The Founding of the Faculty of Law: Hong Kong's Third Law School in 2004 and the JD/PCLL System

The takeaway in one sentence: The Chinese University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Law (CUHK Faculty of Law) received approval to proceed in May 2004 as Hong Kong's third law school, after HKU and CityU. It began teaching in 2006, was elevated to faculty status in August 2008, and launched its first PCLL cohort the same year, positioning itself at the intersection of the common law and Chinese law.

This article is part of the 01 Academic module, an institutional-history investigation. It recounts institutional history supported by official records and news archives; the deans, judges and others named are mentioned in a neutral institutional context with their real names. For the structure of the Faculty of Law's programmes (LLB/JD/PCLL credits and routes to practice), see programs.md; for the founding chronology of all eight faculties and the table of deans, see faculties.md. This article does not repeat programme details; it focuses on the founding itself — how the Faculty went from nothing to something.

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A development proposal submitted to the University Grants Committee, a Central construction site still at the piling stage, and eight offices clustered around it — that, in 2004, was about the sum of CUHK's plans for a law school. It was a from-scratch operation. For more than three decades beforehand, only two institutions in Hong Kong could award law degrees; when CUHK announced it would add a "third," the public's first question was usually: why so late? The second: can a law school genuinely be built in a year? This article follows the timeline to investigate both.

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# 1. Before 2004: why did Hong Kong have only two law schools for so long?

To grasp the significance of CUHK's founding effort, you first need the lay of the land it was born into. Before 2004, legal higher education in Hong Kong had long been monopolised by two institutions, and both had gone through a slow, two-stage process of "department first, faculty later."

The University of Hong Kong is where local legal education began. According to legal-education historical sources, HKU's Department of Law was established in 1969 and elevated to a faculty in 1984^※; it was not only Hong Kong's first institution to train local legal professionals, it remained the only one for a long time. A second would not appear for nearly two decades: the Department of Law at City University of Hong Kong (then City Polytechnic of Hong Kong) was set up in 1987 and became a faculty in 1993^※. In other words, until the 1990s, nearly every locally trained law graduate in Hong Kong came from these two institutions.

Behind this picture lay a highly regulated admissions-to-practice system. To become a solicitor or barrister in Hong Kong, a law degree alone is not enough — you must also complete a professional training course called the Postgraduate Certificate in Laws (PCLL), followed by a period of practical training. The PCLL was pioneered by HKU in 1972^※, and for a long time only HKU and CityU were authorised to offer it. Whoever can run the PCLL controls the express lane for its graduates into Hong Kong practice; this threshold was the biggest hurdle facing any new law school.

Into the 2000s, Hong Kong's role as an international financial and dispute-resolution centre drove steadily rising demand for lawyers who understood both the common law and mainland Chinese law. The two existing law schools' places, relative to market demand and application numbers, were already tight. Adding a third law school thus moved from an academic talking point to a higher-education planning issue. For CUHK itself — a comprehensive research university — the long absence of a law faculty was also a gap in its disciplinary map. That gap was filled in 2004.

This table clears up a commonly misread date: the "2004" for CUHK refers to the year the School of Law was approved, not the year it became a Faculty (that was 2008). HKU and CityU both took the same two-stage path of "department first, faculty later"; CUHK simply walked it faster — four years from School to Faculty.

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# 2. The 2004 step: the UGC proposal and the birth of the "third"

CUHK's decision to found a law school followed the standard procedure for expanding disciplines at Hong Kong's public universities: submit an academic development proposal to the University Grants Committee (UGC) to secure funding and student places for the new programmes.

According to English Wikipedia, when CUHK submitted its triennium academic development proposal for 2005–08^※, founding a law school was listed as a core item; once the proposal was accepted, the School of Law was formally approved as "the third and then-newest law school in Hong Kong." The public announcement, per the Chinese Wikipedia entry, came on 10 May 2004^※ — this is the direct origin of the "founded 2004" claim.

Worth noting is the gap between approval and first classes. Per Chinese Wikipedia, the School of Law was initially established in September 2005, but offered no courses until teaching began in 2006^※; the Faculty's own website chronology, by contrast, dates the School's establishment to September 2004^※. The two versions differ by about a year, probably reflecting different definitions of "approved to proceed" versus "administratively constituted." This article sets the two alongside each other without arbitrating: what is certain is that 2004 was the year of decision and approval, 2006 the year teaching actually began, and the year-plus in between was the period in which the School moved from paperwork to substance.

The urgency of that preparatory period produced the most dramatic stretch of the founding story: a law school had to build its entire curriculum, premises and faculty from zero within a single year before opening its doors.

