BY FOO KIM LENG

Singapore Academy of Law

BLUER THAN BLUE

When Wong Meng Meng SC was in Lee & Lee, one of his clients was a porn peddler who was charged with possessing 16 reels of blue film. The tapes in two paper bags had been seized at a construction site and his client was described as behaving nervously when approached by the police officer who made the seizure.

“I remember this was before [Richard] Magnus who was then a Magistrate… Magnus asked, ‘What is your defence, Mr Wong?’ I said, ‘Two-fold, Your Honour. One is we haven’t seen the tapes yet so obviously, we deny they are blue and secondly, my clients deny he was in possession.’

“I remember Magnus tracing his finger, tap, tap, tap on the front of his desk… and he told the clerk to arrange for us to view the 16 reels of film at the film censors’ auditorium. So, for two Saturdays, we watched the movies, and it was as blue as anything could be. My first experience of blue movies.”

At the trial, the last witness to testify was a young investigating officer. Mr Wong recalled, “While he was giving his evidence, I suddenly noticed that instead of two paper bags on the table with the blue films, they were all in one big plastic bag. So, after the IO had given his evidence, I did something which all of us had been told never to do; do not ask a question which you don’t know what the answer is. But instinctively, I felt I could take a chance. And I said, ‘The police officer who seized the tapes said they were in two paper bags, can you please tell us why the tapes are now in one plastic bag?’

“And I remember he looked at me, looked at Magnus and then asked Magnus, ‘Must I answer that question, sir?” Magnus was very puzzled and said, ‘Of course. What is the problem?’ By this time Magnus was also getting very impatient and said, ‘Will you please answer that question, inspector?’

“Then it came out in a torrent. ‘Sir, when the tapes were brought to my office, all the officers rushed for all the tapes and then the paper bags were torn, and they took away all the tapes.’

“There was complete silence. The interpreter was trying not to laugh. And I remember I think I had a smile on my face. Magnus was trying to look very stern.

“Magnus said, ‘You mean to say the evidence left your control? Do you know what went off?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know what came back?’ ‘No, sir.’

“So, Magnus looked at me, ‘Well, Mr Wong?’ I said, ‘No further questions, thank you very much, Your Honour.’ Then I sat down. Case dismissed.

ENRICH WITH VITAMIN C

Chelva Rajah SC not only remembers his first court case with alacrity, but he had also kept the evidence as a reminder of his victory. “It has been downhill since then,” he jokes.

Mr Tan Chin Hoo, the chief clerk at Tan, Rajah & Cheah had asked the young Chelva to help a friend who was charged under the Sale of Food Act. The item in question was a can of guava juice with a label, ‘Enrich with Vitamin C’.

The drink was a sample that the client had received from a supplier in Malaysia. Mr Rajah recalled, “He put this on display just to see whether it’s laku or not, whether people would buy it.” When inspectors from the then Food Department came, they found that the can was not properly labelled.

“Under the Sale of Food Act, whenever you say it’s got any vitamins in it, you have to say how many milligrams of vitamins per milligram of product, and it didn’t have that. It just said, ‘Enrich with Vitamin C’.

Mr Rajah had initially planned to make a representation to the Attorney-General’s Chambers to see if they would withdraw the charge. “As I was writing the representation…I realised, hey, maybe there’s a defence. So I didn’t write the letter.”

Two weeks later, the case was fixed for hearing and the prosecution produced their witnesses. “I never cross-examined anybody. Then the prosecution closed its case, and I submitted no case to answer. The judge said, ‘Mr Rajah, so no case to answer? On what basis no case to answer?’

“So my submission to the court was, ‘Your Honour, this can, there is nothing there that claims that there is Vitamin C put into this drink. In fact, what is contained on the can are the words, ‘enrich with Vitamin C’. In its ordinary meaning, it is an exhortation to the purchaser to enrich it with Vitamin C. It didn’t say it’s been ‘enriched with Vitamin C.’ And the only authority I could use with the court was that words must be given their ordinary and natural meaning when you interpret, and this is exactly the opposite of what the prosecution is saying. And I got my acquittal at my first case and to me, it was my greatest forensic triumph.”

DECODING THE POSTAL CODE

Giam Chin Toon SC recalled his assistant telling him, ‘I don’t see how you’re going to have a case…how you are going to fight?”

His client, a developer, had been sued by his architect for non-payment of fees following an abortive project in China. The architect had tendered in evidence a stack of correspondence, building plans, paid and unpaid invoices spanning two to three years in support of his claim.

“My client claimed he had paid all outstanding fees and that the last two alleged unpaid invoices were never received by him. The hearing was coming up shortly and I was wondering how to establish that the two alleged unpaid invoices were never received by nor sent to him. One night, I could not sleep, thinking of the case. I took out the stack of correspondence and invoices (there might have been seven or eight of them) and laid them in sequence on the table. They were all set out on printed letterheads of the plaintiff’s architect firm.”

Mr Giam’s client was adamant that he had received all the other documents but not the two alleged unpaid invoices.

“How do we show that he had not received them? Can he be telling the truth?

“I kept looking at all the correspondence and the invoices placed side by side on the table. The printed letterheads appeared to be exactly the same when I looked at them. Then, by chance, I noticed that the letterheads of the two disputed invoices, although looked identical with the other letterheads at a glance, actually had a different address postal code printed on them. I decided to check when the postal code had been changed by the authorities.”

The next morning, Mr Giam requested his colleague who was assisting him on the case to check when the new postal code for Singapore was implemented. It turned out that the existing postal code at the material time was changed well after the dates of the two disputed invoices. The official government directory from where the information was obtained, was produced as proof of that in court. It was clear that the alleged invoices could only have been issued after the change in the postal code was announced and not on the dates stated in the invoices. These invoices were clearly backdated to show that the fees were incurred on those dates and had remained unpaid. Mr Giam’s client was indeed telling the truth.

The architect had denied the allegation and tried to explain. In court, he was asked how he would have known of the new postal code on his letterhead and had it printed out on his letterhead before the change had been announced by the authorities. “To the credit of my opposing counsel, he forthwith withdrew his client’s claim and we settled the case amicably,” said Mr Giam.

THE READING ON THE GRAPH

In 1989, Ms Koh, a nurse with more than 20 years of experience would have lost her job should an inquiry panel find her negligent in administering an extra dose of a potent drug without checking with her doctor. The patient Mr Ho who was warded at Mount Elizabeth Hospital for psychotic depression slipped into a coma and died a few weeks later.

Mr Ho’s psychiatrist Dr Ang Peng Chye had prescribed five different sedatives, one of which was Sodium Amytal. When Mr Ho was behaving violently, Ms Koh gave him an additional dose of Sodium Amytal to calm him down.

Justice Choo Han Teck who was then practising at Allen & Gledhill represented the hospital at the coroner’s inquiry. Mr Ho’s family represented by Lee & Lee had sued the hospital, and Ms Koh had been charged by the AGC for causing the death of the patient.

Justice Choo recalled, “I went to the hospital and spent three days there… going through every document they had, page by page. There were thousands of pages of documents because the patient had been warded for about two months. I found a nursing chart which had a graph line going up and a second line going down and immediately I said, ‘This seems unusual.’ My instinct told me this is the one to follow up.”

Justice Choo sent a copy of the chart to an expert in London who explained that that the reading showed an abnormal heart rate and respiratory collapse had started long before the dose of Sodium Amytal was administered by the nurse.

At the trial, Justice Choo was asked by the District Judge if the nurse wanted to claim trial on a charge in which the maximum fine was only $500.

Justice Choo recalled, “So he said, ‘Do you want to fight this case? It’s only a $500 fine. Why are you fighting?’ I was telling myself, ‘Why did he think it this way?’ All the more reason we have to fight because if it is only $500, it’s worth fighting. And furthermore, if she was found guilty, she’ll be struck off. That would be the end of her nursing career.”

At the trial, Justice Choo recalled that he had to plan his strategy. Professor Chao Tzee Cheng was an expert witness at the coroner’s inquiry. He was a very influential forensic pathologist and coroners tend to endorse his opinion. Justice Choo recalled, “If Professor Chao testified first, the District Judge will just agree with him. Luckily for me, the Public Prosecutor got in Professor Tsoi Wing Foo, an expert on pharmacology and psychiatry.” Justice Choo also managed to persuade the DPP to allow Professor Tsoi to testify first.

“So I planned my last question to him very carefully. I said, ‘So Professor Tsoi, can you tell this court in the light of what has happened, if this second dose of Sodium Amytal was not given, would it have made any difference?’ He said it would have made no difference. In other words, the guy was already gone. So I stopped. And once I got him to say that I was very happy because when Chao Tzee Cheng went in, I said to him, ‘You heard what Dr Tsoi said, do you disagree?’ He said, ‘No,’ and that was it. The nurse was acquitted. I wrote to Lee & Lee to withdraw the suit, which they did.”

Interview with Davinder Singh SC

TPB Menon and Sat Pal Khattar

VETERAN TRIALS

These days, we are constantly reminded of the need for resilience and fortitude in the face of Covid-19. For veteran lawyers Mr TPB Menon and Mr Sat Pal Khattar, it did not take a global pandemic to turn their lives upside down. At an age when most of their peers were focused on their studies, they had to shoulder the added responsibility of being head of their households while grappling with the demands of law school. Their stories, taken from excerpts of their oral history interviews with SAL, are inspirational in these difficult times.

Mr TPB Menon was studying for his HSC (Higher School Certificate, equivalent to today’s A’ levels) when his father was diagnosed with cancer. “The doctor told me, your father has only got three months to live…I didn’t tell my mum. I think it would have finished her.”

Within six months of his father’s passing, the family had to vacate the staff quarters at the Bukit Timah campus where the elder Mr Menon had been Supervisor of Works at Raffles College. They would live in rented premises for two years before Mr Menon purchased a $19,000 semi-detached house with money left from his father’s university provident fund. “The first day we moved in, we only had a footstool and we all had to sit on the floor.”

At just 19, Mr Menon became head of the household. “My mother was only 37,” and he had three other younger siblings. “I don’t know how I did it. I didn’t fall sick but I was very, very thin.” He would wake up at 5am, drive his siblings to school, do the marketing on his way back before heading home to change and go to university. At 12.30pm, he would pick his siblings from school, go home for lunch and then he was back at university for lectures in the evenings and studies at the library until 10pm.

Above: The first batch of students at the University of Malaya Department of Law. Addressing the moot court is a young TPB Menon who later made his mark in trust litigation. Courtesy: Scales of Gold: 50 Years of Legal Education at the NUS Faculty of Law

The final year of law school was the hardest. “I had a heavy combination of subjects which meant that I had to work doubly hard.” But money was also running out. “My sister and brother were poised to go to university. So being the eldest, I had to worry about money which at that stage shouldn’t be the case… [At] night, I gave tuition and used to earn a little bit of money writing articles for [a friend at] The Straits Times.” Giving up was not an option; after all, Mr Menon recalled that it was his father’s dying wish that all the children complete their university studies.

Unlike Mr Menon, Mr Sat Pal Khattar’s father had no wish for his son to further his education beyond the Senior Cambridge (equivalent to today’s ‘O’ levels). “My father had decided that he needed help in his tiny business. And I had very little say. So I sold sports goods for my father, and travelled to all the smaller towns in Malaya, Sarawak, Brunei and Sabah.”

“When I wanted to do law, I had to discuss with him to say that I would need only about three hours a week off. I managed to persuade the faculty to put all my tutorials after office [hours]. But lectures were not arranged [that way] for me. So quite often I used to rush to a lecture [and] rush back and sell sports goods.” He would also spend his university holidays travelling to different parts of Malaysia for the business. “My obligation to the family business was unaffected by the fact that I was doing law,” said Mr Khattar, who lost his mother as a child. Just before his second-year exams, his father died of a massive heart attack. It was a double whammy for him. “The second-year exams were crucial because if you did not get through, you had to leave the faculty.”

Despite his father’s unexpected passing, Mr Khattar got the best results that year and even nabbed a book prize. Law studies aside, the young man was also saddled with the full responsibility of running his father’s business and looking after an extended family which included his grandmother, his sister, step-mother and her three children.

“Everybody was interested in getting the best [results] but I was more interested in getting a job because, for me, a job was the most important thing,” recalled Mr Menon. The convocation ceremony for this first batch of local law graduates was held in Kuala Lumpur but given their dwindling finances, his family couldn’t afford to attend. “My mother wanted to see her eldest son graduate but we couldn’t afford for all of us to stay in the hotel. So I had to go there all by myself.”

