Media

The Law, Innovation, Technology & Entrepreneurship Lab (LITE Lab) at the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) was presented with the 2022 Legal Innovation in Operations (LIO) Projects award by the Corporate Legal Operations Consortium (CLOC). This is the first time a university programme and an Asia-Pacific initiative has been named a winner of the global CLOC LIO Project Awards.  Attended by around 2,500 legal service professionals, the award ceremony took place at the GLOC Global Institute 2022 in Las Vegas.

“CLOC stands for creativity and innovation, and we are proud to recognize those who demonstrate these values in the relentless pursuit of transformation at scale in legal operations,” said Mike Haven, president of CLOC’s Board of Directors and Head of Legal Operations and Associate General Counsel for Intel.

LITE Lab@HKU received its CLOC LIO Project Award for its “innovation-focused experiential student/client business challenge”.

“It is an honour to have received this award from CLOC for our pioneering win-win initiative to better prepare our next generation of legal professionals in a way that also positively impacts under-resourced organisations and the current legal profession in their legal innovation and technology journeys,“ said LITE Lab’s founding executive director Mr Brian Tang.

“This prestigious award would not have been possible without the trust and genuine collaboration of the general counsel and legal operations leaders at our inaugural project partners FedEx Express, HSBC and Goodman Asia, together with ecosystem partners such as Association of Corporate Counsel – Hong Kong, Clifford Chance, and a growing number of no/low code platforms, to whom we are most grateful. We look forward to exploring further collaborations with other interested parties to expand our impact globally,” Mr Tang said.

Launched in 2019, LITE Lab is an interdisciplinary and experiential programme that fosters law, innovation, technology and entrepreneurship (LITE) at the HKU Faculty of Law. By collaborating with ecosystem partners such as Cyberport, Hong Kong Science & Technology Park, HKU’s iDendron, and Fintech Association of Hong Kong, LITE Lab@HKU curated and introduced a variety of new courses that enable undergraduate and postgraduate students to work with students from six of HKU’s ten faculties and real-world under-resourced project partners to tackle real world legal innovation and technology issues of such tech startups, social entrepreneurs, NGOs and legal departments.

In its inaugural year, LITE Lab’s Lawtech & Regtech Sandbox partnered undergraduate law students with the legal and operations departments of project partners to co-design proof-of-concept legal triage and document automation using no/low code tools to address their real-world painpoints. This win-win university-industry collaboration assisted with the digital transformation journeys of students and legal departments alike, and some of the student prototypes have even been implemented. Details of LITE Lab’s award-winning LIO Project submission can be viewed here.

According to Shogo Osaka, Managing Director Legal of LITE Lab’s project partner FedEx Express North Pacific, “The co-design project with LITE Lab has offered us a great opportunity to transform some legal-tech ideas into reality. Through collaboration with the law students to design and develop proof-of-concept tools, we not only achieved a tangible benefit to automate repetitive tasks but also enjoyed a rewarding experience of supporting the students’ growth.”

CLOC LIO Project Award presenter Farrah Pepper, Chief Legal Innovation Counsel at March McLennan, summed up what many legal professionals say about LITE Lab: "I wish they had that when I was in law school."（video of the award ceremony)

Media contacts:
LITE Lab@HKU: Mr Brian Tang (Email: bwtang@hku.hk)