Alice To was born and bred in Hong Kong. She is married and has one daughter Anneliese
who is now 6 years old. Since she was young, she has always had the aspiration to
become a lawyer and she qualified as one in Hong Kong in 1996 and in England & Wales in 1997.
Her first exposure to arbitration was in 1997 when she was tasked with the duty to go to court to stay court proceedings for arbitration. Her interest in arbitration
and ADR grew and continued to grow. In 1999, she joined Masons (now Pinsent Masons) and shifted her focus towards construction disputes. She then spent many
years working with clients in the construction industry in the arbitration and ADRs of their disputes relating to construction and engineering projects as well
as their other commercial disputes.
In January 2015, she took on the role of General Counsel of a listed construction company in Hong Kong, a long-timed client of her and one of the oldest local
contractors. The experience in-house as part of a business organisation and
operation was unique and invaluable. It helped her understand more the reason, intention, psychology and expectation behind each dispute and the experience
assists her in her role as arbitrator, a role that she has taken on since January 2019.
In the past 4.5 (almost 5) years, she has acted as the sole arbitrator in construction and other commercial disputes, such as, breach of contract due to the pandemic and shareholders’ disputes and she conducted the proceedings in English and Chinese. In Hong Kong, there are few arbitrators who could do the work in Chinese and luckily she had the chance to learn Chinese when she was young. She enjoys being a neutral decision maker and is determined to further develop this as her extended legal career.