Above: Mr TPB Menon’s graduation photo. He is standing in the last row, fourth from the right. Courtesy: Scales of Gold: 50 Years of Legal Education at the NUS Faculty of Law

THE DRAW OF THE LEGAL SERVICE

The Legal Service offered the best opportunity to get a job straight away after graduation. Unfortunately, Mr Menon recalled the day when he was told that his application was rejected. “It was my birthday… I even remember the shirt I wore. It was a short-sleeved blue shirt with stripes. That was the blackest day, I thought it was a disaster.”

When he broke the news to this mother that he would not have a salary for another year, “I still remember the words my mother said. She told me, ‘Son, when one door closes, there’s always another window that opens.’”

Mr Eric Choa opened that window for Mr Menon when he agreed to take him as a pupil for six months on the condition that there will be no pay and that he would have to leave at the end of the period. However, after just three months, Mr Choa offered Mr Menon a job at his firm. Despite getting offers of higher pay later, Mr Menon chose to remain with Mr Choa who would eventually pass him the firm, making him a sole proprietor at a relatively young age. “I thought to myself and I said, ‘What is more important? Is money more important or my relationship with Eric Choa who has taught me the ropes?’”

CLIMBING THE RANKS

Unlike Mr Menon, Mr Khattar was not eager for a job in the Legal Service. He was earning a comfortable income from his family’s sports goods business and he had no intention of practising law. “I wanted to go back to university to become a graduate assistant.”

At the behest of Dr Bashir Mallal, who chided him for wasting his legal education, Mr Khattar decided to join the Legal Service and was appointed a DPP and State Counsel doing criminal work. “I hated it. I was not made for a career prosecuting criminals and murders and rape and stuff like that.”

Above: Presidential candidate Ong Teng Cheong being greeted by lawyer Sat Pal Khattar at Singapore Conference Hall on nomination day for the first presidential election in 1993. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore

So when a vacancy in the tax department came up, Mr Khattar decided to make the switch; one that would change his entire career. Within seven years, he would rise to the rank of a superscale officer at an early age of 30. “I was the envy of a lot of people in the Legal Service because nobody below 30 ever got a superscale. But after a while, I decided that I didn’t want to remain a civil servant all my life.”

He left the Legal Service to start a one-man practice, Sat Pal Khattar and Company on 1 July 1974. About 15 months later, his classmate Dr David Wong joined him and Khattar-Wong & Partners was born.

Mr Khattar attributes much of his success to what he calls ‘accidents’.” It was accidental that after I started practice… Graham Hill [who] was not only the leading lawyer in the tax field but the leading civil lawyer in Singapore… ran into some problems… and he gave up practice and went back to the UK. So suddenly, I was a tax practitioner with no other person to compete with, and I had a lion’s share of the tax work from the multinationals as well as from the local community.”

A LIFE IN THE LAW

Mr TPB Menon was among the pioneer batch of 22 law students who graduated from Singapore’s first law faculty in 1961. His former classmate Chan Sek Keong describes him as “the most experienced property and trust lawyer in private practice”. Mr Menon was senior partner of Oehlers & Choa before it merged with Wee Swee Teow LLP in 1989. He was senior partner of Wee Swee Teow LLP from 1989 to 2000 and is now a Consultant at the firm. He was President of Law Society from 1980-83 and was awarded the Society’s highest honour – the CC Tan Award in 2004. Listen to his interview here.

Mr Sat Pal Khattar graduated with an Honours degree in Law from the University of Singapore in 1966 and started his career as a Deputy Public Prosecutor and State Counsel at the Attorney General’s Office. This was followed by a shift to the Inland Revenue Office as a Legal Officer. He founded Khattar Wong & Partners, one of the largest law firms in Singapore. After retiring from law practice in 2000, he established Khattar Holding, a private investment firm. Since the early 1990s, Mr Khattar has been investing in India, and this experience has helped him promote and support bilateral trade and investments between Singapore and India. He has served on many civic bodies in Singapore in various capacities and has been honoured at the May Day Awards on several occasions. He was the first resident in Singapore to receive the Padma Shri Award from the Indian government. Listen to his interview here.

The Development of The Singapore Legal System is a joint oral history project by SAL’s Legal Heritage Committee and the Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore.

Law firms take more extensive cuts amid unprecedented crisis

TUE, AUG 11, 2020 – 5:50 AM

Several well-known law firms in Singapore, including one of the Big Four, have imposed pay cuts across the board – a move not seen in previous crises. PHOTO: ST FILE

Singapore

SEVERAL well-known law firms in Singapore, including one of the Big Four, have imposed pay cuts across the board – a move not seen in previous crises.

Dentons Rodyk and Big Four firm WongPartnership are among the largest law firms here that have announced firm-wide wage cuts, with both doing so by stripping out lawyers’ “front-loaded” bonuses.

Local law firms have over the past decade supplemented lawyers’ basic salaries with bonuses that are “front loaded”, or paid out in advance every month.

Lawyers and staff at Dentons Rodyk have had their advance bonuses cut since April this year.

Senior counsel Philip Jeyaretnam, who is the firm’s Asean chief executive and global vice-chair, said the move was “simply about being prudent” in the face of Covid-19.

“By March of this year, it was clear that 2020 was no normal year and so we stopped paying advance bonus from April onwards to all associates and to staff. Naturally, partners, especially senior partners, reduced their drawings the most,” he told The Business Times.

The firm will review the situation at the end of the year and decide how much additional bonus to pay, and to whom to allocate it.

“Some work, especially dispute work, restructuring and refinancing work has actually increased and some people are working harder than ever,” Mr Jeyeretnam pointed out. He also noted that the firm had preserved all jobs and hired 13 practice trainees.

At WongPartnership, lawyers across various seniorities will have their front-loaded bonuses cut by between 5 and 10 per cent from August, with these adjustments “revisited periodically”.

In response to BT’s queries, partner Joy Tan said that Singapore is facing unprecedented economic challenges, with the economy expected to shrink by between 4 and 7 per cent this year.

“The firm has a similar conservative business outlook on the year. While we remain financially healthy, and retrenchment is not an issue for us, we have chosen to adopt prudential measures on pay,” she said.

These paycuts are “not purely prudential belt-tightening measures”, she said, but designed to give the firm flexibility in paying a differentiated bonus to reward the more deserving performers, Ms Tan said.

There are plans to restore the front-loaded bonuses in 2021 or earlier, if the outlook improves.

“We have encouraged our people to not look at this as a cut but as a withholding, in that deserving performers may well still be paid the same amount in bonuses as before, at the end of the financial year,” she said.

Data from London-based legal research firm Chambers and Partners showed WongPartnership and Dentons Rodyk are staffed by about 300 and 200 lawyers, respectively, in Singapore.

A spokesperson from Drew & Napier would only say that the firm has not implemented any pay cuts.

Allen & Gledhill and Rajah & Tann, the remaining two Big Four firms, did not address queries on whether they have implemented such cost-cutting measures.

Local mid-sized firm TSMP Law Corporation had told BT in May that its partners would be taking a 25 per cent cut to “stand in solidarity” with clients.

While the firm has not implemented any pay cuts firm-wide since then, it will be adjusting starting pay for newly qualified lawyers down by 8 per cent, for those getting called in August.

“If the situation worsens, however, the firm could take further action to restructure all our lawyers’ pay,” joint managing partner Stefanie Yuen Thio told BT.

“We would try to make this a temporary cut, however, with an intention to reinstate pay levels in a year or two. The work will come back. Law firms just need to survive the cash flow crunch until that happens. That’s why we decided to do an early pay cut for the partners to manage our cash flow more prudently.”

There are whispers of concern over retrenchments later if business activity continues to languish, reflecting the severe economic impact from a global pandemic on the professional services sector.

Some law firms are reducing work hours or encouraging lawyers to go on sabbaticals, moves that are fairly uncommon in the legal sector here, even in past economic downturns.

When BT reported in May on law firms tightening their purse strings, most were doing so by freezing increments, hiring, or slicing partners’ profit distributions.

But recent moves seem more extensive, impacting junior associates and even staff who are not lawyers.

An associate at a Big Four firm expects the firm to be harder hit due to its large volume of corporate work.

A junior lawyer at another local, established law firm said that his firm has also implemented a cut of 10 per cent to associates’ pay. Partners at the firm were said to have taken a larger cut, but the proportion was not disclosed, said the lawyer, who spoke to BT on the condition of anonymity.

“(The management) announced the cuts a month before circuit breaker. They sent an e-mail and said that times are challenging … If it deteriorates, the cuts could get worse,” he said.

TSMP’s Ms Yuen-Thio said that during past economic downturns, the legal sector saw hiring slow and pay increments moderated. Because the economic pain tended to be concentrated in certain geographical areas, lawyers could also find jobs in countries that were less impacted.

But Covid-19 has dealt a different hand.

“The virus has been agnostic about political leanings and geography, and with most business sectors badly affected, the law firms that support them have started to feel the pinch,” she said.

Lee Shulin, co-founder and director at Ansa Search, pointed out that firms with strong litigation, disputes, as well restructuring and insolvency practices are more resilient.

“They have greater leverage when the economy takes a turn,” she said.

International law firms, including those with a presence in Singapore, appear to be the ones who are taking more drastic measures,

US outfit Reed Smith has rolled out several rounds of austerity cuts, which saw pay cuts across all levels – including a 40 per cent reduction in monthly draws by equity partners – as well as layoffs in the firm’s largest office in London.

London-headquartered Norton Rose Fulbright has asked staff to volunteer reducing their working hours by up to 20 per cent until next April. It took a similar move in the immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis.

The firm’s Europe, Middle East and Asia arms are also deferring partner distributions and staff salary increments for the foreseeable future.

Checks on the Law Society’s careers portal still show a number of mid-sized and smaller law firms, such as Yeo & Associates and Eldan Law, looking to expand their litigation practices.

But recruiters said they have also been receiving a larger number of queries of late particularly from junior lawyers, with some considering leaving practice to serve as in-house legal counsels.

“Their workload has remained largely the same, if not more, and would be understandably disgruntled in having to take a pay cut despite their efforts,” said Clement Tan, a senior consultant at Space Executive.

“Some see the pay cut as a time to reassess where they are, becoming more open to considering an alternative career in-house or with another firm.”

Davinder Singh SC: 50 Sikhs and their Contributions

[This article is courtesy of SINGAPORE AT 50: 50 SIKHS AND THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS, a book published by the Young Sikh Association, Singapore (YSA) in conjunction with Singapore’s 50th birthday]

In 1972, the former head of the United Negro College Fund, Mr Arthur Fletcher, said: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

Adopted as one of the most successful public service marketing slogans of all time, it was geared at driving home the point of the necessity of education.

A member of Singapore’s legal fraternity provided an equally compelling perspective on the value of intellectual power when he stated that: “If you want to train your mind, I would advise you to study law.” Well, when this advice comes from legal eagle Senior Counsel, Mr Davinder Singh, one would pay serious attention to it.

Born in Singapore in 1957, Davinder is the youngest of ﬁve children. He grew up in humble surroundings along Race Course Road. He came from a relatively structured household where his father, born in Baluchistan, modern-day Pakistan, was the bread winner. He was strict while his mother, born in Malaysia, was the complete opposite and she loved to dote on her children.

Davinder lived in a neighbourhood of different races and religions. He was, thus, fortunate to be exposed to the different festivals and celebrations in Singapore early on in life. According to him, mingling with everyone without prejudice and judgment helped him learn much about people and life. This played an important role in shaping his outlook. His parents promoted understanding and appreciation of others among their ﬁve children – they had an ‘open door’ policy where anyone from the neighbourhood was free to visit. They were generous, as was everyone else in his neighbourhood. This is a memory that Davinder holds dear to his heart till today.

Davinder was a quiet child at home. His demeanor was, however, quite different in school where he was an active and a more outspoken student. He attended Saint Joseph’s Institution and later enrolled into National Junior College. Recalling fondly, he described his schools as places of complete freedom with an all-rounded education. It was also here that he met school mates who are his closest friends till today.

Following college, Davinder felt that it was time to choose his direction in life. He opted for law, for the simple reason that it would consistently and continuously train his mind. He felt that learning law would give him the mental frame to analyse issues differently – a useful skill in everyday life. He went to the National University of Singapore to pursue a degree in Law.

Today, Davinder is the Chief Executive Ofﬁcer of Drew and Napier LLC, one of the largest law ﬁrms in Singapore. Set up in 1889, the ﬁrm’s calibre of work is acknowledged internationally at the highest levels of government and industry. He joined the Litigation Department of the ﬁrm immediately upon graduation in 1982 and rose through the ranks. He considers himself extremely fortunate to have an unending stream of good work and to be able to work with the best people while serving important clients.

