Gillian Lam and Jennifer Wu, Associates

We are really pleased that our firm supports and promotes pro bono work globally. It is part of who we are. With a global reach, we are able to work on multi-jurisdictional projects together on pro bono basis. For example, the Legal Atlas for Street Children project – the Baker McKenzie team spent over 8,000 hours on the questions of police round ups, legal identification and status offences of street children around the globe, receiving the PILnet Award for Exemplary Partnership in the Public Interest (see Pilnet’s announcement  and our video submission). We also worked with our corporate clients on these projects, thereby influencing private sector input to the cause of justice for the world’s most vulnerable children.

Recently, we advised a local NGO in Hong Kong in respect of their advocacy of a Hong Kong draft bill which aims to prohibit physical and humiliating punishment (PHP) against children in Hong Kong. We provided both legislative and non-legislative practical suggestions as well as a comparative analysis of the laws regulating PHP across numerous jurisdictions. Our team comprised of lawyers in Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore and the UK, and have altogether dedicated over 1,300 hours on the project, which took 16 months to complete – This is a clear demonstration of our lawyers’ commitment and dedication to pro bono projects locally and globally. As a result of such contribution, our firm and a number of our lawyers are recipients of the Special Award and Individual Awards from the Law Society of Hong Kong.

Apart from the availabilities of many pro bono projects and the external recognition of our firm’s and individual efforts, the fact that multiple offices within Baker McKenzie would count lawyers’ contribution towards approved pro bono projects as billable hours (up to a certain hours) also gives extra impetus to individual lawyers to contribute time to the projects and creates a good culture of giving.

Working on pro bono projects at Baker McKenzie with like-minded colleagues and clients is a very meaningful way of building rapport with our colleagues and clients outside of our daily routine. It also widens our horizon in terms of jurisdictions and areas of law which we would not normally look into as commercial lawyers. It is also a wonderful way to give back to the society with our skill-sets.  We would highly recommend our fellow lawyers (existing or future) to participate in such interesting and meaningful projects regularly if possible.

Gillian Lam is a senior associate with our Hong Kong Dispute Resolution Team and Jennifer Wu is an associate with our Hong Kong Tax Team. Both are avid contributors to pro bono work within Baker McKenzie as well as outside of the firm. They both led the PHP project and participated in the Legal Atlas project mentioned above. They are also recipients of “Gold Individual Award” from The Law Society of Hong Kong in 2021.