Home Points to Note for Electronic Submission of Information
< Back

Submission of Electronic Information under the Legal Aid Ordinance

When information under the Legal Aid Ordinance is submitted in form of electronic records by virtue of the Electronic Transactions Ordinance (ETO), the following points should be noted:

SCOPE OF EXEMPTION/DISAPPLICATION

Electronic information under the Legal Aid Ordinance will not be accepted if the relevant provisions of the Ordinance fall within the scope of exemption or disapplication made by virtue of -

(a) Schedule 1 of the ETO on matters excluded from the application of sections 5-8 of the ETO under section 3 of the ETO such as wills, statutory declarations, etc;
(b) Schedule 2 of the ETO on proceedings excluded from the application of sections 5-8 of the ETO under section 13(1) of the ETO; and
(c) Sections 15 and 16 of the ETO.

By its nature, legal aid applications in the form of electronic records will not be accepted. However, you may submit pre-application information electronically through our Legal Aid Electronic Services Portal (LAESP).

GENERAL FORMAT, MANNER AND PROCEDURE

For submission of electronic information under the Legal Aid Ordinance by virtue of the ETO, the format, manner and procedure specified below shall be adopted:

Language

  1. Electronic records which contain English characters only shall be encoded in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000, ISO/IEC 10646:2003 with Amendment 1 or ISO/IEC 10646:2011.
  2. Electronic records which contain Chinese characters shall be coded as follows:-
    (a) Chinese and English characters shall be coded in ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000, and the set of Chinese characters is restricted to the Chinese characters within the Chinese-Japanese-Korean (CJK) Unified Ideographs defined in ISO/IEC 10646-1:2000 or the characters included in the Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set – 2001 (HKSCS-2001); or
    (b) Chinese and English characters shall be coded in ISO/IEC 10646:2003 with Amendment 1, and the set of Chinese characters is restricted to the Chinese characters within the CJK Unified Ideographs defined in ISO/IEC 10646:2003 with Amendment 1 or the characters included in HKSCS-2004; or
    (c) Chinese and English characters shall be coded in ISO/IEC 10646:2011, and the set of Chinese characters is restricted to the Chinese characters within the CJK Unified Ideographs defined in ISO/IEC 10646:2011.

Manner of Delivery of Electronic Records

  1. Where electronic records are compressed, the following compression standards shall be followed:-
    (a) Zip file (.zip);
    (b) GNU zip file (.gz);
    (c) 7-Zip file (.7z); or
    (d) RAR file (.rar).
  2. Electronic records shall be sent as follows:-
    (a) through electronic mail conforming to:-
    1. Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol over Transport Layer Security (SMTP over TLS);
    2. Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (MIME) or Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (S/MIME) standard; and
    3. size not exceeding 25 MB;
    (b) in the form of CD-ROM in ISO 9660 format;
    (c) in the form of DVD-ROM in ISO/IEC 13346:1995 format;
    (d) in the form of USB Mass Storage Device in FAT format; or
    (e) in electronic-form to be uploaded via LAESP.

File format

  1. An electronic record and all electronic records contained in it shall be given, served and presented in the following file format standards:-

    File Format Standard(s)
    (a) Text Format Plain text format (TXT)
    (b) Formatted Document File Format Microsoft Rich Text Format (RTF);
    Hypertext Mark Up Language (HTML);
    Extensible Markup Language (XML);
    JavaScript Object Notation (JSON);
    Microsoft Word format (.doc);
    ISO/IEC 29500-1 format (.docx); or
    OpenOffice.org format (.odt)
    (c) Presentation File Format Microsoft PowerPoint format (.ppt);
    ISO/IEC 29500-1 format (.pptx); or
    OpenOffice.org format (.odp)
    (d) Spreadsheet File Format Microsoft Excel format (.xls);
    ISO/IEC 29500-1 format (.xlsx); or
    OpenOffice.org format (.ods)
    (e) Portable Document Format Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF); or
    PDF/A format
    (f) Graphics or Image Format Encapsulated PostScript Files (EPSF);
    Tag Image File Format (TIFF);
    Portable Network Graphics (PNG);
    Graphics Interchange Format (GIF); or
    Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG)
    (g) Computer Aided Design Drawings Format Autodesk Drawing Exchange Format (DXF)
    (h) Electronic Form Format Electronic-form format downloaded from LAESP (VXF)

Digital signature

  1. An electronic record given, presented or served under a statutory provision must be signed with a digital signature if:-
    (a) the provision expressly requires the signature of a person; or
    (b) the provision requires the submission to be made in a specified form and the specified form has a signature requirement.
  2. When a digital signature is used, it shall be attached to an electronic record in accordance with the following standards:-
    (a) Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension (S/MIME) standard;
    (b) Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS #7);
    (c) PDF v1.5/1.6/1.7 (ISO 32000-1) or v2.0 (ISO 32000-2:2017); or
    (d) XML Signature Syntax and Processing standard.
  3. For an electronic record which comprises multiple electronic records and which has to be signed, each individual record shall be separately signed digitally.

Others

  1. Electronic records given, presented or served shall not contain any computer instructions, including but not limited to:-
    (a) computer viruses; and
    (b) macros, scripts and fields that depend on the execution environment and the execution of which will cause changes to the electronic record itself or the information system displaying the electronic record.
  2. For submission of Government forms to Government, the Electronic Government Forms (in the form of a software) should be used to generate electronic records and, if required, to make digital signatures. The format of individual supporting document, if any, attached in an electronic record should comply with all the relevant requirements specified above.

E-MAIL ADDRESS

Except for information that must be submitted through LAESP, submission of other information under the Legal Aid Ordinance in form of electronic records by virtue of the ETO can be made to ladinfo@lad.gov.hk