Now in its fourth year, whilst remaining alert to the ever-changing demands of the recruitment market and open to new ideas, I feel that the Careers Office has now completed its development stage and that we are now moving from catch-up into a more mature phase in trying to tailor our service to the more specific needs of our students. In this respect the challenges that have presented themselves have principally been: (1) the need to direct students to the law firms and chambers most likely to recruit them, in the absence of a clearing house in Hong Kong for these applications; (2) giving targeted help to those applying to the higher-end law firms with their increasingly sophisticated application requirements and interviewing techniques and (3) finding ways to help the (mainly younger) students develop a greater level of self-confidence and interpersonal and professional skills in advance of internship and mini-pupillage interviews.
This latter issue is one more often than not affecting Hong Kong and mainland educated students as compared to those who have received a western-style education outside Hong Kong or in international schools here. This appears to be partly influenced by the culture within the Hong Kong primary and secondary education system where seemingly students have been traditionally discouraged from actively questioning and challenging and given insufficient encouragement to take leadership roles – which after all is what clients generally expect from their lawyer. One result of this is that some, mainly LLB, students give the appearance of lacking ambition and often do not fulfill their potential, many of them not even seeking Careers Office guidance or attending careers seminars and other events.
In this respect our alumni and DPM mentoring programmes are crucial in providing guidance and support to our students and I thank those of you who have signed up for these programmes and encourage those of you who have not yet done so to please register. The DPMs are generally more senior lawyers to whom are allocated one or more LLB students. If you would like to sign up as a DPM then please contact Mr. Richard MORRIS at law.alumni@cuhk.edu.hk. Mentorship via the alumni programme is open to all and can be accessed by logging in to the platform at alumni.law.cuhk.edu.hk with alumni ID and password. To those who have already done so, once again, a big “thank you” for offering your time for the benefit of our students.
Paul MITCHARD
Director of Career Planning and Professionalism