Finding for What Matters Most
Finding for What Matters Most
Cho Long Kiu Natalie’s Story
HKU Business School / Faculty of Law
BBA(Law)&LLB
“I aspire to create values, not just for myself, but also others,” said Natalie, a third-year BBA Law student who recently pioneered her social enterprise project – Legal Access.
Participating in a student observer programme held by the Home Affairs Department (HAD) in her second year of study, Natalie got an opportunity to shadow duty lawyers who offer preliminary advice to legal aid applicants with all sorts of needs ranging from pipe leakages to financial disputes. She soon found out that a myriad of grassroot citizens are in dearth of affordable legal services. Despite the presence of legal aid service, not all the cases can be covered whereas not all the needs are well-addressed. In most cases, members of public still have to queue up for months after filing their cases to the HAD.
“I aspire to create values, not just for myself, but also others.”
Realising that law – the subject she has been studying for years – is indeed highly accessible among the public, Natalie is eager to start a social enterprise project tailormade for the underprivileged group. Teaming up with three of her friends, she brought her initial project to the HSUHK x SCMP Entrepreneurship Challenge Competition in which she reaped valuable feedback from her mentor. She was reminded that her citizen-based project might not be sustainable and scalable due to narrow profit margins; and was advised to adopt a commercial operation mode.
After a few months of adjustment and refinement, her idea took off and Legal Access was born eventually. This time, Natalie changed her targets to start-ups and small-and-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) who share similar struggles – the unaffordability of legal service. Hence, Legal Access capitalises on automation technology and builds a legal database, in which clients can have access to varied templates for legal documents. To further ease clients’ legal enquiries, Legal Access also offers detailed explanations on the rationale on each term and condition in a contract. For clients with more complicated needs, the company provides one-to-one matching services between the SMEs and individual lawyers to reduce logistics and administrative costs for both parties.
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“If the project can scale up to a mature and sustainable stage, I hope to put more resources in expanding the legal database to civil cases as well to serve the marginalised.”
“If the project can scale up to a mature and sustainable stage, I hope to put more resources in expanding the legal database to civil cases as well to serve the marginalised like the divorced.” Natalie’s strong determination to reinvest her profits for social mission indeed won recognition from the 7th Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition – in which her team was awarded with a first runner-up prize.
Running a social enterprise while studying a full-time undergraduate programme is not thornless. Both she and her team confronted significant difficulty in balancing different commitments. However, Natalie truly believes her five years of university life shall never be limited to academic pursuit in legal and/or business field only. Being a lawyer upon finishing a legal degree may seem orthodox to most. Nonetheless, to Natalie, it is more about building a meaningful side hussle that enables her to find her passion and strength, and at the same time, create values and impact for others.
Written by:
Carmen Ng
Year 4, Faculty of Social Sciences
January 2022