Over the last 33 years, Davinder has litigated cases in almost every area of the law, including landmark cases. Each case is different in its own way and a few have generated some public interest. These included the National Kidney Foundation scandal and the Roy Ngerng defamation case. Davinder ﬁnds it difﬁcult to pick a particular case that he found particularly compelling or challenging. Each case impacted his thoughts and emotions uniquely. Davinder also has an active international arbitration practice involving complex commercial disputes and multiple jurisdictions. Among others, he has advised and/or acted in the International Court of Arbitration, Singapore International Arbitration Centre and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law.

Prominent legal directory Chambers Asia-Paciﬁc said: “The ‘Davinder Factor’ puts this [law] practice in a different league”. He is also described as “a formidable advocate with a long-standing and excellent reputation in the market”, and as “a standout ﬁgure in arbitration as well as litigation, his advocacy is smooth as silk.” It is, therefore, unsurprising that he has been regularly acknowledged locally and internally as a top litigator and arbitration counsel.

Most recently, he was recognised as the ‘Disputes Star of the Year – Singapore’ at the inaugural Asialaw AsiaPaciﬁc Dispute Resolution Awards 2015. Last year, he received the prestigious ‘Outstanding Contribution to the Legal Profession’ award from Chambers & Partners for his exceptional achievements and signiﬁcant impact on the regional and international market. Chambers & Partners also named him a standalone Star Individual, a category above Band 1, for ﬁve consecutive years. He was also named ‘Disputes Lawyer of the Year’ for Southeast Asia and India at the inaugural The Asian Lawyer Emerging Markets Awards in 2014. He was the only litigator in Singapore to be named External Counsel of the Year by Asian-MENA Counsel in 2012 and 2013.

In spite of these numerous accolades, Davinder remains humble and believes that each award is recognition for his entire team. He feels that his team members are the bedrock behind every case he ﬁghts. Without them, the accolades and recognition would not be possible. He also chooses to take such moments to remind his two sons that there is recognition for honest work and, if one works hard and passionately, the opportunities will present themselves.

Joining Politics

In spite of his busy legal career, Davinder answered the call to serve the country. In 1988, he was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) under the People’s Action Party (PAP) ticket, making him the ﬁrst Sikh parliamentarian in Singapore’s post-independence history. There were two reasons he took on this challenge.

Firstly, he saw his MP role as an opportunity to widen his horizon and assist the less fortunate. Davinder felt his perspective of life was being shaped by his experience as a professional working in the city every day. He did not wish to lose sight of the fact that there were people who were not as fortunate and who needed help.

“I have known Mr Singh for at least 20 years, since the days when he was a MP serving the residents of Toa Payoh Central branch. We still keep in touch and meet up with other branch members for meals. He is a kind man who is always willing to help the poor and needy. Despite his heavy work schedule, he looked after the residents who queued, sometimes late into the night, to meet him. He earned the trust of the various clan and merchant associations because he was always humble. He never took credit, always praising others for their good work.”
-Mr Chia Ah Sah JP, BBM(L), PBM, PB Vice Chairman Toa Payoh Central Branch

On a more personal level, he decided to join politics because his mother wished it, and he knew it would have made his father proud as well. His family had the highest regard for Singapore’s ﬁrst Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, and this was Davinder’s opportunity to with him. Following Mr Lee’s passing in March 2015, Davinder explained the greatness of the man in a Straits Times interview: “I sat with and talked to this genius who, more than anyone, understood human nature and societies, who had the third eye and could see trends and dangers, which we mere mortals were blind or oblivious to, and who knew with complete conﬁdence what was best for his people and Singapore.”

While Davinder served as MP for the Bishan-Toa Payoh Group Representation Constituency for 18 years and did his utmost to address the concerns of the residents, his political journey was not without challenges. As an MP, he faced the never-ending task of striking a balance between his professional commitments and the needs of his constituency while, at the same time, ensuring that he had ample time for his sons.

When Davinder was elected into Parliament, the idea of a Sikh MP was new to the Sikh community. There was naturally much jubilance within the community on his election. As much as he chooses not to take credit, Davinder played an important role as a link between the Sikh community and the government. In 1996, he was joined in Parliament by Mr Inderjit Singh. Together, they were highly successful in presenting the Sikh community as one that punches well above its weight.

The famous American author, poet and philosopher, Mr Henry David Thoreau, once said: “As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

In a similar vein, Davinder has unendingly trained his legal mind to emerge as one of the brightest, if not the brightest, legal minds in Singapore, marking his life with exceptional professional accomplishments and selﬂess service to the nation and community.

K Shanmugam SC: Portrait of a Legal Titan

Raffles Conversation: Portrait of a legal titan
26 April 2008

K Shanmugam is not only a man of many titles but also one of many pleasant contradictions, says MICHELLE QUAH

K SHANMUGAM – Senior Counsel, head of litigation and dispute resolution at Allen & Gledhill, Member of Parliament and soon-to-be Law Minister and Second Home Affairs Minister – is not only a man of many titles, but also one of many pleasant contradictions.

‘As a Minister, you can make a far greater contribution to society then you can as a lawyer in private practice, helping individual clients. It is a privilege to serve society in a meaningful way.’

As a reporter who’s followed his cases and career closely in the last few years, I thought I had a handle on the man; but he still manages to surprise me every time. Part of this is due to the fact that very little is known about the 49-year-old, personally, given his intensely private nature – which is, already, a contradiction for so public a figure. His preference for only letting his work speak for him has meant not only that it was no mean feat getting him to agree to this interview – but also that few people, save for friends and colleagues, really know what makes the man tick. Most of us know him as one of Singapore’s most fearsome litigators, who has been described as one of the country’s ‘twin titans’ of litigation alongside Senior Counsel Davinder Singh of Drew & Napier. Mr Shanmugam’s list of legal victories and contributions to the local litigation scene runs long – as does the list of awards and accolades accorded to him. His public image can be a forbidding one.

Those who’ve witnessed him tearing apart his opponents, skilful argument by skilful argument – in his calm, yet menacing way – understand why he’s also known as the ‘Silent Killer’. In fact, some have wondered if it was because of those very accomplishments that he was picked as Singapore’s new Law Minister. In a word, the answer must be ‘yes’ – but those who know him know that he will also bring a great many other qualities to the job. And that’s where those contradictions I’d mentioned earlier come in. Watching Mr Shanmugam in action – his thoughts and arguments flow with a speed that leaves the rest of us mere mortals gasping for breath, struggling to keep up – one would think he’s simply wired that way. Well, he is. But he is also not one who’s content to rely solely on his brilliant brain. He is a litigator who’s also an extremely thorough researcher. It’s a trait that not many are aware of, especially if one has only ever encountered him in the courtroom. But there’s much preparation work that goes before each riveting cross-examination, as the man himself explains.

‘I’m not the sort of litigator who lets his team do all the groundwork, and then comes in just to argue the case. I’m involved from the very beginning. When we get a case, especially a major one, I sit down with my fellow partners and our team of lawyers and decide on how we’re going to tackle it – I look at the key issues, the bases of action, how we’re going to argue the case. I set out the roadmap for them.’ And he regularly updates himself on the progress of his team’s preparations by meeting them to discuss the handling of a case. During these meetings, the work done is considered in detail, and the roadmap ahead as well as new ideas are discussed. And he reads every piece of evidence used in a case.
‘I read every single document – every memo, every letter, every e-mail, every spreadsheet – and I read everything at least three times to completely absorb and analyse the evidence from several angles. I have one set of documents in the office and one set at home. I make sure I’m so familiar with them that nothing can throw me off.’

This familiarity manifested itself in the high profile court case involving the National Kidney Foundation (NKF), where Mr Shanmugam represented the new board in its claims against former officers of the charity. The Senior Counsel was able to trap former chairman Richard Yong on numerous occasions, by pulling out evidence from documents dating 10 years back which contradicted Yong’s testimony. ‘You can only do that when you truly understand the entire sequence of events in a case. You can’t be debating evidence with witnesses – you have to know exactly what you want to get from them,’ he tells me. His ability to absorb that amount of information for each case is possible because the man works at an almost super-human pace. Allen & Gledhill (A&G) partner Edwin Tong – who is one of Mr Shanmugam’s right-hand men in the litigation department, having worked with him for 14 years (and who also worked with him on the NKF trial) – describes it as such: ‘He works faster than anyone I’ve ever known. He reads a document in a third the amount of time it would take the rest of us to. And, by that time, he would also have absorbed, digested and understood it. He also has an uncanny ability to size up the facts and then present them in a clear, concise and logical manner. When cross-examining, that’s a devastating quality.’ That brings us to the most difficult job of a litigator, after the prep work: the court appearance. Which is where Mr Shanmugam has earned much of his fame, ripping apart the arguments of his opponents with his stinging interrogatory style.

Again, using the example of the NKF trial – which many in the public are familiar with – Mr Shanmugam got Yong to admit, in cross-examination, that a letter he claimed to have written to former CEO T T Durai, which praised Durai’s work and offered him an eight-month bonus, was actually drafted by Durai himself. Taking apart the letter word by word, he showed the court that Yong could not have written it – as the former chairman did not even understand some of the words used. The unrelenting scrutiny Mr Shanmugam subjected Yong to, throughout the trial, eventually led the former chairman to admit that he had breached his duties as a board member. It’s a skill which not many possess. Mr Shanmugam explains what he considers to be some of the key factors in handling court work: ‘The difference between a good and an excellent litigator is the ability to draw out such admissions from the witness and to prepare the trap in such a way that there is no escape from the facts which have been established.” You need to know how to counter answers that you weren’t looking for. You have to be very quick. You have to be several steps ahead of the witnesses and be aware of all their escape routes. And, through it all, you must remain cool. Never show fear or weakness. You have to have the stomach to take the pressure. And then turn the pressure onto your opponents,’ he says. That ability has seen him turn impossible cases into victories and difficult situations into triumphs.

The latter instance was illustrated, this time outside the courtroom, in another high-profile dispute – between the owners of Horizon Towers and Mr Shanmugam’s client, Hotel Properties Ltd (HPL).

HPL’s plans to buy Horizon Towers seemed to have been completely scuppered when the Strata Titles Board (STB) rejected the sale in August 2007. HPL could not appeal the decision, having earlier been denied access to the hearing. The minority owners, who opposed the sale, were delighted. And the majority owners, given that property prices had risen very substantially, had no commercial interest in appealing the STB’s decision. Some of them were in fact lobbying for the sale to be aborted. The deal may well have collapsed – if not for Mr Shanmugam’s quick thinking.’ Most people thought that the deal was off. Many lawyers were saying that was the end. But we didn’t sit back and accept it. We decided immediately, within a few days, to sue the majority owners for $1 billion, for breach of contract.

That sort of move requires a clear and objective analysis of the situation – and a lot of guts. The client got out of a situation that looked lost,’ he says. As he puts it: ‘The $1-billion lawsuit focused minds and reminded people of their obligations. The majority owners had a choice – they could appeal to try and get the STB decision reversed and, after that, do their best to get the STB to approve the sale; or they could take their chances with the lawsuit. If our lawsuit was frivolous, they may well have been tempted to take the latter course.’After the lawsuit, the majority owners decided to appeal the STB’s decision. Upon appeal, the High Court overturned STB’s dismissal of the sale – and the case went back to the board, where the sale was eventually approved. The minorities owners are now appealing that decision. And Mr Shanmugam will make his last and final appearance in court as a litigator at this Horizon Towers appeal on April 30 – just a day before he assumes office as Law Minister. That brings us to the other seeming dichotomy about the man: The wildly successful private-sector lawyer versus the inspired public servant.While many were not surprised with the choice of Mr Shanmugam as Singapore’s new Law Minister – Davinder Singh says his first-rate mind and analytical skills would be a boon to the country – many were surprised he would be willing to give up a lucrative and high-profile career to serve in public office. The pay issue aside, the change would also mean that Mr Shanmugam would have to give up more of his closely guarded privacy and free time with his family. Why do it?Mr Shanmugam says: ‘I would point to two factors. First, as a Minister, you can make a far greater contribution to society then you can as a lawyer in private practice, helping individual clients. It is a privilege to serve society in a meaningful way. Second, look at the people we have in Cabinet now – they’re outstanding. Compare this Cabinet to any Cabinet in the world. It is second to none and it is a privilege to be asked to work with them.