There is one detail easily missed but highly revealing of Hong Kong higher-education finance. CUHK could not simply ask the government for a lump sum and open its doors. UGC-funded undergraduate places are subject to strict caps; adding one funded LLB place affects the entire triennium's allocation. Postgraduate self-financed programmes, in contrast, must largely cover their own costs through tuition fees. This shaped the founding team's realistic strategy: rather than waiting for undergraduate places to trickle in, they would first use self-financed JD and LLM programmes to build scale, staff and cash flow quickly. Understanding this financial constraint is the key to the "few undergraduates, many postgraduates" enrolment figures in the next section — they are not an accident but a young school's necessary choice in carving out room to survive within a regulated funding system.

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# 3. Building a law school in a year: the founding team and "eight offices beside a construction site"

Once approved, the School of Law moved into an intense preparatory phase. Overseeing the project was criminal-justice scholar Mike McConville, appointed as the founding Director; he was concurrently named Simon F. S. Li Professor of Law^※. According to Chinese Wikipedia and other sources, the associate directors were international-law scholar Professor Bing Ling and intellectual-property scholar Professor Michael Pendleton^※; the School's first Planning Officer, per the official website, was Mrs. Diana Ying^※, and McConville's initial academic team numbered about ten^※.

The working conditions at the very start were recalled in unusually concrete detail by Lutz-Christian Wolff, a founding member who would later become Dean, in an interview. Speaking to the Law Society's publication Hong Kong Lawyer, he described:

"Back then, there were eight offices around a construction site, which was to become our first boardroom." (Hong Kong Lawyer)^※

In the same interview, the team's mornings were spent facing "a thick layer of dust on the table and constant construction noise," plus late-night email discussions^※. Wolff condensed the sprint into a single sentence: they "had one year to develop the entire curriculum, establish the CUHK Graduate Law Centre in Central's Bank of America Tower, recruit more colleagues, and attract students to join us a year later"^※.

Hidden in this recollection is a key strategic choice: the School did not first build premises at the main Shatin campus; instead, its postgraduate programmes and offices were centred on Central's Bank of America Tower — the future "Graduate Law Centre." Planting one foot of the law school directly in Central's commercial and judicial heartland, with staff and students close to law firms, courts and arbitration bodies, this "two-campus" arrangement was fixed from day one and persists today (undergraduate in Shatin, postgraduate and PCLL in Central).

An easily overlooked detail shows how much the founding team valued institutional identity: the two Chinese characters 「法律」 on the School's nameplate were, per the official website, calligraphy by Ambrose King^※, Emeritus Professor and former Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Sociology at CUHK. A new school built on the common law asking a sociologist to write its name in Chinese calligraphy was itself a quiet statement of its self-positioning at the meeting point of Chinese and Western legal traditions.

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# 4. An unusual starting order: why JD and LLM first, not LLB?

The layperson imagines a law school beginning with the four-year Bachelor of Laws (LLB). CUHK's first intake ran the other way — postgraduate programmes were, from the outset, far larger than the undergraduate one.

Per the Faculty's official chronology, when teaching began in September 2006^※, five programmes took their first cohorts simultaneously, with sharply uneven numbers:

The comparison is stark: the first LLB cohort numbered just 48, while the JD alone took 221 and the three LLM streams combined 137. In other words, CUHK's law school started as a postgraduate institution — unusual in Hong Kong legal education, but with clear logic behind it.

The reasons are two. First, the revenue structure: JD and LLM programmes are largely self-financed, covering their own costs through fees, which allowed the School to build scale, staffing and cash flow quickly in the founding period before UGC-funded undergraduate places were fully in place. This became especially visible at the 2008 elevation, when of roughly 1,100 students in the whole School, only 180 were undergraduates while as many as 920 were self-financed postgraduate students^※. Second, the talent structure: the JD targets adult students who already hold a first degree in another discipline and want to switch into law; the LLM targets working legal professionals and allied practitioners. Both can be filled and produce graduates on short cycles, building a new school's reputation and alumni network quickly. The four-year LLB, by contrast, is a slow-growing tree — its first fruit appears only four years after entry.

This "postgraduate first, undergraduate last" starting order is the key to understanding the early graduation timetable at CUHK Law: the first graduates to walk out the door were not undergraduates but JD and LLM students. It also explains why the common remark "first graduates in 2008" is actually a loose formulation — each programme's "first graduation" happened in a different year, as detailed in the next section.

For the specific differences between the LLB and JD pathways — credits, length of study, intended candidates — and how both feed into PCLL qualification, this article does not go into detail; see the comparison table in programs.md.

