution services". According to the School, LLMArbDR is not confined to "arbitration" alone; it incorporates mediation, adjudication and negotiation alongside it, covering both local and international dimensions and balancing academic rigour with practical training (official LLMArbDR page^※). In other words, it teaches a whole toolbox for resolving disputes "without going to court", not a single technique.

The timing deserves emphasis. In 1991 Hong Kong had not yet been handed over, and the concept of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area was still more than two decades away; a law school barely four years old launched Asia's first ADR master's in that year, effectively betting early on a function that Hong Kong would later come to rely on as a city. It also dovetails with something discussed later in this article: in 2010, CityU co-organised with the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) and Columbia Law School a pioneering mooting competition that combined "arbitration + mediation" — the School's academic and competitive investment in ADR are two points on the same line.

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# 5. Distinctive character: the deep Chinese law and comparative law tradition

The most distinctive academic feature of CityUHK's law school is its tradition of PRC law and comparative law. According to an open overview^※, the School offers three foundational PRC law courses to undergraduates:

• Legal System of the PRC
• Public Law of the PRC
• Private Law of the PRC

Research priorities include: Chinese law and comparative law, the Chinese Constitution and the Hong Kong Basic Law, cross-boundary legal issues between Hong Kong and mainland China, Chinese foreign investment and trade law, and arbitration and alternative dispute resolution (ADR). The School hosts the Centre for Chinese and Comparative Law (CCCL) as the academic vehicle for this direction (overview^※).

The CCCL is not the School's only research centre. According to the official research centres page^※, the School of Law currently runs four research centres, each staking out its own specialist territory:

Taken together, the four centres peg down the School's several academic threads — common law professional training, Chinese/comparative law, public law and human rights, and commercial and maritime law — each with its own research anchor. The CCCL's annual Junior Scholars Forum on Chinese and Comparative Law, with the 2026 edition scheduled for 11–12 June under the theme "The Study of Chinese Law in the Age of AI"^※, covers some ten sub-topics including Chinese securities regulation, technology law and artificial intelligence, Chinese civil and commercial law, and constitutional and administrative law — a sign that this research line keeps updating with technological agendas.

At postgraduate level, the weight of Chinese law is equally visible. The School's LLM is divided into multiple streams, including International Economic Law, Corporate and Financial Law, Intellectual Property and Technology Law, Common Law, Chinese and Comparative Law, and Maritime and Transport Law (official LLM page^※); it also runs a Master of Laws in Chinese Law (LLM in Chinese Law) jointly with Renmin University of China, bringing the faculty resources of a leading mainland law school directly into Hong Kong classrooms (overview^※). For students who want to master both the common law and mainland law, this design — with "Common Law stream + Chinese Law stream" coexisting — is quite rare.

Read the programme spectrum as a whole and the intention is clear: the three PRC law foundation courses lay the groundwork at undergraduate level; the "Common Law stream + Chinese Law stream" division offers deeper specialisation at postgraduate level; and the jointly run Chinese Law LLM with Renmin University brings in first-hand mainland teaching strength. The Centre for Chinese and Comparative Law is the vehicle that crystallises these teaching lines into research output, and the research priorities the School lists — Chinese and comparative law, the Chinese Constitution and the Hong Kong Basic Law, cross-boundary legal issues between Hong Kong and mainland China, Chinese foreign investment and trade law — almost all sit on the seam where the two legal systems meet under "one country, two systems" (overview^※). The current Dean, Lin Feng, is a Chair Professor of Basic Law whose own research sits squarely on this main line — the School's leadership and its academic character are not two separate things.

This positioning aligns closely with Hong Kong's role as "a common law bridge between mainland China and the world": legal professionals who understand both the common law and Chinese law are precisely the scarce resource of the Greater Bay Area era. For related cross-boundary and Greater Bay Area threads, see Greater Bay Area and mainland China.

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# 6. Training foreign-related legal talent: from the Shanghai pairing to the Belt and Road academy

Beyond its own degree programmes, CityUHK's law school has in recent years taken on an additional role — training foreign-related legal professionals for mainland China and the region.

One concrete case is a training programme run with the Justice Bureau of Hongkou District, Shanghai. According to the School's official announcement^※, from 23 to 27 June 2025 the law school organised a week-long "Foreign-related Legal Talent Training Programme" for legal professionals from the bureau, covering seven lectures on topics including the Hong Kong common law system, company law, M&A transactions, Hong Kong listing and maritime law, with participants also visiting the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre and the Hong Kong International Legal Talents Training Academy. Dean Lin Feng remarked at the closing ceremony that "this bridge of Shanghai–Hong Kong cooperation will cultivate more legal professionals and jointly serve cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative" (School's official announcement^※).

