Mrs. Justice Ayesha A. Malik
by Asim

Mrs. Justice Ayesha A. Malik, before her elevation to the Supreme Court, was serving as a Justice of the Lahore High Court since March 2012.

Born in June 1966, her education was completed from schools in Paris, New York and London. She acquired her B. Com from the Government College of Commerce & Economics, Karachi and her LLB from the Pakistan College of Law, Lahore. She went on to acquire her LLM from Harvard Law School where she was named a Landon H. Gammon Fellow for academic excellence.

Justice Malik started her legal career working at Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim & Co and ultimately went on to become a Partner at Rizvi, Isa, Afridi & Angell, where she spearheaded the corporate & litigation department at the firm’s Lahore office. She has been a Lecturer in Banking Law (University of the Punjab) and Mercantile Law (College of Accounting and & Management Sciences, Karachi).

As a Justice of the Lahore High Court, in addition to her position on the bench, she has been a member of the National Judicial Automation Committee overseeing case management, the pace of litigation and effectively harnessing information technology to ensure speedy dispensation of cases. Being a Board Member of the Punjab Judicial Academy, she has contributed successfully to the academic developments therein. She has also been a Member of the Federal Review Board and was the Chairperson for the Judicial Officers Female Supervisory Committee which dealt with issues relating to female judicial officers. She initiated the first Punjab Women Judges Conference in 2016. Successful conferences have since been held in 2017 and 2019 and have bought to the forefront the gender perspective and potential solutions to improve the litigation process for female litigants.

She has also volunteered her time to the Hermann Gmeiner School, Lahore, an SOS project, teaching both English Language and Development in Communication Skills. She has worked, pro bono, for various NGOs and has focused specifically on poverty alleviation programs, micro-finance programs and skills training programs. In addition, she is credited with several successful publications and has been featured in the International Journal of Competition Policy and Regulation Global Law Review, the Oxford Reports on International law in Domestic Courts, and the Journal of World Investment etc.