劉綺雲

English

Ms Winnie Lau Yee-wan is a magistrate in Hong Kong, born in Hong Kong in 1965. She obtained a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of London in 1987 and passed the Common Professional Examination in Law at Manchester Metropolitan University in the United Kingdom in 1995. She passed the Bar Final Examinations in the United Kingdom in 1997, was called to the Utter Bar (Middle Temple) in the United Kingdom the same year, and was called to the Hong Kong Bar in 1998. She has been in private practice since 1999. On 17 September 2012 she was appointed a Permanent Magistrate, by the Chief Executive on the recommendation of the Judicial Officers Recommendation Commission. Lau's academic path moved from science to law: she first obtained a science degree and only then studied and entered the legal profession, an interdisciplinary route uncommon among judicial officers. Having qualified as a barrister in the United Kingdom and then practised in Hong Kong, she is familiar with litigation practice under the common law in both jurisdictions, and later joined the Judiciary as a magistrate. The magistracy is Hong Kong's court of first instance for criminal matters, and magistrates handle a heavy daily caseload. All judges and judicial officers are appointed by the Chief Executive on the independent recommendation of the Judicial Officers Recommendation Commission, under the Basic Law, whose Articles 88 and 92 set out the recommendation mechanism and the criteria for selection. Lau has served in different magistrates' courts and in recent years has chiefly sat at Kowloon City and West Kowloon Magistrates' Courts, hearing employment, theft and various summary cases. Moving from barrister to magistrate requires a shift from advocate to neutral adjudicator, and her path from science to law and to qualification in two jurisdictions reflects the diversity of the sources from which Hong Kong's judicial officers are drawn.