Such programmes are not one-off events but plug into a larger scheme at the Hong Kong level — the Hong Kong International Legal Talents Training Academy was officially launched on 8 November 2024 during Hong Kong Legal Week^※, positioned as a capacity-building platform for legal professionals from Hong Kong, mainland China and Belt and Road jurisdictions, with CityUHK's law school serving as a partner venue and source of speakers for ceremonies and other segments (School's official announcement^※). The School also states that it offers scholarships to outstanding non-local students from Belt and Road countries and regions including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar and Mongolia (School's official announcement^※).

Read this section against the Chinese law tradition of Section 5 and the picture sharpens: the Centre for Chinese and Comparative Law is the "research end" of the accumulation, while the foreign-related legal training programmes are the "application end" of its output — the School translates its dual knowledge of the common law and Chinese law into courses that can be taught directly to mainland legal practitioners. This is one concrete way it fulfils its role as a common law bridge under "one country, two systems" (see also Section 11).

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# 7. A flagship journal older than the School itself: the Asia Pacific Law Review

A law school's academic weight is largely written in the journals it publishes. CityUHK's law school has two worth singling out:

The timing is the curious bit: the Asia Pacific Law Review was founded in 1992, a year before the School itself merged into the Faculty of Law in 1993 (official APLR page^※). Now published by international academic publisher Taylor & Francis, the journal is officially described as the School's "flagship journal" and is regarded as one of the leading peer-reviewed law journals in the Asia-Pacific, providing a platform for discussion of key legal and policy issues in the region (official APLR page^※). The other, the City University of Hong Kong Law Review, is student-edited and has been published since 2009 (overview^※), serving as a training ground where students do hands-on academic editing. An external flagship peer-reviewed journal facing the world, and an internal student review facing the School — the two lines map neatly onto the School's twin missions of "research" and "nurturing students".

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# 8. Who's who: alumni in practice and faculty in residence

As one of Hong Kong's three law schools, CityUHK's graduates and academic staff are by no means rare in the local legal profession and public affairs. The following examples, drawn from an open overview, are neutral statements of identity and fact:

• Rimsky Yuen, SC — Senior Counsel, and former Secretary for Justice of Hong Kong^※.
• Richard Khaw, SC, JP — Senior Counsel, appointed as a Recorder of the Court of First Instance of the High Court^※.
• Tse Wai-chun, Junius Ho — Legislative Councillors^※ in different terms.

On the faculty side, Chair Professor Priscilla Leung, who specialises in Chinese law and constitutional law, also serves as a Legislative Councillor^※. Short though the list is, it covers all three key arenas: the executive of justice (the Secretary for Justice), the judiciary (a Recorder of the Court of First Instance), and the legislature (several Legislative Councillors). For a young law school that admitted just 60 students in 1987, having graduates reach these positions within one generation after the handover says plainly that it is no "latecomer running to keep up" — it has genuinely placed people in the core circles of Hong Kong's legal and public affairs. The list also matches the School's dual orientation of "common law professional training + Chinese law/Basic Law research": there are senior counsel practising in court, and scholar-legislators steeped in the Basic Law and Chinese law. For a fuller picture of alumni in politics and public service, see alumni in politics and public service.

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# 9. International mooting and arbitration record

Mooting is an important yardstick for measuring a law school's practical training. According to an open overview^※, CityUHK's law school has turned in strong performances at several international competitions:

• Won the ICC Moot and Vis East in 2012^※
• Winner at the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot in 2013^※

Neither of these is a minor event. The Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious moots in international commercial arbitration, and its Asian leg, Vis East, is held in Hong Kong every year, drawing teams from law schools around the world; winning at a competition of this calibre speaks directly to the quality of the School's training in international arbitration and commercial law. For a school that treats arbitration and dispute resolution as a signature direction (see LLMArbDR in Section 4), the Vis/Vis East results corroborate its programme design — ADR is taught in the classroom and proven in competition.

More pioneering still, in 2010^※, the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC), CityUHK's law school and Columbia Law School jointly launched an innovative competition that handled a simulated case combining both arbitration and mediation — folding the two dispute resolution methods into a single moot was unusual at the time, and it placed CityU at the frontier of Sino-US legal education exchange and dispute resolution innovation. Of the three partners, one is mainland China's leading foreign-related arbitration institution, one is an Ivy League law school, and CityU sits in the middle — a concrete enactment of its "common law + Chinese law + ADR" positioning.

