Experimental Course: Coding for Lawyers

The University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law introduces an experimental course “Coding for Lawyers” for our Year 2 LLB or above, JD, LLM, MCL, and PhD students in Year 2025-26!  In the era of big data and AI, this intensive course provides law students with no prior experience an accessible primer on classical programming and machine learning using Python.

💡 What You’ll Learn:

✔ Core programming principles (variables, data types, loops, conditionals, functions) and computational logic.

✔ Utilize the Python programming language to create small, functional scripts.

✔ Ideate how computer programmes can be used to automate or solve routine legal tasks.

✔ Understand basic principles of machine learning (train-test split, supervised and unsupervised learning, evaluation metrics)

Class schedule

1. Thursday, 18 September 2025 (Evening), 7-9pm
Session 0: Introductory Lecture: How Machines Learn
Session 1: Data Types, Expressions and Variables

2. Saturday, 20 September 2025 (Morning), 9am-12pm
Session 1: Data Types, Expressions and Variables (cont)
Session 2: Boolean Logic and Decision Making

3. Monday, 22 September 2025 (Evening), 7-9pm
Session 3: Loops and Repetition

4. Wednesday, 24 September 2025 (Evening), 7-9pm Re-scheduled to Sunday, September 28, 9am-12pm due to typhoon
Session 4: Data Structures – Lists

5. Saturday, 27 September 2025 (Morning), 9am-12pm Re-scheduled to Wednesday, October 1, 3:30-5:30pm
Session 5: Data Structures – Dictionaries

6. Thursday, 2 October 2025 (Evening), 7-9pm
Session 6: Functions and Code Reusability

7. Saturday, 4 October 2025 (Morning), 9am-12pm
Session 7: Legal Predictions and Machine Learning

8. Thursday, 9 October 2025 (Evening), 7-8pm
Session 8: Review
Session 9: Conclusions

9. Saturday, 11 October 2025 (Morning), 9-11am
Examination

due to the disruption caused by the typhoon, Wednesday’s class (lists) is moved to Sunday, from 9 to 12, and Saturday’s class (dictionaries) is moved to next Wednesday, from 7 to 9 p.m.

Lecturers:
Professor Daniel Seng (National University of Singapore Faculty of Law)
Professor Benjamin Chen (HKU Faculty of Law)

Limited to 50 sign-ups!

Deadline to apply: September  15, 2025.  Registration fee: HK$ 200 (non-refundable).  Payment instructions will be sent to eligible students who have registered.

This course is non-credit bearing and is weighted at 50% on coursework and 50% on examination.  The exam will be held on October 11, 2025.  Students who have passed the examination will be awarded a Certificate of Completion.  Minimum attendance of at least 12 hours of class time (excluding review and exam).

✨ Sign up for the course now! 👉 https://forms.office.com/r/qGYj5VRt1z

For inquiries, please contact Ms. Grace Chan at mcgrace@hku.hk.