These were real motivating factors for me. ‘It’s important, at this juncture, to touch on a third seeming contradiction about the man: That the stern, ruthless litigator is also a sensitive soul. The persona one sees in court is reserved strictly for work. Off duty, the Senior Counsel is personable, surprisingly soft-spoken, even shy, at times. I remember the trepidation with which I approached him the first time for a quote, after watching him reduce a confident witness to a nervous wreck on the stand. Since then, through our numerous encounters, I’ve learnt that the man may be tough and driven – but he’s also down-to-earth, sensitive and funny. And this interview, our last as reporter and lawyer, was a memorable affair – with Mr Shanmugam candidly sharing with me his hopes and dreams, and even regrets. One lies in the knowledge that he will be leaving a seeming vacuum at A&G’s litigation department. With his departure, the firm will be without a high-profile litigator or a Senior Counsel (SC) to lead the team – which may affect the perception of some clients. Mr Shanmugam doesn’t shy away from admitting the impact this will have on the department. But he believes his work over the past 15 years, building up a group of young litigators – almost from scratch – will pay off soon. ‘I’ve been at A&G for 17 years.

From the beginning, I have worked hard – recruiting exceptionally bright young people and training them to be the sort of litigators I want them to be, to have all the necessary skills. It takes about 15 to 17 years to train a lawyer from scratch until he becomes an SC. But not everyone you recruit is going to be an SC. Of the several lawyers I have recruited over the years, there are some who, I believe, can be SCs soon. It would’ve helped if I could have stayed on until that happened. But the team, without me, will have to tough it out for a while. The market will appreciate their quality soon. My firm has every confidence in them. They are, in my view, as good as SCs are in Singapore and in time to come, some of them will be right at the top.’ Andrew Yeo has been named as Mr Shanmugam’s replacement, as the head of litigation. ‘Andrew was picked because he’s a good lawyer and quite senior. He and Edwin Tong have been running the department very efficiently for three years. I was training them. I asked the partners to pick a new leader among them, and they picked Andrew.’ The efforts he spent breeding a second tier of top lawyers at A&G will now be channelled towards beefing up the talent pool of lawyers in Singapore.’ There are a number of perennial issues. These need to be constantly reviewed.

One of them is the issue of the general supply shortage of lawyers, from the universities – as well as the need to beef up the depth of talent in the industry. But that’s also a chicken-and-egg problem: if we don’t get the deals and the business, we don’t develop the talent. We have really good people, but I feel that the talent pool is not deep. ”Still, I believe the issue will be partly addressed in seven to 10 years’ time, when we will see more law school graduates entering the market – which will raise the level of talent we have. I believe we could do with more talent across-the-board, whether it be in the areas of litigation, corporate or corporate finance work,’ he said. So, while some might think of his new appointment as being a change of pace for the legal titan, it’s clear to others who know him better that there’ll be no easing off the throttle for Mr Shanmugam. No contradiction there, I think.

Letting the evidence speak for itself

I PREFER to let my work speak for me,’ says Senior Counsel K Shanmugam, in explaining why he prefers not to be interviewed on his achievements. ‘I don’t believe in talking about myself. My work is done in Open Court and people can assess for themselves.’

His body of work has made him one of Singapore’s best-known and most-feared names in litigation. His cases – hundreds over the years – bear his hallmark; each victory is marked by his intense familiarity with every piece of evidence and a thorough and lightning-quick absorption of the facts, which has enabled him to trap witnesses in cross-examination and tear down cases meticulously built up by his opponents.

More than once has Mr Shanmugam pulled a rabbit out of a hat, turning a seemingly impossible case on its side, by proving – through a superior interpretation of the evidence – that his opponents have not presented a sufficient case to answer, or by deftly luring witnesses into contradicting their own testimonies and admitting their guilt.

He demonstrated this ability in the recent high-profile cases involving the National Kidney Foundation and Horizon Towers. But perhaps few know that such an impressive skill manifested itself in the very first High Court case he argued – that of Manilal & Sons (Pte) Ltd versus Bhupendra KJ Shan, in 1987.The plaintiffs, Manilal, were represented by M Karthigesu of Tan Rajah & Cheah and the defendants were represented by a very young Mr Shanmugam, who was then with Drew & Napier.’

I was only 28 years old, and up against a formidable opponent – Mr Karthigesu (who later became a Justice of Appeal). He would have been the equivalent of the very best amongst the SCs today, and it was quite challenging to square up against him,’ Mr Shanmugam recounts.

The odds were stacked against the young lawyer – ‘The case was seen as a complete loser and was given to me as the youngest on the totem pole because no one else wanted to do it’, he says. But, as in many of his other cases, the keen litigator managed to turn the table on his opponents. After the plaintiffs filed their list of documents for the trial, Mr Shanmugam pushed them for a further and better list of documents – realising there was more key evidence to be had. The plaintiffs failed to produce the documents, claiming either that the evidence had been written on ‘scraps of paper’ which had been thrown away or that the evidence was in the defendants’ possession. Under intense cross examination, the plaintiffs’ story was shredded to pieces. Mr Shanmugam argued that the plaintiffs’ entire case should be thrown out.

Justice Chao Hick Tin accepted Mr Shanmugam’s arguments and, quoting excerpts of Mr Shanmugam’s cross examination, threw out the plaintiffs’ case completely, on the grounds that they had failed to give proper discovery of documents. The decision became an important and leading precedent on discovery in Singapore courts.

Many will also remember IDA vs SingTel in 2002, for the personalities and sums involved. The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) had sought the return of $388 million it claimed had been paid mistakenly to SingTel as the tax element in the $1.5 billion compensation that the telco received for giving up its monopoly early. IDA wanted the money back after the tax authority said the compensation was non-taxable.

The case pitted Senior Counsel Davinder Singh of Drew & Napier, acting for IDA, against SingTel’s counsel Mr Shanmugam and Jules Sher – one of Britain’s most highly regarded Queen’s Counsel.

Justice Lai Kew Chai threw out IDA’s claim in a strongly worded ruling, saying the telco regulator and SingTel had struck an inviolate contract and that it was ‘wholly unjust and contrary to fair play’ to order SingTel to return a part of the compensation. He ordered IDA to foot SingTel’s legal costs and allowed SingTel to claim for two lawyers, instead of the customary one, on the grounds that the case required specialist expertise.

Mr Shanmugam and Mr Sher’s fees were tipped to weigh in at between $2 million and $3 million; and observers expressed their surprise at the IDA’s decision not to appeal the ruling. He has also made waves in a case involving Lew Syn Pau in 2006, in which the former Member of Parliament was charged for breaching Section 76 of the Companies Act, which forbids a company from providing financial assistance to anyone for the purpose of acquiring its shares.

The case was a high-profile one, given that it involved a former politician – but it was also notable in that it involved a question of law of unusual difficulty, and henceforth defined how Section 76 of the Companies Act would be interpreted.

Mr Lew was said to have rendered financial assistance when Broadway’s Mauritian subsidiary Compart Asia Pacific lent him $4.2 million and he, in turn, lent $4 million to a third party to buy the shares of listed Broadway Industrial Group.

Mr Shanmugam successfully argued that the prosecution’s case should be thrown out in its entirety even without the defence being called, on the basis that there was no breach of Section 76, as – for the purposes of company law – a parent company and its subsidiary are seen as separate legal entities, separated by a ‘corporate veil’.

Mr Shanmugam’s remarkable ability to turn a case around in his cross-examination of witnesses was again showcased in Prebon vs BGC in 2006.Money broker Tullett Prebon sought $66.4 million from rival BGC International – represented by Mr Shanmugam – in compensation for lost business, claiming BGC conspired with its former regional head to ‘decimate’ its money-broking staff after almost half of them left to join BGC in February 2005.Prebon’s witnesses contradicted their own testimonies, under cross-examination by Mr Shanmugam.

Prebon’s Asian head Len Harvey, in particular, became so entangled in his own evidence that he had to be stopped by his own counsel, who told the court: ‘Your Honour, I think the witness should be given a chance to explain because this witness is not the brightest.’ This intervention made it to the London Times.

Laycock & Ong

by Lee Hsien Loong
17 October 2015

In the early days, my parents and Dennis Lee worked hard to get Lee and Lee off the ground and pay the bills. My father had started off at Laycock & Ong. He spent a lot of his time representing trade unions, working often pro bono – so much time that John Laycock wrote him a letter, expressing his displeasure but in typical British understated style. They were unhappy but they put it in a polite way.

The letter was displayed at the “Remembering Lee Kuan Yew” exhibition held at the National Museum earlier this year. But in case you didn’t make the exhibition or didn’t see the letter, let me read it out to you because when you draft many letters, it is useful to know how to do these things.

“Dear Harry,

Ong and myself have been discussing the question of members of our firm appearing in these lengthy arbitrations or commissions on wages etc. which are now all the vogue. We have been suffering from these heavily during the past few months. Coupled with the absences of so many of our qualified lawyers during March, they have left us with a backlog of purely legal work in the way of our ordinary business which cannot easily be overtaken. We have come to the conclusion that we must not take any more of these wage disputes. They can never be short, we fear, because they are always preceded by long negotiations; and we can see clearly that it is likely there will be more, perhaps many more, in the near future.

If any special case arises, the same might be specially considered by us; in that case, please let us have full information before you accept any work.

Yours Sincerely,

John Laycock”

This is quite a classy letter and probably played a part in the foundation of Lee and Lee!

So my father moved next door – John Laycock was probably at 11 or 12 Malacca Street – set up at 10-B Malacca Street, Lee and Lee, and took on all sorts of cases to make a living. Divorces, chap jee kee runners, routine debt collection, and he continued to be active in the unions and politics.

After he became prime minister in 1959, he tapped Lee and Lee for talent, and persuaded some of the partners to join him in politics. Eddie Barker became minister for law and drafted the Separation documents, including the Proclamation of Independence. Chua Sian Chin, who joined Lee and Lee in 1959, became a partner in 1965. And he would enter politics and become the minister for health at the age of 34, making him the youngest Cabinet minister in independent Singapore’s history.

Then there was S. Ramasamy, who I think was the chief clerk at Lee and Lee, and he became legislative assemblyman for Redhill constituency. Later on after we became independent, and after Separation, he served as Member of Parliament for two terms, also for Redhill constituency. And so 60 years on, Christopher de Souza is continuing the tradition!

As my father became increasingly involved in politics, he left Lee and Lee’s affairs to my mother and Dennis.

My mother regarded her husband and children as her first priority but she did her work. Every day she came home for lunch from the office so as to see her children. She would take a nap and then go back to work. When I had chicken pox – I must have been aged four or five years old – she nursed me at home, with her work files at my bedside.

On days when business was slow, she would wait for new call-in clients at the office, because in those days there were no mobile phones, and she took along her knitting to office because she loved to knit. In the evenings, she would bring home files to do and the files would come as big bundles in the open cane baskets which some of you may remember. She would stack them up and do them one by one, mostly conveyancing documents, and I would be fascinated with the documents – not with what was written inside, but what was pasted inside – because the conveyance documents and title deeds would have revenue stamps for what seemed to me like fabulous denominations; we had $500 stamps, $1,000 stamps, and also old faces because these were transactions from properties which were 30 or 40 years old, from previous reigns.

I used to collect stamps – these were 10-cent stamps, 50-cent stamps – and you would be very lucky to find a $5 postage stamp, and here were $500 stamps.

My mother would look at me and say these are not postage stamps but revenue stamps; you don’t put them on envelopes!

My mother decided to do mostly solicitors’ work. When Kim Li (Mrs Lee’s niece) joined the firm, my mother advised her, and in fact told her “umpteen times”, that “women should not do litigation because that would make them argumentative, and more difficult to find husbands!”

And I understand my mother gave the same advice to other ladies in the firm, including Kim Li’s daughter, Joanna, who entered law school in 2005. I am reporting this to you as hearsay evidence, but on good authority, but of course I would never venture to offer any such advice to anybody.

My mother developed the Conveyancing Practice and the Trust and Probate Practice at Lee and Lee. Many of the clients she acted for became her friends, and remain to this day clients of the firm. She retired from partnership in 1987, nearly 30 years ago, but she stayed on as a consultant for many years after that.

Be wise people, not just smart lawyers: former Attorney-General V. K. Rajah tells NUS law graduates

Former Attorney-General V. K. Rajah noted that many young lawyers would want to emulate apparently successful lawyers and feel the need to assume some of their traits.ST PHOTO: ONG WEE JIN

Janice Tai

Social Affairs Correspondent

SINGAPORE – Be yourselves. Embrace competition. Seek a larger purpose.