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# 5. When was the first graduating class? Programme by programme

"When did CUHK Law produce its first graduates?" looks like a simple question but must be answered piece by piece. Because the programmes differ in length and start dates, their first graduation years differ accordingly. Per the Faculty's official chronology:

This table corrects a common misconception. The first to graduate were not undergraduates but the first JD cohort of 2007 (two students) and 58 LLM graduates^※ — a full three years ahead of the first LLB cohort. The first LLB class did not graduate until 2010, with 46 students^※, virtually no attrition from the 48 who entered in 2006. As for research postgraduates (MPhil/PhD), the first four were admitted in 2007^※, graduating in 2010.

If one insists on a single emblematic "first graduation" year, the more precise formulation is: 2007 produced the School's earliest taught-postgraduate graduates; 2009 produced the first cohort to complete professional training and qualify for practice; and 2010 completed the undergraduate LLB leg. Each of the three years has its own weight; taken together they form the full arc from first admissions to fully fledged graduates.

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# 6. 9 November 2006: an inauguration ceremony presided over by the Chief Justice

Two months after teaching began, the School of Law held its formal inauguration, at a conspicuously high level. Per English Wikipedia, the School, together with its first LLB, JD and LLM students, was officially inaugurated on 9 November 2006^※; the ceremony was, according to Chinese Wikipedia and other sources, presided over by the then Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal, the Honourable Mr. Justice Andrew Li^※.

Having the highest judicial officer in Hong Kong preside over a new law school's inauguration carries obvious symbolic weight: it amounted to a public endorsement of this "third law school" by the territory's judiciary. For a new school whose boardroom was still a construction site, the ceremony marked the watershed between "being built" and "being in operation."

Three easily confused dates are worth distinguishing: 2004 was the year of decision and approval (the School was approved), September 2006 was when teaching actually began (five programmes took their first students), and 9 November 2006 was when the inauguration ceremony was held and the School formally presented itself. The three are barely two years apart but correspond to three different events: approval, first classes, and official unveiling.

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# 7. From School to Faculty: the 2008 elevation and PCLL authorisation

If 2004–06 was "from nothing to something," 2008 was "from something to everything" — that year the School accomplished two things that would determine its standing: elevation to faculty status, and acquiring the right to offer the PCLL.

The first was the elevation. Per English Wikipedia, on 1 August 2008, the School of Law was upgraded to a Faculty of Law^※, officially explained as a response to "its expansion in size and development"; with it, the Faculty obtained institutional standing equal to the Arts and Science Faculties, becoming CUHK's eighth faculty^※. As noted earlier, at the time of elevation the Faculty had about 1,100 students (180 undergraduates and 920 self-financed postgraduates) — a considerable size within just two years.

The second, and strategically more significant, was the PCLL. According to CUHK Faculty of Law sources, the first PCLL began in September 2008^※. This made CUHK formally one of three institutions in Hong Kong authorised to offer the PCLL^※ — the other two being HKU and CityU.

Why is PCLL authorisation so critical? Because it directly determines whether graduates can practise locally. As set out above, an LLB or JD alone does not qualify one to practise in Hong Kong; one must complete the PCLL and then practical training to become a solicitor or barrister. A law school without PCLL authorisation would force its local graduates to compete for the limited PCLL places at the other two institutions, or to seek qualification abroad. CUHK obtaining PCLL authorisation just two years after starting its undergraduate programme meant completing the entire chain — degree, professional certificate, and eligibility for practice training — in one stroke, allowing its graduates to compete on equal footing with HKU and CityU in the Hong Kong legal market. This step is what truly made the "third law school" a reality.

Per the Faculty's official website, the first PCLL admitted 76 students in 2008^※, with 72 graduating the following year^※ — an exceptionally low attrition rate, close to full completion. These graduates who left the Graduate Law Centre in 2009 were the first in CUHK Law's history to have completed the full professional training and be directly eligible for the path to practice as solicitors or barristers. From that cohort onward, "CUHK-trained practising lawyers" ceased to be a future-tense idea and became a growing reality in the Hong Kong legal profession year after year.

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# 8. Beyond the PCLL: how the three law schools divide the field

With the route to practice secured, the next question for CUHK Law was how to find its place in a market already occupied by two established law schools. Judging from the founding architecture, the three schools are not simple duplicates; they have gradually settled into a differentiated division of labour.

HKU's Faculty of Law is the oldest, largest and deepest in alumni networks of the three. Since its department was founded in 1969^※, it has long been the principal source of talent for the local judiciary, politics and the Bar, with deep roots. CityU's School of Law, founded as a department in 1987 and elevated in 1993^※, has a solid reputation for practical orientation and professional training. CUHK Law, the youngest, deliberately avoided the well-worn path of "another local common-law school" from the start, placing its bets on differentiation in two areas: an internationalised faculty and global outlook, and the juncture between the common law and the mainland Chinese legal system.

