Hong Kong’s connectivity and talent pool could help facilitate international legal and economic collaboration, the justice minister and an expert have said, as they joined representatives from more than 25 jurisdictions this week at an annual forum in the city.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of the five-day Hong Kong Legal Week forum on Monday, Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok said this year’s theme, “linking laws, bridging worlds”, emphasised Hong Kong’s role in connecting various economies and legal systems through global legal exchange and collaboration.
“With our strong legal foundation and international connectivity, Hong Kong is dedicated to serving as a superconnector and capacity building hub, so as to facilitate legal and economic collaboration across the region and beyond,” Lam said.
Organised by Hong Kong’s Department of Justice annually, the Hong Kong Legal Week forum this year comprises four different summits during the five-day conference period, encompassing topics from laws on the digital economy to the 28th anniversary of the Basic Law.
One of the events was a summit co-organised with the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law while another, a symposium, was organised with The Hague Conference on Private International Law. Both bodies are international organisations that work to make laws governing private transactions and disputes more similar across borders.
Lam also mentioned in his speech that Hong Kong had implemented a number of conventions and model rules from the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law to facilitate global trade, while the city’s coming legal amendments on laws governing the digitisation of business-to-business trade would also reference the organisation’s model law.