Three women among eight new senior counsel
Latest members, all mothers, make a contrast with trend in Britain, where fewer women are being appointed to the top rank of barristers
Three more women have become senior counsel, joining the top rank of barristers.
The elevations of Yvonne Cheng Wai-sum, Audrey Campbell-Moffat and Roxanne Ismail reduce the sex ratio within the male-dominated circle to below seven to one.
The trio were among eight barristers raised yesterday to senior counsel - the largest number in a single year since 1990.
All three were mothers, Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li noted.
Cheng, at age 39 the youngest of the eight, is married to Eugene Fung Ting-sek SC, who took silk - as the elevation to senior counsel is known - a year before her.
That made them "apparently the first married couple of senior counsel in the legal history of Hong Kong", Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung said.
Yuen went on to disclose a little secret of hers. "Yvonne has a keen interest in Facebook games, especially the one called Words With Friends, which is a game similar to Scrabble," he told the admission ceremony.