Bay Area urged to upgrade legal talent training
Guangdong province and the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions were urged to allocate more resources into training legal talents, as law professionals and academics from the three regions exchanged views at the Greater Bay Area Rule of Law and Legal Talent Training Forum in Hong Kong on Saturday.
They advised the three regions to focus more on the unique “legal ecosystem” within the GuangdongHong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
The Bay Area’s “legal eco-system” is the most complicated in the country, as it comprises three different legal jurisdictions, law systems and more, experts explained.
Governments should make improving legal education a major priority, said Liu Chunhua, deputy director of the Legal Affairs Department of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong SAR.
Building hardware is easy, but the Bay Area is in dire need of an upgrade of soft power.
“Infrastructural connectivity was relatively easy in the region, but coordination, cooperation, and interaction among different customs areas, currency areas and legal jurisdictions is rather difficult,” he said.
There is no ready-made experience for it as other world-class bay areas, such as New York, Tokyo, and San Francisco, did not face the same challenges, Liu noted. “Only through institutional innovation and full implementation of the ‘one country, two systems’ principle can we tackle these challenges,” he added.
This could translate into opportunities for Hong Kong, argued Maria Tam Wai-chu, deputy director of the Hong Kong SAR Basic Law Committee. The call for more legal talents not only meets the demands of the country and the market, but also the SAR’s potential to cultivate professionals proficient in different legal systems and languages, she added.
Tam said Hong Kong’s legal services turnover contributed 1.04 percent to its GDP in 2016, compared with 2.3 percent for New York and 2.46 percent for London. This means the SAR’s legal services have greater potential to upgrade and expand while seizing opportunities in the Bay Area, she explained.
Guangdong also sees considerable potential in this regard. As the country’s economic powerhouse, the province’s legal talent pool gives it a solid advantage over other places on the Chinese mainland, said Liu Tao, vice-president of Guangdong Lawyers Association.
According to official statistics, Guangdong has the largest number of lawyers in China, accommodating more than 43,000 out of the 380,000 registered lawyers in the country.
There are currently 28,000 undergraduate law students in 35 universities in Guangdong, many of whom are willing to further their studies in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, 80 percent of Hong Kong law practitioners on the mainland are working and residing in the province. Together, they will contribute much to legal development in the region, Liu said.
Zhu Chaohua, deputy director of the Department of Education of Guangdong province, said the “onehour economic circle” is also a “onehour legal education circle”. Law schools should study the legal systems of the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao — especially the latest cross-boundary legal issues arising from the Bay Area development.
Echoing Zhu, Lin Feng, professor at the City University of Hong Kong, said the three regions must deepen their understanding of each other’s legal systems.
The law schools in the Bay Area should form a league of education, said Professor Zou Pingxue from Shenzhen University in his closing remarks. Zou is also director of the Center for the Basic Laws of the Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions of Shenzhen University, a co-organizer of the event.