General Course Information
1.1 Course details
| Course code: | LLAW6313 / JDOC6313 |
| Course name: | Law as Data |
| Programme offered under: | LLM Programme / JD Programme |
| Semester: | First |
| Prerequisites / Co-requisites: | No |
| Credit point value: | 9 credit / 6 credits |
1.2 Course description
What counts as legal data has expanded dramatically with advances in artificial intelligence. Beyond traditional legal texts, audio, images, and video can now be leveraged to generate new insights, especially with the rise of multimodal reasoning models. Law as Data equips students with essential tools for computational legal research, spanning classic computational methods to recent advances in large language models and AI agents. Students will learn these tools, engage with recent research that applies them, and design and develop their own research ideas using them. The course is primarily designed for doctoral students pursuing research in computational law and computational social science. LLM and JD students with a strong interest in legal AI research are also welcome.
1.3 Course teachers
| Name | E-mail address | Office | Consultation | |
| Course convenor | Benjamin Chen | benched@hku.hk | CCT 512 | By email |
| Course convenor | Yu Fan | yufn@hku.hk | CCT 502 | By email |
Learning Outcomes
2.1 Course Learning Outcomes (CLOs) for this course
To be advised by the course convenor.
2.2 LLM and JD Programme Learning Outcomes (PLOs)
Please refer to the following link:
LLM – https://course.law.hku.hk/llm-plo/
JD – https://course.law.hku.hk/jd-plo/
2.3 Programme Learning Outcomes to be achieved in this course
| PLO A | PLO B | PLO C | PLO D | PLO E | PLO F | |
| CLO 1 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| CLO 2 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| CLO 3 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| CLO 4 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Assessment(s)
3.1 Assessment Summary
| Assessment task | Weighting | Feedback method* | Course learning outcomes |
| To be advised | 100% | 1, 2, 3, 4 |
| *Feedback method (to be determined by course teacher) | |
| 1 | A general course report to be disseminated through Moodle |
| 2 | Individual feedback to be disseminated by email / through Moodle |
| 3 | Individual review meeting upon appointment |
| 4 | Group review meeting |
| 5 | In-class verbal feedback |
3.2 Assessment Detail
To be advised by course convenor(s).
3.3 Grading Criteria
Please refer to the following link: https://www.law.hku.hk/_files/law_programme_grade_descriptors.pdf
Learning Activities
4.1 Learning Activity Plan
| Seminar: | 3 hours / week for 12 teaching weeks |
| Private study time: | 9.5 hours / week for 12 teaching weeks |
Remarks: the normative student study load per credit unit is 25 ± 5 hours (ie. 150 ± 30 hours for a 6-credit course), which includes all learning activities and experiences within and outside of classroom, and any assessment task and examinations and associated preparations.
4.2 Details of Learning Activities
To be advised by course convenor(s).
Learning Resources
5.1 Resources
| Reading materials: | Reading materials are posted on Moodle |
| Core reading list: | TBA |
| Recommended reading list: | TBA |
5.2 Links
Please refer to the following link: http://www.law.hku.hk/course/learning-resources/