Abstract

Postgraduate Certificate of Laws (PCLL) is an intensive one-year full-time professional legal qualification programme in Hong Kong. It is a year of skill-focused training aimed at preparing law graduates (LLB or JD graduates) to practice either as a barrister or solicitor in Hong Kong.

At CUHK, PCLL courses have long integrated active learning activities such as role-play and simulation to inspire interest and encourage deep learning. Students are placed in a professional context simulating their actual future work environment. They are encouraged to participate in activities such as client presentations, drafting, negotiation and interviews. These hands-on activities aim to prepare our law students to transit to their new role as legal practitioners.

To further improve on existing learning activities of the PCLL curriculum, the implementation of the “Standardized Client Initiative” to bring it in line with other leading legal education providers around the world is proposed. This ground breaking initiative has already been adopted in recent years in many UK, US universities and by The University of Hong Kong for Professional Legal Education. This is to be introduced to the CUHK PCLL program in the Corporate Finance course, in which the project supervisor acts as the Course Leader.

Standardized clients are lay people who are trained to act as if they are law firm clients for the purposes of teaching and learning. This methodology allows students to have valuable interaction with trained clients in a powerful simulation. Students could work on a range of client-facing skills that would be crucial to their success as future legal practitioners.

Simulation-based learning and role-play practical exercise allow students to study legal rules and theories in the context of the commercial world. Students start envisaging themselves as a legal practitioners and think of commercially practicable solutions and how best to meet the expectations of hypothetical clients. The objective of learning activities involving standardized client and simulation is to motivate students to study, not just for examinations, but adequately equip themselves with relevant skills and experience for their future career ahead.