Former Attorney-General V. K. Rajah dispensed these advice to law graduates from the National University of Singapore (NUS) on Saturday morning (July 8), as he urged them to be not just smart lawyers but more importantly, wise people.

“Try and be lawyers with good heads and good hearts. Be wise lawyers. In Singapore, we have many clever people but not enough wise ones,” said Mr Rajah, who stepped down as the AG this January following a career as a Judge of Appeal, a High Court judge and the managing partner of law firm Rajah & Tann.

Speaking at a commencement ceremony that also marked the NUS Faculty of Law’s 60th anniversary, Mr Rajah noted that many young lawyers would want to emulate apparently successful lawyers and feel the need to assume some of their traits.

“A word of advice. Don’t. Be yourselves. By all means, absorb all the professional lessons but do not blindly absorb all the personal attributes that you witness,” he added.

“There are practising lawyers who have changed their identities and become uncaring in seeking to secure their clients’ ends. They practise ostensibly within the letter of the law without observing its spirit.”

On embracing competition, he said it would be sad “if lawyers still plead for protection from international competition” decades after Singapore started its first law school.

“I do not think that lawyers today have any right to try and deny clients access to the best legal minds available, Singaporean or international,” said Mr Rajah, who said he would be returning shortly to private practice without elaborating.

On seeking a larger purpose, he said law firms and lawyers “should not be defined by just billing targets, profits and compensation”.

“Unlike the hospitality business, the client is not always right. A good lawyer does not slavishly follow the client’s instructions. Instead, he counsels the client to achieve balance,” said Mr Rajah, who was from the 1982 batch that included Senior Counsel Davinder Singh and Judges of Appeal Andrew Phang and Steven Chong.

He also urged the graduates not to stay on longer in the legal profession than they have to if they are uninterested as “only those with passion will excel”.

“Unhappy lawyers are not just unhappy persons but a lack of commitment can have adverse consequences for others. Find your passion by all means. Today, a law degree opens many doors,” he added.

Mr Rajah’s comments come even as the third law school here opened in the SIM University earlier this year, amid an oversupply of young lawyers and declining interest in the law profession among youth.

Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said last year that the number of new entrants to the profession has doubled in the past five years. Last year, 509 new lawyers were admitted to the Bar.

The Straits Times reported on Monday (July 3) of the waning interest in law among university applicants, with 17 per cent fewer applicants at NUS listing law as their first choice compared to last year. For the Singapore Management University, the drop was 22 per cent this year. More students were opting for majors such as computing.

But Mr Rajah assured parents of those who choose to leave the law that their children have not just wasted four years of their lives.

He noted that NUS law graduates have,over the last 60 years, excelled in many different fields beyond the law including diplomacy, high finance, the business world and the arts.

He cited several from the 1961 pioneering class, such as “Mr Chan Sek Keong, the finest legal mind Singapore has known; Professor Tommy Koh, the finest diplomat Singapore has produced; and Mr TPB Menon, Singapore’s finest Chancery lawyer until he left active practice”.

Mr Rajah described the 1961 batch as the “wise class” that trump the clever in making a difference to society and lives and added that that other batches, including his 1982 cohort, should seek to emulate them.

Seven members of the 1961 class including Prof Koh, who were the inaugural batch of students admitted to the Faculty of Law of the then University of Malaya (now NUS) in 1957, attended the commencement ceremony on Saturday to support the 2017 graduating class and celebrate the faculty’s anniversary.

Prof Koh told The Straits Times that he hopes Singapore’s very brightest students continue to see law as their first choice for their future.

“A legal education prepares our students not only for a career in the law but for a whole variety of options, the foreign service, business and even the arts,” he added.

Among the graduating class of 2017 – over 300 of them – is a team of students who emerged as champions against the University of Queensland in a hard-fought grand final of the 18th International Maritime Law Arbitration Moot on July 5.

Student Douglas Lok, 25, was also named “Best Speaker in the General Rounds”. This was NUS Law’s fifth win in this competition, with the previous wins in 2000, 2001, 2010, and 2015.

Said Mr Lok: “I am confident that as long as we are willing to work hard and maintain an open mind, we will have long and fulfilling careers regardless of whether we are in or outside of the legal industry.”

Arbitration pioneer Alvin Yeo offers tip to young lawyers

Whether it is handling the decade- long Susan Lim court saga or a $250 million arbitration spat involving firms backed by famed Malaysian and Indonesian tycoons, Senior Counsel (SC) Alvin Yeo is a master of his craft – both in litigation court work and arbitration advocacy.

The former MP and veteran lawyer, who led teams in the two high-profile cases, told The Straits Times both were equally challenging but required the two different skill sets. He also advises young lawyers to cut their teeth in court work first, before plunging into arbitration where both your competitors and your markets are global.

SC Yeo, who turns 55 tomorrow, was last week lauded by the renowned London-based legal directory Chambers Asia-Pacific with the Outstanding Contribution to the Legal Profession award in its 2017 honours list for the region at a gala event held here.

Chambers Asia-Pacific described Mr Yeo as “an excellent strategist as well as a first-rate litigator” who is a “deeply impressive and extremely capable individual”, and who provided leadership on Singapore International Arbitration Centre and International Chamber of Commerce proceedings. The rare award is another mark of recognition for SC Yeo, who in 2000 became the youngest lawyer appointed senior counsel here at age 37.

SC Yeo was called to the Bar in 1988. He, current Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and Senior Counsel Wong Meng Meng were the three founding partners of WongPartnership in 1992.

The firm, then a boutique litigation firm with 11 lawyers, has today become a top-tier full-service firm with some 300 lawyers and has offices in six countries in Asia.

CLIENTS’ EXPECTATIONS

The largest source of stress from disputes work stems from the win-lose nature of the work. At the end of the day, the client is looking for a positive result from his case, not just a valiant losing effort.

SENIOR COUNSEL ALVIN YEO

Mr Yeo is currently chairman and senior partner of the firm, which is the youngest of Singapore’s Big Four law firms, with each of the three others being more than twice its age.

SC Yeo’s legal work also spans the growth of Singapore as an international arbitration centre, being a pioneer in the field more than two decades ago.

Two high-profile cases he led in the areas of open-court litigation and closed-door arbitration attest to his broad experience and ability.

In litigation, he was lead counsel for the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) in its disciplinary proceedings against Dr Lim for overcharging in relation to a $24 million bill for a patient in 2007. She was eventually suspended for three years and fined $10,000 in 2012.

In the course of the saga, Dr Lim took the SMC to court to appeal against the outcome and failed.

SC Yeo said it was “one of the most contested SMC cases” and had an “international element”.

But, if he had his way, there would have been little publicity on the details of the case.

“This was a case which attracted so much media attention. In accordance with the SMC’s approach of preserving the confidentiality of its proceedings, I applied on its behalf to have the court proceedings held in camera,” he said. This was done to protect the reputation of the doctors facing disciplinary proceedings, prior to the conclusion of those proceedings, he added.

“Unfortunately, this was resisted, and the proceedings were held in open court, with all the resulting publicity,” he said.

By contrast, in the case of arbitration hearings, publicity is not an issue as confidentiality is a condition. But an arbitration case comes to the public’s attention when the private award is challenged in court.

He cites the spat over a failed pay-television venture between the Astro group controlled by Malaysian billionaire Ananda Krishnan and the Indonesian Lippo group where eight Astro units sued three units of Lippo to enforce the arbitration award in Singapore.

The Court of Appeal in 2013 overturned the $250 million arbitration award won by Astro, and Lippo’s PT First Media and PT Ayunda Prima Mitra had to pay about $700,000 to five units of Astro.

SC Yeo said the challenges in such an arbitration case stem from a range of issues which are fought out across a span of jurisdictions.

In the case, the proceedings took place in Britain, Singapore and Hong Kong, with a host of personalities of different nationalities as, variously, the arbitrators, the legal counsel, expert and factual witnesses.

“It is mastering the sheer breadth of issues playing out over multiple proceedings and executing an overall, coordinated strategy that is the biggest challenge,” he said.

“The arbitration process tends to be very intense, where everything is crammed into a week as some of the parties fly in from abroad and you start very early and finish very late.

“In court, it is not so cramped; they might give you four weeks, six weeks for your trial. In that sense, it’s slightly more spaced out but the fact that you are on your feet for four, six weeks itself is a challenge.”

He advised young lawyers to start off in court litigation to acquire the advocacy and cross-examination skills which they can then apply to the arbitration context.

“In arbitration, your chances for oral advocacy are actually more limited. So you have to make sure it counts because you actually have less time.”

Asked about winning and losing cases, he said: “The largest source of stress from disputes work stems from the win-lose nature of the work. At the end of the day, the client is looking for a positive result from his case, not just a valiant losing effort. If the outcome is not successful, which does happen, you have to analyse what the reasons are, learn from your mistakes, and move on. There is no other way to survive in this practice.”

V. K. Rajah: The ‘reluctant’ A-G and his ethos of fairness

Mr V. K. Rajah, who retired as Attorney-General last Saturday, hailed the work of AGC staff who work long hours in the belief of “serving a wider cause”. An AGC initiative for lawyers to work with abused foreign workers was also introduced under his watch.

Straits Times, 18 January 2017

Before he became the Attorney-General in 2014, Mr V. K. Rajah twice declined the offer in 2007 and 2013.

“I was a reluctant A-G, but once I decided to be A-G, I put my heart and soul into it,” he said in an interview with The Straits Times at his office last Friday. “I put in 110 per cent, and as long as I held office, I wanted to discharge my responsibilities to the best of my ability.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Rajah, who left the post last Saturday, said one of the changes he implemented soon after taking the job was a reporting mechanism to review the prosecution’s sentencing positions. If the position was excessive or disproportionate, the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) would inform the defence counsel to go ahead and appeal, and prosecution would not object.

Mr Rajah, 60, said prior to this, prosecutors reported to the senior leadership matters that might attract media or public attention.

“I was more interested in (other) matters and our sentencing position that would affect the larger swathe of the population, from shoplifting to property, offences of any sort… and I wanted us to review our sentencing position on every possible area of criminal activity,” he said.

V. K. Rajah on two cases of significance

WHY AGC DID NOT PUSH FOR A HEAVIER SENTENCE FOR DAD WHO KILLED SON Banker Philippe Marcel Guy Graffart, then 42, had killed his five-year-old son last year amid a bitter custody battle.The charge was reduced from murder to culpable homicide as the Belgian national was assessed to be suffering from a major depressive disorder.
His estranged French wife had engaged lawyers to press for a higher sentence.

The Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC), said Mr Rajah, would use the full force of law to prosecute cases that were cold-blooded and premeditated.

“Where homicide takes place as a result of mental issues, it’s unpremeditated, where there is a momentary loss of control, we appraise the facts differently,” he said.

He also observed that the case arose out of a bigger divorce squabble.

This is why family law should be practised in a more collaborative and amiable way, he said.

Mr Rajah added: “Unfortunately after reading the file – and I went through it very thoroughly – I felt that the lawyers advising the couple added fuel to the fire.”

WHY PROSECUTION APPEALED TO REDUCE CYCLIST’S SENTENCE

Mr Rajah said the public might not be aware but the AGC has informed counsel to appeal when a sentence is excessive or disproportionate after reviewing the case.

The 2015 case involving Mr Lim Choon Teck, then 35, was different as he did not have a lawyer. Mr Lim had received a jail sentence of eight weeks for knocking down an elderly pedestrian while cycling on a pavement. After a review, Deputy Public Prosecutor Prem Raj Prabakaran appealed to have the sentence reduced, arguing that the prosecution believed the original sentence was disproportionate to his culpability and the fact that he had pleaded guilty at the first reasonable opportunity.

“If (Mr Lim) appealed, there was no certainty that the High Court judge might agree with him… So I directed my colleagues, and they were taken aback that we should appeal,” said Mr Rajah. Mr Lim’s jail term was cut to three weeks.

Mr Rajah said: “I’m glad the case was publicised because it also assured the public that AGC was trying to do right rather than to punish people excessively.”

Ng Huiwen

All cases that were concluded were reported in the form of a summary report and Mr Rajah would review these cases every evening.

In one unusual case, the AGC even appealed for a sentence to be reduced. The accused, a cyclist who had knocked down an elderly person, did not have his own lawyer.

Originally sentenced to eight weeks’ jail in 2015, his sentence was reduced to three weeks after the Deputy Public Prosecutor appealed to have it slashed.