# The 2025–2026 season: the record is still being written

According to the School's official international mooting page^※, students continue to compete in a range of international mooting and mediation competitions, and the page preserves an archive of results from 2008 to 2025^※ for verification. The most recent two seasons, for example:

• In the Hong Kong qualifying rounds of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Commercial Mediation Competition, the CityUHK team finished as 1st Runner-up among 42 teams in the 2025–2026 season^※.
• At the Hong Kong rounds of the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition (held on 28 February 2026), CityUHK representative MAHMOOD Eshal Taghbeen was awarded the 2nd Best Oralist Award^※.
• In the same period the School fielded teams for the 33rd Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot (with its Budapest pre-moot), the 23rd Vis East, and the International Bar Association (IBA) International Criminal Court Moot Court Competition, among other 2025–2026 season events (official School page^※).

From the ICC Moot and Vis East titles in the early 2010s to sustained podium finishes in the ICC mediation competition, Jessup and others in the 2025–2026 season, it is clear that the School's investment in mooting and ADR training is not a one-off achievement but a sustained, institutionalised effort spanning more than a decade.

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# 10. The 2026 ranking leap: law enters the global top 50 for the first time

In 2026, CityUHK's law discipline climbed simultaneously on two major subject rankings — the most recent verifiable development covered in this article.

On the QS 2026 table, CityUHK's law and legal studies leapt 15 places from the previous year's 56th to enter the global top 50, with the University stating that this "underscores the School's growing international reputation and academic excellence in legal education and research" (CityUHK law school announcement^※). On the same year's THE law subject ranking, the School likewise placed 41st globally, holding its regional position at 7th in Asia and 2nd in Hong Kong^※. For a young university that has not yet reached its fortieth anniversary, with a deliberately lean law school, standing in the global top 50 on both tables at once is the same upward curve as holding the PCLL authorisation and publishing a leading Asia-Pacific law journal — these are the "hardware" behind the ranking.

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# 11. Relationship to CityU's overall positioning

The contrast between the "choke point" status and the youth of the institution is the first key to understanding this law school. CityU was founded only in 1984 and did not become a full university until 1994, and its law school began only in 1987; yet with a PCLL authorisation, a Chinese law and comparative law tradition, and a flagship journal older than the School itself, it has carved out an irreplaceable place in Hong Kong's legal education landscape. This is the same logic as CityU's overall "small but excellent, seize the key points" approach — not trying to cover every discipline broadly, but ensuring that at the critical nodes it holds resources no one else can take away. For the School's coordinates in the University's overall academic structure, see colleges and schools overview.

The bridge role is the second key. A common law foundation, Chinese law and Basic Law research, and an arbitration and ADR presence begun remarkably early — stack these three together and they are almost tailor-made for Hong Kong's city positioning as a "super-connector / super value-adder". When Hong Kong positions itself as the common law interface between mainland China and the world, and treats Greater Bay Area legal services as a new growth point, a law school that can simultaneously teach the common law, explain Chinese law and train in ADR stands exactly at the centre of demand. The 2026 double entry into the global top 50 on both QS and THE can be read as this positioning echoing back in international visibility.

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# 12. Summary

• CityUHK's law school was established in 1987 (initially as the Department of Law), merged into the Faculty of Law in 1993, and renamed the School of Law in 1998^※.
• It is one of only three institutions in Hong Kong authorised to teach the PCLL^※ (mandatory for practice), alongside HKU and CUHK — this is its strongest calling card.
• The LLB/JD dual track leads to the PCLL; the JD admits roughly 60–80 students a year, mostly with upper second-class honours or above; the LLB offers around 42 places a year, with about 1,064 JUPAS applicants in 2025 and about 47 offers — an acceptance rate of roughly one in twenty-three; undergraduates also have the G-LEAP Oxford summer credit option.
• Its distinctive character lies in the Chinese law and comparative law tradition, supported by four research centres (Chinese and Comparative Law, Commercial and Maritime Law, Public Law and Human Rights, Public Affairs and Law), plus sustained results in international mooting/arbitration competitions including Vis East; its flagship journal, the Asia Pacific Law Review, was founded in 1992, before the School itself was formed.
• In recent years the School has taken on a "training foreign-related legal talent" role, such as the 2025 training programme co-organised with the Justice Bureau of Shanghai's Hongkou District, and it plugs into the Hong Kong International Legal Talents Training Academy launched in 2024.
• In 2026 the law discipline ranked 41st globally on both QS^※ and THE^※, entering the global top 50 for the first time; on THE it placed 7th in Asia and 2nd in Hong Kong.

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