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SCMP Reporter

When Elsie Leung Oi-sie left Sacred Heart Canossian College at the age of 18, she had no visions of walking into a highly paid job. Instead, her widowed mother had to find $10,000 to pay the master of a legal firm so she could begin five years' work as an articled solicitor's clerk.

 'Well, I got pocket money,' chuckles the Secretary for Justice, recalling her $100 a month. By the time she passed her solicitor's qualifying examinations in 1967, she was earning $350.

 Today, legal trainees make $33,355 when they start work in the imposing offices of the Department of Justice.

 It is all very different from the old system which saw optimistic youngsters hoping for a legal career enter five-year agreements which virtually bound them to one master.

 But it was not all bad, Ms Leung insists, remembering doing company ownership searches, checking if documents were correctly stamped and other basic requirements in the front-line ranks of the legal industry.

 She learned. She qualified. In 1988, when she passed her law course at the University of Hong Kong after part-time studies, she had for years been a notary public, a JP and a partner in her firm.

 How did a solicitor with little experience of the tough, bruising world of litigation and no-nonsense battles of the senior criminal courts come to be selected as head of the Government's legal arm?  When Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa named her as his future Secretary for Justice in April, even other lawyers wondered about her suitability. Elsie who?  To be fair, it was a good question. Although Ms Leung, 57, had been active for many years in social fields ranging from youth support work to women's rights to equal opportunities, her name was hardly headline material.

 Until she decided to back him and give him legal advice during his campaign for selection as Chief Executive, she had never met Mr Tung.

 She recalls: 'I was most impressed by his determination to do what was best for Hong Kong. One day, he sought my opinion on a particularly difficult matter. I told him there were several options, and the most difficult to achieve was the best.' Mr Tung's reply was: 'We go for the best.'  That response increased her regard for Mr Tung. It was obviously reciprocated; her appointment to the retitled job was one of his first announcements.

 It was in many ways historic. There had never been a woman attorney-general and Hong Kong's top legal officer had never been Chinese. It was extremely rare for a lawyer without extensive courtroom skills or government experience to be selected for the job.

 After her first month in the chair, despite court challenges to the entire new system of government, enormous legal wrangles over child illegal immigration and constant worries by both lawyers and lay observers about potential erosion of the rule of law, Ms Leung has taken a liking to the job.

 The third-generation Hong Konger whose ancestors came from Guangdong felt 'duty bound' to accept the job. If other lawyers were surprised at the choice, well, she smiles, so was she.

 In the past, she's had many requests to serve the public, as equal opportunities commissioner and urban councillor. Instead, she had chosen to do her bit in other ways, from service on the Inland Revenue Board of Review to the Police Complaints Council to the Federation of Women. She says she also liked her role on the Social Welfare Advisory Committee and on Baptist University's council.

 Ms Leung has, in fact, been involved in an understated but active role in China relations for more than a decade.

 All her working life, she was with one firm, P. H. Sin and Company. When it amalgamated with Iu, Lai and Li in 1994, she was a senior partner.

 Since 1986, she had been an attesting officer registered with the Chinese Ministry of Justice, a role that gave her valuable insights into the way justice, law, courts and the entire legal system operate in China.

 Those duties impressed someone in Guangzhou; in 1989 she was appointed a Hong Kong delegate on the rarely noticed but vital Provincial People's Congress of Guangdong, a key link in Hong Kong's development with China.

 Four years later, she was a delegate to the National People's Congress and appointed a Hong Kong and Macau affairs adviser.

 As the Preliminary Working Committee worked through the problems of the transition, Ms Leung found herself deeply involved in researching legal aspects, probing all potential snags.

 'Very educational,' she reflects. 'We had to examine and report on legal issues so they could be understood by both Hong Kong and Chinese members. We were not following the Chinese legal system, no, not at all, but trying to understand it, trying to deal with matters that were never envisaged in the Basic Law.

 'That included the formation of the Provisional Legislative Council, which of course was not dealt with in the Basic Law because its existence was never envisaged when the Basic Law was promulgated. It came into being because the legislative through-train was derailed.

 'So it was a doctrine of necessity, where there was no machinery for the Government to function, to set things in order for the election to be held before June 30 next year.'  Her first task, she maintains, is to strengthen her department, which, with 300 qualified lawyers, is at peak strength. Numerically, perhaps, but what of the charges made by many, including the police, that government lawyers are too young and inexperienced to surge confidently into court and confront legal heavyweights.

 Education, in-service training, dedication and experience are all being used to try to improve the performances of half her qualified legal staff who make up the prosecution service, she says. Meanwhile, the department will continue to brief out important cases to local barristers and even imported British QCs.

 On the rule of law, she's adamant. It will remain. 'What's the rule of law?' she demands. 'Well, it's ensured by the system. And the system will not change. Judges, for instance, can't be removed simply because they make a decision the Government doesn't like. There are safeguards. It's prescribed. That will remain. Don't forget, 100 per cent of the judges are still sitting on the same benches.

 'And lawyers? Are they prepared to take up cases against the Government? Well, we've had more than 100 of them quickly volunteering over children's rights to stay in Hong Kong. They don't seem threatened.'  Articulate and relaxed, Ms Leung is far from the humourless and strict legalist she has been portrayed.

 Law, she muses, is the oldest form of social service. It solves disputes, it relieves hardship.

 'I had in mind a profession that would level the hills and fill in the valleys,' she says, reflecting on her youthful idealism, a notion that she retains by insisting on justice for all, guaranteed by many different legal services, paid or unpaid.

 'It's brought me into contact with many people, poor and rich, meek and powerful. Being a lawyer has widened my way of thinking.'  She gives one of her easy grins. 'It makes life interesting,' she says.



Long legal road to the top