This differentiation was already visible in the first intake's curriculum. Where HKU and CityU were undergraduate-led, CUHK started with the JD and three LLM streams (Common Law, International Economic Law, Chinese Business Law), making postgraduate education for working professionals and career-switchers its main engine. The International Economic Law and Chinese Business Law streams, in particular, mapped directly onto Hong Kong's market demand as a cross-border legal services hub. In short, CUHK's founding strategy was not to fight the two senior schools head-on for local undergraduates, but to open its own lane in the relatively open territory of postgraduate, international and mainland-law education. The three law schools thus moved from a zero-sum contest over numbers to a division of labour in which each plays to its strengths.

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# 9. Four deans and "CUHKLAW20": two decades of the Faculty

Since the 2008 elevation, the Faculty of Law has had four deans, with clear succession. Per English Wikipedia and CUHK Communications and Public Relations Office sources:

One continuity is striking: Wolff, Dean from 2019 to 2024, was the very founding member who had worked through the night in the "eight offices beside a construction site"; and Chao Xi, who took over in 2024, has taught at the Faculty since 2007, the year after teaching began. In other words, the last two deans both rose from within the founding period — in a faculty only two decades old, that constitutes a rare continuity of institutional memory.

In 2026, the Faculty marks its twentieth anniversary, commemorated officially under the banner "CUHKLAW20"^※. Twenty years is also exactly the time it took for the Faculty to grow from "eight offices beside a construction site" into a law school with a place in international rankings.

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# 10. Positioning: between the common law and Chinese law

From the outset, CUHK Law chose a co-ordinate distinct from HKU and CityU: not content to be merely another local common-law school, it aims to serve as "a bridge between the common law and the mainland Chinese legal system." Per the Faculty's page on the CUHK website, its stated mission is:

"to bring the common law and Chinese law systems together with other legal traditions to promote justice and safeguard the rule of law." (Faculty of Law, CUHK)^※

This positioning rests on several observable institutional pillars. The first is an internationalised faculty: per the Faculty's website, its staff come from more than 20 different jurisdictions^※; in 2018, Times Higher Education (THE) ranked CUHK Law first in the world for "international outlook"^※. The second is its department-less structure: unlike many law schools organised into departments by subject, CUHK Law operates as a single integrated unit across undergraduate, postgraduate and professional-certificate levels. The third is a curriculum balancing Chinese law and international law: from the first intake, it simultaneously offered three LLM streams — Common Law, International Economic Law and Chinese Business Law — making clear that mainland law and international economic law were to be distinctive features from the start.

The department-less structure deserves an extra word, because it is more than an administrative arrangement — it reflects a foundational choice. In most long-established law schools, subjects are divided into departments of public law, private law, commercial law, international law and so on, with research and teaching resources pooled along departmental lines; the benefit is depth, the cost is silos and turf. CUHK Law chose from the beginning to operate as one integrated faculty with no departments, letting a small young team organise courses and research flexibly across fields — under the founding conditions of a "ten-person team and eight offices," this was almost the only workable structure, and it has since been retained as an institutional feature. It echoes CUHK's overall three-layer governance — faculties responsible for academics, colleges for whole-person education, and the Graduate School for research postgraduate coordination — yet the Faculty's small-and-integrated nature gives it a compactness that the larger faculties do not have.

Looking back over a longer time horizon, the bets placed in the founding period have largely paid off. The internationalised faculty and the "international outlook" recognition have given this young school visibility out of proportion to its age; the differentiation strategy built on postgraduate programmes and mainland law has let it hold its ground in enrolment and identity between the cracks of HKU and CityU. The specific rankings and research data behind these outcomes are not expanded upon here — what this article set out to preserve is the origin story behind them, the passage "from construction site to faculty."

It should be noted that this article focuses on the founding history and positioning, and does not expand on the Faculty's rankings or research performance (such as the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) results, QS law-subject rankings, or mooting competition results); those, along with detailed biographies of the four deans, belong to the in-depth Faculty of Law file in faculties.md. The credit structures, practice-training durations and double-degree arrangements for the LLB/JD/PCLL are in programs.md. The division of labour among the three articles: this one answers "how it came to be"; faculties answers "what it looks like now"; programs answers "how the programmes work."

Back to the two questions with which we began. Why did Hong Kong not get a third law school until 2004? Because the admissions-to-practice system was heavily regulated, the PCLL had long been offered by only two institutions, and the barriers to entry for a new school were extremely high; it was only when talent demand rose in the 2000s and UGC planning loosened that the opportunity matured. Could a law school genuinely be built in a year? CUHK answered yes from the "eight offices beside a construction site" — approved in 2004, teaching in 2006, elevated and PCLL-authorised in 2008; within four years, a school started from nothing had grown into an unavoidable third pole on Hong Kong's legal-education map. And that once dust-choked Central construction site is today the home of its most vital postgraduate classrooms.

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