Mr Rajah said his “obsessiveness for looking at things granularly” boiled down to a need to exercise the power of the prosecution carefully. Not all were on board at first with the decisions he made, including the move to appeal to have the cyclist’s sentence reduced.

Some colleagues had told him the decision would not have been possible in the AGC a decade ago, because “that’s not part of our culture”.

“But having said that, I think all of them were immediately on the same side because they realised and appreciated that this accorded with their role as ministers of justice.

“My operating ethos in every … office that I held is to ensure fairness. And fairness includes, apart from due process, proportionality. It’s in no one’s interest for individuals to be punished harshly,” he said.

Another initiative launched in his time involved lawyers in the AGC who volunteered to work with abused foreign workers. They halved the time it took to resolve cases that otherwise would require the foreign workers to stay for months or even years in Singapore to resolve their situation in court.

Mr Rajah hailed the work of AGC staff. “Many officers in the AGC and in the public service work anonymously as they should and get very little credit.

“They put in long, long hours of work over weekends, over holidays, and they do this not because they are looking for recognition, but they do this because they believe it’s the right thing and they are serving a wider cause.”

Mr Rajah spent 20 years in the private sector, becoming managing partner of law firm Rajah & Tann. In 1997, he was among the first lawyers to be appointed Senior Counsel.

V. K. RAJAH…

ON HIS ROLE AS ATTORNEY-GENERAL

I was a reluctant Attorney-General, but once I decided to be A-G, I put heart and soul into it. I put in 110 per cent and, as long as I held office, I wanted to discharge my responsibilities to the best of my ability. There is no point having a half-hearted A-G.

ON UPHOLDING FAIRNESS

My operating ethos in every appointment or office that I held is to ensure fairness. And fairness includes, apart from due process, proportionality. It’s in no one’s interest for individuals to be punished harshly.

ON SELECTING HIS TEAM

I pay particular attention to the way people interact and I am less than impressed by people who manage upwards and are all brown-nosed… I rather let the work speak for themselves.

He was then on the Bench for 10 years, first being appointed Supreme Court justice in 2004 and then Judge of Appeal three years later. It was then, in 2007, that he first declined the Attorney-General post.

“I enjoyed my work. Further, I was keen to continue working with Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, whom I greatly respected. I regard him as the finest legal mind who has held public office in Singapore.”

Outside of his office, Mr Rajah reads extensively on social and political issues that affect Singapore and the wider world, as well as the sciences, such as psychology and neuroscience. “But since I became A-G, I’ve read only a handful of books,” he said, as he spent more time reading up on ongoing cases, even the minor ones, such as shoplifting.

Mr Rajah said: “I could leave my law firm when I wanted to and the fact that it continues to thrive 13 years after I left it means that I left it with good foundations and in good shape.” Former defence minister Howe Yoon Chong, in a conversation with Mr Rajah years ago, called the same quality a “walking capital” and the term stuck with him.

He entered the role as the “reluctant A-G”, but with his retirement, he said: “I made sure everything that I’ve done, every institution I’ve done, I have left it in better shape.”

How I became Chief Justice: Yong Pung How Chief Justice of Singapore, 1990-2006

Source: Straits Times
Date: 20 Mar 2016

After graduating, I went back to Kuala Lumpur where my father had a small law firm and was working for Tan Cheng Lock.

I travelled to Singapore a few times, hoping to get some lead work. I would meet up with Kuan Yew and he would take me out for lunch at a chicken rice stall in Middle Road. On my first visit, he asked where I was staying. I told him I was at the hotel next to the railway station. He said, “Oh, it’s a terrible place! I have a spare room in the house.” So I stayed with him a few times at Oxley Road. I think I slept in what would eventually become his daughter Wei Ling’s room because she wasn’t born then. He was very kind to me.

The first time I went to his home, his mother, who I had already heard was a very famous cook, insisted I stay for dinner. She cooked everything. I think I nearly burst myself that night.

When Kuan Yew won the elections in 1959 and became Prime Minister, I would meet him at his office at City Hall and we would go for lunch. Those were good times.

One of his favourite fruits was pomelo. Once, while enjoying some pomelo at his office, he told me it was from lpoh, specially brought in by Malayan Airways pilots. At the end of that visit, he called his secretary to ask how many of the fruit were left and asked her to put two in my car.

The last time I saw Kuan Yew was in late December 2014, at a dinner, together with a group of his friends. They always included me in these dinners, which were held every two months; they considered me to be his oldest friend, I guess, at least in age. Someone would organise a dinner for him. They would give the excuse that the poor chap was lonely, but actually all they wanted were his views. He knew everything!

MR LEE AS A CO-WORKER AND BOSS

There were a couple of occasions after graduation when Kuan Yew and I worked together on some legal cases. In one case, the richest man in Penang had insulted Dr Lim Chong Yew, a prominent politician and medical doctor. We worked on the case together for a short while until it was settled. We also did a few other small cases together. At that time, he was famous as a lawyer.

Clearly, he was brilliant. He was the most brilliant man I have ever met. If he was on a legal case, he would work through every detail and angle. When he set up the People’s Action Party, he was absolutely thorough, in the same way he responded to questions at university or analysed cases. When we studied our cases, he always made sure he covered everything.

The very first time he came to Kuala Lumpur was in the early 1950s. We went for dinner at a restaurant in an amusement park in Bukit Bintang. We walked into a room that was empty but this newspaper chap, who was part of a wedding reception in the next room, noticed him and recognised him as Lee Kuan Yew from Singapore. He came up to Kuan Yew and asked him some questions, and soon, half of the wedding guests trooped over. I think Kuan Yew never ever liked any of this attention.

In 1982, when I was vice-chairman of OCBC Bank, I was seconded to the government to help restructure the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Eventually, I was appointed to head the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. But I had to leave after a while.

What happened was that there had been a question asked in Parliament which was filed but not published. The issue was about Singapore money being transferred to a Malaysian. Dr Goh Keng Swee asked me, “Are you a Malaysian?” Indeed I was. So I was sent to see Lim Siong Guan, who was then principal private secretary to Kuan Yew, who then said I should become a Singapore citizen.

He would put up a paper with three names – Lee Kuan Yew, Hon Sui Sen and Goh Keng Swee – and also get them to sign it. I remember going to Empress Place to get this done. There was a nice lady there who gave me a book. I held it, took an oath, and so I became a citizen.

I then worked for Lim Kim San. I was in a room next to Dr Goh, who was at the Ministry of Education at the time; Kim San’s office was across from Dr Goh’s. I was actually on loan to Kim San because he was short of staff. He wanted someone to write letters for him – he said lawyers always wrote good letters – but he looked at me and said to Dr Goh: “I just don’t like this bloody chap.” Dr Goh dismissed it and told me Kim San was just in a bad mood that day.

The next time I saw Kim San, he was in a good mood and had forgotten we had ever met. I wrote simple letters for him; they were for his constituents or people requesting help from him, promising them that things would be done but that it would take time and we would do our best in the meantime. Kim San was very nice to me after that.

I had learnt to write very short letters, and the minutes I wrote while at the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation were also short. When I first gave the minutes to Kuan Yew, its new chairman, he said: “I don’t like this. It’s rubbish. I want to know exactly what each person said.” He wanted more details.

In 1989, Kuan Yew was looking for a new Chief Justice and he said my name had been put up by several judges. He said, “Think about it,” and told me to make a decision quickly.

I replied: “Can I think about it?”

He said: “That was what I said. But I hope your answer will be yes because you have done nothing for Singapore!”

He practically scolded me, bringing up the fact that I had declined his offer to be a Supreme Court judge in 1972.

He said there was no time to waste. I asked him what I was supposed to do. He said: “Become Chief Justice! Just clean up the whole thing, you know what to do.”

I said: “Fair enough. But if the job is too much for me, will you release me?”

There was no answer.

The next thing I knew, he was telling people he had found a person and my name was published in the papers. So that was how I became Singapore’s second Chief Justice.

The Big Read: Four top lawyers share their experiences in the legal world

BY VALERIE KOH

MARCH 5, 2016

A DIFFERENT BREED OF LAW STUDENTS

Within the legal fraternity, Professor Walter Woon walks as a giant.

His roots are based in academia, although he had a dalliance with lawmaking, serving as a Nominated Member of Parliament from 1992 to 1996. The first Private Member’s Bill to be passed — the Maintenance of Parents Act — was drafted by him.

Prof Woon, 59, also served as an ambassador overseas, before taking up the Attorney-General (AG) appointment in Singapore in 2008, going on to argue several cases personally. One of his last court appearances was for the high-profile case of Malaysian drug trafficker Yong Vui Kong, in the latter’s appeal against the death sentence.

After stepping down as AG in 2010, he returned to his first love — academia — and is now dean of the Singapore Institute of Legal Education. Most recently, he joined RHTLaw Taylor Wessing as chairman and senior consultant.

Things have come full circle, he acknowledged. “I dislike litigation. If I liked litigation, I would go out and triple my salary. People did offer but I said, ‘No thanks. I’ll come back to my natural habitat which is academia, pass on what I’ve learnt over the last 30 years to the next generation, so they’ll be better prepared than we were’.”

The career choices that Prof Woon has made allowed him to spend more time with his twin sons during their growing-up years.

While his sons, Adrian and Alexander, have followed in his footsteps and pursued law, Prof Woon notes that the profession is no longer the same as when he was a rookie.

“Law has become more of a business, rather than a profession. It is a pity but it’s inevitable. The old clubby feeling disappeared when the profession expanded. Firms are 200, 300 (in size). They have to be run as a business,” Prof Woon says.

These days, young lawyers are a different breed. “They’re less hungry than they used to be. Nowadays, unlike my generation, they have the expectation of inheritance. The majority of the students who come into law school nowadays come from families that are well-off,” he points out.

Lacking drive, the newcomers no longer find it necessary to stay in the profession through “thick and thin”.

Prof Woon notes: “They have options. And I don’t say this to blame them; because why should you kill yourself doing something you do not like in order just to accumulate money, when you’ll inherit? So do something worthwhile with your life, instead of just make money.”

AN INTERESTING, WORTHWHILE LIFETIME JOB

One of the earliest impressions Senior Counsel Michael Hwang had of the legal profession came from fiction.

“Students of my generation were all inspired by this fictional lawyer called Perry Mason who never lost a case. It was the most famous lawyer novel series then,” says Dr Hwang, 72. “When you’re young, you’re reading these books, you think, ‘My goodness, what magic a lawyer can do if he is able!’; vindicate his clients and save them from wrongful conviction.”

Mason’s brilliant cross-examination of witnesses, portrayed in the novel series by Erle Stanley Gardner, enthralled Dr Hwang and inspired him to become a lawyer.

Very soon into his decades-long legal career, he realised that the tales were “completely unrealistic”. The sobering realisation did not lead to disenchantment with his profession though, he quickly qualifies.

“The reality is that this doesn’t happen. No lawyer can ever say that he’s never lost a case,” he says. “Also, everything was based on the lawyer’s brilliant cross-examination of the witness, whereas in real life, a cross-examination is very often a slow and steady interrogation to exploit weak points made in evidence and destroy the credibility of witnesses.”

Indeed when Dr Hwang stepped into law, his family expressed scepticism.

“It wasn’t considered a glamorous profession in those days. Everybody wanted to do engineering and medicine … My mother said to me, ‘You know lawyers don’t make a lot of money.’ With respect to my late mother, I don’t think that’s true anymore. Parents would be quite happy for their children to become a lawyer,” he says.

He likens law to the field of medicine, with “many areas you can go into”. Back in the old days, lawyers were expected to be generalists and juggle various areas of the law — capital markets, mergers and acquisitions. But these days, large firms bank on their young hires to be experts in highly specific fields.

“They become very specialised quite quickly. That’s good but what my former senior partner used to say is that you don’t want to be too left-handed, meaning you become too specialised to the extent that you know virtually nothing about other branches of law,” he says.

Starting out as a lawyer with Allen & Gledhill, Dr Hwang has risen through the ranks, notching accomplishments along the way including heading his fraternity as president of the Law Society and being a member of the Supreme Court Bench.

He has carved a niche in the fields of international arbitration and mediation, currently sitting as Chief Justice of the Dubai International Financial Centre’s Courts, presiding over a panel of 10 justices from other countries.

His string of accolades includes being the honorary vice-president and governing board member of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA).

Despite his success , Dr Hwang says he has not finished learning about the work of a lawyer.

“Even at this late stage, I’m always learning something new because you cannot know it all. Almost every day, there’ll be some new legal knowledge that I acquire. Of course, the juniors will be learning five to 10 new things a day, while I’m learning one or two. It’s a lifetime job, which makes it more interesting and worthwhile,” he says.

