Policy Address
Legal Talents
153. The DoJ will introduce a range of measures to attract and retain top legal talents, such as relaxing the qualification requirements in handling international commercial disputes and clarifying the types of supporting documents required for transactional lawyers. Moreover, the DoJ will regularise the pilot scheme introduced in June last year to allow eligible non-Hong Kong residents to participate in arbitral proceedings in Hong Kong as visitors on a short-term basis, without the need to obtain employment visas beforehand. The scheme will strengthen Hong Kong’s position as an international centre for legal and dispute resolution services in the Asia-Pacific region.
Intellectual Property Talents
154. Fostering the IP manpower capacity of private enterprises is the key to developing Hong Kong into an IP trading centre. Therefore, the IPD will enhance and organise more training courses under the IP Manager Scheme, with a view to assisting SMEs to build up their manpower resources in IP protection, management and commercialisation.
Research Talents
155. In recent years, the Government has been sparing no effort in expanding the I&T talent pool. For example, the Global STEM Professorship Scheme proposed in my Policy Address last year is a huge success. Over 40 distinguished scholars and their research teams from eight economies recruited in the first tranche are gradually arriving Hong Kong. We will continue to implement the Scheme to attract more renowned I&T scholars and their research teams to Hong Kong such that our local universities will scale new heights in I&T research and development activities.
156. To encourage the UGC-funded universities to flexibly deploy resources to nurture more research talents in support of their research activities, the over-enrolment ceiling of UGC-funded research postgraduate (RPg) programme students will be further relaxed from 70% to 100%. Meanwhile, we have already invited the UGC to assess the supply of and demand for UGC-funded RPg places and consider the feasibility of increasing the number of funded places.
