The University of Hong Kong's New PCLL

Abstract

A recent review of legal education criticised Hong Kong's professional legal education programme (the PCLL). The review said that the PCLL was not doing a good enough job in preparing students for legal practice. This article responds to the review by outlining proposals for a new PCLL. The proposals are based on the premise that professional legal education needs to develop students' ability to learn new skills after graduation. This is a complicated, but crucial, educational goal that is more easily understood with the help of concepts such as problem solving and transfer of learning. The paper argues that if the PCLL is designed to enable students to transfer problem solving skills from one legal context to another then students will more easily be able to transfer what they have learned in the programme to new problems in legal practice. To achieve this goal, however, requires painstaking effort in using several interdependent, curriculum-design features that other programmes around the world have used successfully.