MENTORSHIP A TWO-WAY STREET

When he first started out as a lawyer, Mr Amolat Singh would wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweat, and run through the details of a particular case in his mind.

“You ask yourself, ‘Is there something else I can do that I’ve forgotten?’” he says. “Behind my work, there are real lives at stake. In commercial, civil and corporate cases, everything boils down to dollars and cents. But when you’re doing criminal and family law, you know it’s not just dollars and cents. These people have to pick up the pieces.”

For newer practitioners, this emotional burden is very real; with each negative verdict comes devastation. But the senior lawyer learnt from his mentor and long-time friend, the late criminal lawyer Subhas Anandan, to keep his emotions at bay, and maintain professionalism and objectivity.

Mr Singh was a mid-career lawyer, having left the military at the age of 35. Later, he started volunteering for Legal Assistance Scheme for Capital Offences, and worked on his first capital case with Mr Anandan.

“Subhas had by then so many cases under his belt. Even for the very first case we did, every time we had a coffee break or we went for lunch, I would share my doubts with him. I was very fortunate in the sense that at the start of my career, I had somebody like that to shadow,” says the 59-year-old.

Mentorship is important for younger lawyers, Mr Singh stresses. “It helps them find some bearing in life, then they will stay the course.”

Current mentorship programmes in law firms tend to be more technical, and less focused on dealing with emotions, he feels. For mentorship to reap rewards, young lawyers must learn to voice their concerns, he said, and senior lawyers have to make time to address these worries.

Today, Mr Singh runs his own practice with two other partners, one of whom is his wife. But some things remain unchanged for the veteran.

“Even when you drive the car, you stop at the traffic light, and your mind goes back to this case,” he says. “Sometimes you do get a spark. So I quickly drive to the side of the road and write down in my small pocketbook, so that it remains there while it’s still fresh.”

PUTTING IN YOUR BEST FOR EVERY CASE

Decades after defending former footballer Abbas Saad in a match-fixing scandal, defence lawyer Edmond Pereira continues to feel “deeply aggrieved” over the case.

In the 1990s, the Lebanese-born Australian was a star in local football, turning out for Singapore in the Malaysian League and Malaysia Cup. But his footballing dreams went up in smoke in 1995, after he was found guilty of fixing matches, fined S$50,000 and banned from football-related activities here. The lifetime ban was only lifted in 2009.

Recounting the day the verdict was handed down by the court, Mr Pereira said many supporters were elated with the sentence and erupted into cheers in the courtroom “as if the team won the game”.

Two decades on, the lawyer still wonders if the outcome could have been different.

“(This) is one case which I feel deeply aggrieved about. Abbas happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Unfortunately, he made some admissions in his statement,” he says.

During the trial, Mr Pereira challenged the admissibility of the statement as evidence — arguing that Abbas had been threatened and coerced into signing it — but to no avail.

“Looking back, could I have done it differently? Perhaps I could have. Would the outcome be the same? It’s hard to say. I could see at that time that (the authorities) wanted to make an example of somebody and Abbas was the right target,” he says.

The veteran lawyer, 66, started his career as a legal officer in the Defence Ministry, before becoming a Deputy Public Prosecutor and State Counsel in the Attorney-General’s Chambers, and serving as a District Judge in the then-Subordinate Courts. In 1988, he moved into private practice, and became one of the stalwarts in criminal law.

Even today, Mr Pereira remains passionate about the cases he takes on, despite the fact that it is less financially rewarding than other areas of legal practice.

“(Criminal law) involves the person’s rights and liberty. There’s an accusation, there’s a lot more cut and thrust, and there’s excitement,” he says.

Over the years, Mr Pereira has carved a niche in corruption cases. However, he shuns drug trafficking cases because drugs “ruin people’s lives”.

Asked about his portfolio of work, Mr Pereira is contemplative. “Sometimes when we look back on some of the trials we did, (we wonder) whether our challenge to the prosecution witness should have been in a particular way. Would it have been better? It’s very hard. You’ve got to make that judgment at that time.”

The Big Read: As a legal career loses its sheen, law firms take action

BY: VALERIE KOH
SATURDAY, 05 MARCH 2016

SINGAPORE — Long considered a lucrative and respected career option here, the notion of becoming a lawyer — which, along with being a doctor or a banker, ranks highly among many parents’ wish lists for their children’s future occupations — is losing some of its shine.

Anecdotes abound of lawyers dropping out of the industry, citing stress and burn out — so much so that the hollowing out of the criminal and family law practice areas has become a growing concern. Amid a potential oversupply caused by a spurt in the number of Singaporeans studying to be lawyers overseas, starting salaries of fresh law graduates have also fallen, going by the latest graduate employment survey.

The unusual manpower predicament — a glut of fresh graduates seeking to join the industry couple with an exodus of experienced mid-tier lawyers — is threatening to hinder Singapore’s ambitions of becoming a legal hub at a time when its transitioning economy needs all the help it can get.

Veteran lawyer Gloria James-Civetta, who runs her own law firm, said her senior lawyers end up doing most of the heavy lifting themselves, due to the lack of mid-level talent.

“Senior lawyers end up having to go to court often to attend to heavy-duty matters, when they could have been dealt with by a lawyer with less experience,” she said.

“Sometimes, we can’t offer a client a mid-level lawyer, so it results in us having to compromise and reduce some of our rates as well.”

Lawyer Amolat Singh believes the thinning of mid-tier legal practitioners could have a negative impact on the competitiveness of the Republic’s legal industry on the global stage, though the impact might not be apparent at the moment.

“Parents see law as the land of milk and honey. People think that the courtroom drama is quite fun, but they forget that for one hour of drama, there are many hours of sweat not seen,” said Mr Singh, who noted that, anecdotally, many lawyers exit the industry after the three-year mark.

Statistics provided by the Law Society of Singapore (LawSoc) in 2014 showed that three in four Singaporean lawyers call it quits within their first decade of practice.

Responding to TODAY’s queries, LawSoc said that between 2011 and last year, the proportion of mid-tier lawyers (those with seven to 12 years of experience) has hovered between 7.6 per cent and 10.2 per cent. In comparison, lawyers with more than 12 years’ experience make up between 51.8 and 60.6 per cent, while the proportion of junior lawyers (defined by LawSoc as those who have spent less than seven years in practice) ranged between 29.6 and 39.5 per cent.

In response to the challenges faced by the industry, a third law school at SIM University — which will welcome its first batch of students in January next year — has been set up, primarily to attract mid-career professionals to criminal and family law. In contrast to the more lucrative corporate law practice, these two practice areas have borne the brunt of what Senior Minister of State (Law and Finance) Indranee Rajah described as a “hollowing out effect”.

STEMMING THE EXODUS

There are currently about 1,600 criminal and family lawyers here. About one in 10 is above 65 years old.

Lawyer Sunil Sudheesan, the acting head of the Association of Criminal Lawyers of Singapore, noted the great emotional strains on lawyers in these two practice areas.

“Criminal law is a very depressing game to play … the first case that really left a deep impression (on me) was Took Leng How’s,” he said. “I was involved in the psychiatric aspect of that case. After we lost in the High Court, I got quite upset and wondered, ‘Was it because my submissions were not good enough?’”

In a case that gripped the nation, Took was sentenced to death in 2005 for the murder of eight-year-old Huang Na.

But criminal and family law are not the only areas where warning signs are going up. Senior lawyers noted that in all practice areas, the attrition rate is high compared with other industries. LawSoc president Thio Shen Yi felt the demands of the profession may not necessarily be in sync with what many millennials are prepared for. Gen Y lawyers crave new experiences and have an array of options available to them, said Mr Thio, who is the joint managing director of TSMP Law Corporation.

The Singapore Corporate Counsel Association, which represents in-house lawyers, does not track the number of lawyers who have left private practice to go in-house. Anecdotally, however, the SCCA has observed a “gradual increase” in the number of in-house counsel over the years.

Currently, there are some 2,000 in-house counsel here — almost half the number (about 4,800) of lawyers in private practice.

One of those who made the switch was Ms Jaime Lee, 29, who started her legal career in 2010 at a Big Four law firm before joining a global commodities company as an in-house counsel. In December last year, she left the industry to focus on growing her stationery and lifestyle products business. “I was very happy where I was, but the business was growing and I had to decide whether I wanted to take the leap of faith to go full-time to bring it to the next level,” she said.

Ms Joanne Poh, 31, also cut short her legal career. After less than three years in the industry, she left to pursue freelance writing. “Most of my friends thought I was insane to want to leave a high-paying job,” she said.

Veteran lawyer Foo Siew Fong, Head of Family and Matrimonial Law at Harry Elias Partnership, offered a reason young lawyers opt out: “The best time (to leave) is when (one) is still young and has no financial burden of maintaining a family.”

Last year, LawSoc set up a taskforce to conduct focus group discussions with junior lawyers and find out “what might keep them in the industry, pull them away, (or) push them away”. “Once we understand the causes, we can try to work out solutions,” said Mr Thio.

He said he was not unduly worried about the situation, which he felt could be corrected by market forces in due course. “If there are fewer people in the middle category, then these people become very much in demand. The rewards for them increase, and more people are incentivised to stay,” he reasoned.

Nonetheless, some law firms — both big and small — have begun taking action to retain their young guns.

At Drew & Napier, the management recognises that lawyers need to “pause, recharge, and take care of their families and other aspects of their lives”. Mr Kelvin Tan, a director at the firm, said: “We have flexible arrangements to help our lawyers do that, like sabbaticals, the flexibility to work from home fortnightly, and part-time working arrangements.”

At smaller firms, lead lawyers encourage their juniors to take ownership of cases that they are helping with. “Assisting doesn’t mean taking notes only, they have to interact with clients and prepare (for the case),” said veteran lawyer Edmond Pereira, who runs his own practice.

To give room for young lawyers to grow, Mr Peter Low, who also runs his own practice, believes in pushing every member on his team to develop their “own public persona”. He said: “I don’t want a lawyer to tell me after five years that people think he’s my sidekick. It cannot be like that. Five years later, people must say, ‘Forget about Peter Low, forget about the law firm. You’re a good lawyer’.”

LawSoc president Thio Shen Yi felt the demands of the profession may not necessarily be in sync with what many millennials are prepared for. Gen Y lawyers crave new experiences and have an array of options available to them, he said. Photo: Koh Mui Fong

TRAINING CONTRACT WOES

While the industry struggles to hang on to its young talent, a constant stream of fresh law graduates seeks to enter the legal profession.

In 2014, Law Minister K Shanmugam warned that Singapore could face an oversupply of lawyers in the coming years, due to the spike in the number of Singaporeans studying law overseas. As a result, aspiring lawyers have to manage their expectations in terms of pay and job opportunities, he said.

The findings of the latest Joint Graduate Employment Survey released earlier this week showed that the median gross monthly salary for fresh law graduates from Singapore Management University fell to S$4,731 last year, compared to S$5,025 in 2014. The starting pay for those who graduated from National University of Singapore’s Law Faculty also fell to S$4,700, from S$5,150.

To guard against the oversupply, the authorities have dropped almost half of the 19 United Kingdom law schools on the list of institutions whose graduates are recognised for admission to the Bar from this year. But it will take some time for the impact of the move to be felt.

For now, law firms are spoilt for choice, with many fresh graduates vying for training contracts. “It’s actually good for law firms. When there’s an oversupply of law students, it means that law students may not be as fussy as before in terms of the areas they go into,” said Mr Thio. “If we take the situation five or six years back, all the law students wanted to go into corporate transactions or commercial disputes. You might find a situation now where law students say, ‘well, I’m quite happy to go into criminal law or family law … It might be easier for me to secure a job that way, and that’s my way of entering practice’.”

Mr Pereira used to have one or two trainees in his firm. These days, he has four trainees under his wing. He has even encountered applicants who said they were willing to go without the training allowance.

Rajah & Tann Singapore managing partner Lee Eng Beng advised fresh law graduates to chalk up relevant experience before applying for a training contract, which is required for admission to the Bar. Mr Lee, a Senior Counsel, said: “A lot of Singapore law graduates see being called to the Bar as a final qualification that they need to acquire as soon as possible. I don’t think it’s necessary. There’s too much focus on the qualification to practice, and not enough on gathering real experience and learning, which will produce a good practitioner in the long run. It’s an outdated mindset.”

