As previously reported, the year 2016 saw the launch of the Law Faculty’s alumni-based e-mentoring programme, with more than 60 mentors now signed up and the numbers growing as the Faculty passes its 10th year and our alumni start to attain more senior positions in the law.
Alumni are encouraged, please, to continue to sign up for the programme – a reminder that the object is to try to match the career ambitions of the students as closely as possible with the practice and experience of our alumni to enable mentor-mentee relationships to be developed. Through this relationship a measure of support can then be provided in helping students to understand the legal market, to see how best to deploy their talents towards their future career and in appreciating what “professionalism” entails.
The programme operates only as means of introduction: once contact has been made then mentor and mentee are free to communicate in whatever manner they choose. It is designed to give participants full control not only over the extent and means of communication but also over what information they wish to provide, over whether or not alumni will accept a particular mentee and over the number of mentees they will take at any one time, with anonymity preserved until a mentee is accepted. Alumni may join the e-mentoring programme by logging in to the platform at alumni.law.cuhk.edu.hk with alumni ID and password.
Questions have been asked about the relationship with the Distinguished Professional Mentor (DPM) programme run by the Sir TL Yang Society, which provides mentors comprising barristers, solicitors or members of the Judiciary for undergraduate students starting from their second year. The position is that finding a mentor through e-mentoring is available to all Law Faculty students, although we would generally expect the DPM relationship to be sufficient for those to whom it is available.
The Careers Office also continues to provide support to Law Faculty students in choosing a career and finding jobs and assistance with job applications and teaching professionalism. During 2016, in addition to the usual round of internal and external seminars (involving solicitors’ firms, the Hong Kong Bar, in house legal practice, the Department of Justice and New York Bar) as well as CV workshops and career surgeries, this year has also seen the introduction of seminars specifically targeted at LLM students, on the Chinese legal market, and also for PhD students, with an emphasis on roles in academia and NGO’s locally and worldwide. More recently we have introduced a digest sent weekly to all Law Faculty students by email reporting on events in the world of legal business, which will continue throughout the main recruiting season as a means of keeping those attending interviews up-to-date on current developments.
Finally, it is proposed during 2017 to bring an additional focus upon law-related careers (such as in compliance and investigations) and in-house opportunities, particularly enhanced through relationships with alumni and the Hong Kong Corporate Counsel Association.
There remain challenges for the future, in addition to that caused by the relatively competitive market for legal jobs in Hong Kong. These include lack of a clearing house in Hong Kong for internships and training contracts, which in particular makes identifying opportunities within smaller firms and chambers quite difficult, the almost universal requirement for Mandarin language skills among the international firms, cultural issues for local Hong Kong students without experience abroad in applying successfully for positions with international firms as well as the sometimes uncertain career path within smaller law firms. All of these are being addressed and will continue to be the subject of our efforts to provide the best career support service that we can in the forthcoming year.
Paul Mitchard
Faculty of Law Careers Director