嚴舜儀

English

Ada Yim Shun-yee (born 1966 in Hong Kong) is a District Judge. She obtained an LL.B. from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom in 1988 and a Master of Laws from the University of New South Wales in Australia in 1994. She was called to the Bar in England and in Hong Kong in 1989 and practised in private practice from 1990. She was appointed a Magistrate with effect from 2 July 2002, later becoming a Principal Magistrate, and on 12 April 2024 she was appointed a District Judge on the recommendation of the Judicial Officers Recommendation Commission. Holding both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in law and qualified at the Bar in two jurisdictions, Judge Yim moved from private practice to the magistracy and was later promoted to Principal Magistrate, serving in the magistracy for more than two decades and hearing a large volume of criminal cases, and also sat as a Deputy District Judge hearing riot cases arising from the 2019 events. After her appointment as a District Judge in 2024 she has continued to hear serious criminal cases, including phone-fraud cases, and has stressed in sentencing the need to send a deterrent message to society. The magistracy handles the great majority of criminal cases in Hong Kong and is the first tier of the criminal justice system, while in the District Court civil claims generally range from HK$75,000 to HK$3 million and the maximum sentence is seven years' imprisonment.