Ferdinand Loo Wins 2026 Kathi Pugh Award for Pro Bono Service

Ferdinand Loo is the recipient of Morrison Foerster’s thirteenth annual Kathi Pugh Award for Pro Bono Service. An M&A/PE associate in the firm’s Hong Kong office, Ferdinand is being recognized for his outstanding leadership of the firm’s contributions to the work of Justice Centre Hong Kong, recently renamed Asylum Services and Knowledge, or ASK. He is the first member of MoFo’s Asia offices to win this award.

Ferdinand leads MoFo’s pro bono efforts with ASK to provide holistic and continual immigration detention support to immigrants and asylum seekers in Hong Kong. Some of Ferdinand’s key contributions to ASK include helping to develop a series of immigration detention self-help toolkits, delivering training workshops for fellow practitioners and the refugee community, and coordinating legal visits to detainees to support their immigration claims. Ferdinand consistently recruits his fellow lawyers to join in this work and has personally contributed more than a quarter of all MoFo hours in the five years of the firm’s work with ASK.

On top of Ferdinand’s commitment to immigration detention work, he has also been centrally involved in various other pro bono projects around Hong Kong. He has partnered with PILnet to conduct legal health checks for numerous local charitable organizations, designed a refugee training program with a refugee support group, and advises three other local charitable organizations on a wide range of corporate and commercial matters—including negotiating collaboration agreements and leases, applying for charitable tax exemption status, and deregistering Hong Kong entities.

This award is one of many pro bono accolades Ferdinand has earned. His tireless efforts and dedication to pro bono work have been recognized by the Hong Kong Law Society: Ferdinand is the recipient of the Young Lawyer Award in 2024 (for having dedicated the most hours to pro bono work among all junior lawyers in Hong Kong) and the Gold Pro Bono Award in 2023, 2024, and 2025.

As the 2026 winner of the Kathi Pugh Award, Ferdinand may direct $10,000 to a nonprofit legal services organization that improves access to justice, funded by the Firm and the Morrison Foerster Foundation. He has chosen ASK as the recipient.

The Kathi Pugh Award for Pro Bono Service was established by MoFo in 2013, when Kathi Pugh retired after two decades of running the firm’s pro bono program. It recognizes the values, enthusiasm, and compassion that Kathi brought to the pro bono program and celebrates the remarkable ways that lawyers like Ferdinand proudly carry out Kathi’s pro bono legacy. Past award winners include Robert Paris, Chelsea Kehrer, Andrew Kissner, Camila Tapernoux, Chris Gloria, Tushna Gamadia, Mercedes Samavi, Adam Hunt, Christian Andreu-von Euw, Ruth Borenstein, Natalie Fleming Nolen, and Fredo Silva.