Rate My Professor Mimi Zou

Professor Mimi Zou serves as Honorary Professor in the School of Law and Justice at the University of Newcastle. She is concurrently Head of School, Private and Commercial Law, and Professor in the Faculty of Law & Justice at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). A globally recognized scholar in law and technology, her research examines private and commercial law issues arising from artificial intelligence, the regulation of emerging technologies, social media regulation, Chinese law, AI applications in legal services, and technology policy and geo-politics. Admitted as a solicitor in New South Wales and called to the Bar in England and Wales, Zou is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law and actively collaborates with industry, government, and civil society to promote responsible AI and ethical technology practices.

Zou earned her Bachelor of Economics and Social Sciences (University Medal and First Class Honours) and Bachelor of Laws (First Class Honours) from the University of Sydney, followed by a Bachelor of Civil Law (Distinction) and DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford on Commonwealth and Oxford-Australia Scholarships. Her distinguished career encompasses senior academic appointments, including Chair in Commercial Law at the University of Exeter and the inaugural Fellowship in Chinese Law at Oxford, where she established the university's first lawtech lab and co-led an AI spinout venture. She has held visiting and honorary positions at institutions such as Oxford, Columbia University, University of Zurich, and Peking University. Zou's accolades include the British Academy Talent Development Award (2021, first legal scholar recipient), Global Australian Award for Technology (2024), Flos Greig Trailblazer Award (2025), Association for Asian Studies-Luce Foundation Award, International Association of Labour Law Journals Marco Biagi Award for Best Paper, University Medal (Sydney), and Walter Reid Memorial Prize for Economics and Law. Her influential publications feature editorship of The Cambridge Handbook of Generative AI and the Law (2025, with Ebers and Poncibò), Contracting and Contract Law in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (2022), Chinese Contract Law and the 2020 Civil Code (2020), and An Introduction to Chinese Contract Law (2018), alongside articles such as 'Resolving Wrongs in Algorithmic Contracting: Applications of the Doctrines of Unconscionability' (2025, UNSW Law Journal), 'Code, and other laws of blockchain' (2020, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies), and 'Migrants at Work: Immigration and Vulnerability in Labour Law' (2016, Industrial Law Journal). She advises the UK Ministry of Justice and Judiciary on emerging technologies, serves on the LawtechUK Panel, and contributes to international taskforces including G7, World Economic Forum, World Bank, and UNIDROIT. Currently co-editing a statutory commentary on the EU AI Act, Zou shapes global discourse on technology governance.