He added: “If you are already very clear that you want to enter a certain industry…and if you’re prepared to spend a couple of years to work in that industry and gain knowledge, and two years later, apply to us for a training contract, I would put that name first. Grades will be secondary by then.”

Law firms are now spoilt for choice, with many fresh graduates vying for training contracts. Veteran lawyer Edmond Pereira used to have one or two trainees in his firm. These days, he has four trainees under his wing. He has even encountered applicants who said they were willing to go without the training allowance. Photo: Robin Choo

HOPE ON THE HORIZON

It is not all bad news, however.

While those in the legal fraternity fret that a core of practitioners to succeed the likes of Mr Shanmugam, Senior Counsel Davinder Singh, former Attorney-General Walter Woon, Senior Counsel Michael Hwang and the late Subhas Anandan on the pantheon of Singapore’s legal giants is not forthcoming — possibly a consequence of the industry’s struggles to hold on to its brightest talent — others are more sanguine.

Mr Amolat Singh felt that this is inevitable as the overall pool of lawyers gets bigger. In the past, it was easier to shine, he said. But these days, the gulf between top lawyers and “the rest of the crop” has narrowed considerably, he said.

Rajah & Tann’s Mr Lee also noted that large law firms have also shifted away from depending on star names. He added: “When you have your branding and profile revolving too much around individuals, that’s not healthy for large firms. All individuals will grow old and retire one day. So the institutional name is the one that remains.”

And while bright young legal minds here have been lured away by firms overseas — especially in Hong Kong, which serves the China market — Professor Woon feels this is not necessarily a bad thing. “I suspect that the brain-drain would be worse without the prospect of working for an international law firm in Singapore. The young and the restless will move abroad to get the international exposure; the presence of leading international firms in Singapore gives us the opportunity to lure them home,” he said.

Singapore is not standing still, either. It has been strengthening its position as a dispute resolution hub. The Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC) was launched in January last year, complementing the work of the Singapore International Arbitration Centre and the Singapore International Mediation Centre.

In the past, appearing in the courtroom was “the only avenue known” to lawyers, said Mr Amolat Singh. “For every dispute, we say, ‘See you in court.’ But now there are alternatives, and people are beginning to realise the benefits of alternative dispute resolution. The outcomes can be more custom-fit.”

Asked if such a shift could take away the thrill of arguing in court which some lawyers live for, Mr Singh said: “The disputes will still arise, but the manner of resolving them is a bit faster, and I can go on to the next file…It’s just a question of changing our mindsets and modus operandi to suit the new model.”

K Shanmugam SC – Tempering the law with compassion

The Straits Times Nov 04, 2012

IN THE four years since Mr K. Shanmugam took over the Law Ministry, he has wrought sweeping legal reforms. Not least of all is the easing of the mandatory death penalty regime for drug-trafficking and murder offenders.

The Criminal Procedure Code was also overhauled in 2010, providing new community sentencing options such as the mandatory treatment order and community service order, as alternatives to jail sentences.

If he has one goal in his lifetime, he lets on, it is to make Singapore a more compassionate society “with greater communitarian spirit and which looks after those who can’t look after themselves”.

To lead the way, the 53-year- old conscientiously looks for the exceptions, outliers or those who fall through the cracks. His legal training helps him to “first step back and look at things in perspective in terms of overall systems, structures, what’s legally possible” and to that, he adds “kindness and compassion” to see what he can do in each individual case.

More changes are afoot.

National University of Singapore law professor Michael Hor, who was his university classmate, expects the minister to continue to “inspire quiet and incremental change in favour of moderation and balance”. The changes so far stem from a humble and humane approach to law: “humble because of the awareness that when rules are crafted, we can never foresee (their) consequences with absolute certainty, humane because of the unwillingness to sacrifice individuals unfortunately caught by overbroad rules”.

Mr Shanmugam himself says he is trying to make the legal framework relevant to the times.

What lies ahead?

Liberal hopefuls have wondered: Will the Internal Security Act (ISA), which confers on the Government the right to arrest and detain individuals without trial for up to two years, be reviewed or repealed?

To this, the Law Minister says that nothing is written in stone, although he adds that the ISA is not under his purview but that of the Home Affairs Ministry. “Everything has to be looked at as society changes and the environment changes. Any law has to have public support.”

As a young lawyer, he too had misgivings about the risk of abuse with the ISA but, since the Sept 11 terrorist attacks on the US in 2001, his views have changed. “You have to ask yourself what are the consequences if we are not able to detain terrorists ahead of time without trial? What are the consequences for Singapore which has persuaded the world to invest here based on confidence?” he says, adding that often the information available cannot be made public.

“So you have a choice between arresting without trial or not arresting and waiting until the act is about to be committed. A larger country can afford to take that risk. Can we afford to take that risk?”

After 23 years as a top civil and commercial litigator, he now trains his firepower on transforming the criminal justice system. He wants to boost the quality of the criminal Bar and attract younger people to it. He is also looking at beefing up access to justice, beyond depending on lawyers to take on pro bono cases on an ad hoc basis.

Of late, he has taken on eclectic causes – dogs, cats, street dancers and itinerant hawkers. A dog lover, Mr Shanmugam has three of his own, and has worked with animal rights groups over the past four years to effect a slew of changes. Last weekend, he piloted a scheme allowing residents in Chong Pang to keep cats in their HDB flats. If successful, the scheme will go islandwide.

Animal rights group Animal Concerns Research and Education Society (Acres) founder Louis Ng says he alerted Mr Shanmugam last month to the plight of terminally ill Mr Tan Cheng Chu, who was told to give up one of his dogs according to HDB rules, after a neighbour complained of noise. Mr Shanmugam asked to meet Mr Tan and ruminated on his Facebook page afterwards that discretion must be exercised in applying rules. Mr Ng says: “What touches me the most about him is that no matter how busy he is, he always makes time to listen to the concerns of animal lovers and makes an effort to help.”

Meanwhile, the minister has applied an unsentimental rigour to his foreign affairs portfolio, which he inherited after the 2011 General Election. Well aware that no city state has lasted a long time, he sees his role as forging ties that are important to Singapore’s economic and strategic security, and defending Singapore’s interests.

His unvarnished, straight-talking manner has been an unlikely diplomatic asset. American diplomat and academic Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, says of Mr Shanmugam: “The quality of his mind is impressive. In meetings with him, he has legal framing, approaches problems in a deeply systemic way, is unsentimental about the world, clear- eyed and very strategic… He can be hard-headed about what is best for Singapore, but he is always upfront and clear.”

No social capital

FAR from his public image as an aggressive lawyer, the soft-spoken man, whom you have to strain to hear, comes across as shy in person and intensely private. All he will say about his childhood is that he was the youngest of three children and the only one born in Singapore to immigrants from Tamil Nadu with no formal education.

His father ran a small business, and his mother was a housewife. Home was a series of rented premises, usually shared with others, till they got their first Housing Board flat when he was 16.

He was born in 1959, just before the People’s Action Party (PAP) swept into power. His parents had “zero social capital”. But they bequeathed him “total faith, which I then adopted without question, that it didn’t matter who you are or the colour of your skin, what race you were, all that mattered is that if you study hard, you can do well in life”.

“It was a very simple philosophy. They had total faith in the PAP and that education was the passport to success.” He attended the now-defunct Newton Boys’ School, Raffles Institution and then National University of Singapore’s law faculty, graduating with first-class honours.

The PAP had started wooing the rising litigator through its tea sessions. Before he said “yes” to being fielded as a candidate, he wanted to get a taste of constituency work. Former MP Chandra Das remembers him as a “keen, earnest and patient young man, with sharp observation skills”, who dutifully attended all grassroots activities. He was fielded in 1988, when he was 29.

At first, the young English- speaking Indian lawyer thrown into Chong Pang in Sembawang GRC – a very Chinese, lower-middle-class constituency – seemed a poor pairing. “But the traditionalism of the constituency meant that there are certain advantages. One, if you work hard, are sincere, didn’t throw your weight around and are in a position to help, as I was as a lawyer, many deep and close friendships are immediately formed… And once you have done them a favour, they remember you for life. So that constituency in a way fitted my personality,” he says.

“Partly because of my own background, the milieu of the people I met were in the same social situation that I used to be in myself, so I was completely comfortable,” he says. He stayed five terms and is now the second longest-serving MP in Cabinet next to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who was elected in 1984.

Asked whether being plain- speaking has been a liability or asset in his political career, he shrugs and says: “People know I mean what I say. Sometimes it has served me well, sometimes it has comes across as harsh. I don’t sugarcoat or say something people like to hear. I prefer to be honest and direct. I think there is value to that.”

His law career soared. He has represented listed companies, multinationals and the Singapore Government. At 38, he became one of the youngest senior counsel. Juggling legal practice and politics, along with fathering two young children, took its toll. There were regrets and sacrifices along the way, such as “no time to read, smell the flowers or watch the kids grow up”. His marriage to Dr Jothie Rajah failed and they divorced after 15 years, due to “mutual incompatibility”.

Dr Rajah has since completed a law PhD at Melbourne University and written a book Authoritarian Rule Of Law, which alleges that the rule of law is a subjugating rather than liberalising force in Singapore. Asked about this, all he will say is he has not read the book. “My own views are set out in the speeches I have made on rule of law,” he adds with finality.

Big pay cut

MR SHANMUGAM remarried four years ago. His wife is Seetha, 41, a Berkeley-educated, Chicago-trained clinical psychologist – and a fourth-generation Singaporean. “Not a foreign talent,” he adds for good measure, in reference to online rumours.

She has quit private practice to travel with him on his official trips.

He visibly relaxes when she arrives midway through the three- hour interview at Old Town White Coffee at Chun Tin Court, their favourite weekend haunt. It is one of his rare pockets of downtime. The only other is his daily hour-long exercise routine, which involves calisthenics, yoga and cross-training.

He admits that in 2008, when he was asked to become law minister, it was a big decision to mull over, involving a sizeable pay cut. His income in the first year was less than the tax he had to pay on his previous year’s income, he lets on.

“Yes, it was a substantial financial cutback but I don’t see it as a great sacrifice. I was at a stage in my career where I was prepared to say I can do this… Of course I thought about the money. I will be lying if I said I didn’t. I went and looked at my obligations from an accounting point of view. Then I decided to do it.”

The clincher was when he reflected that if he looked back at his life on his deathbed, it would have been more important for him to “have worked to change society for the better” than to have made more money.

What fires Mr Shanmugam, a Hindu, is his deep religiosity. “If you look at the Bhagavad Gita, a central theme is about doing your duty and not worrying about the results. Whether you succeed or you fail, do what you think is right, and leave the consequences to take care of themselves,” he says.

He hastens to add that he has not fully internalised that. “I’ll be lying if I told you that the results didn’t matter. But I keep reminding myself and try to be on this path, and it influences the major decisions I take.”

That has shaped his understated, taciturn ethos of “Don’t talk much, just do what you can”. And of course letting his work speak for itself.

Mr Shanmugam on

His public persona

This comment that I’m aloof has been made more than once. People think that because I am somewhat introverted. I don’t speak much, I keep to myself.

Plus, the litigation training that is so much a part of my persona makes me deconstruct what people say clinically: “You said this. These points I agree, these other points, I don’t agree.”

And I will set out the reasons why they make no sense. In court, I didn’t think of this as being harsh. But outside court, people tell me sometimes it does sound harsh. I need to reflect seriously on that.

Levelling the playing field

We need to look at the academic system again, to make sure that it is truly meritocratic. Over the years, a class structure has developed. Middle-class parents are able to give a significant head start to their children. The State has to do more in the infant care and pre-school context, to help the children whose parents can’t give them the same advantages. The State can’t completely equalise the advantages educated parents give their children, but the State can do more to level the playing field.

Quote of the Week

In criticizing, the teacher is hoping to teach. That’s all.

~ Bankei

Singapore Legal Practice in the 70’s

The Good Old Days Revisited

At the beginning of the 70s, I had been in practice for only a few years. I had just been made a salaried partner in Allen & Gledhill, which gave me a good pay rise without the responsibilities of full partnership (‘good pay rise’ is of course a relative term: my income as a salaried partner was significantly less than that of a present first year associate in the same firm). My firm was one of the biggest in town (with about a dozen lawyers), yet it was still small enough that I knew the name of every person in the firm (peons included), and partners would lunch with legal assistants on a regular basis.

The legal world was still dominated by the ‘Big 4’ firms which had been founded by expatriates, namely, Donaldson & Burkinshaw, Drew & Napier, Rodyk & Davidson and Allen & Gledhill. However, their dominance was being challenged by two ‘local’ firms, Shook Lin & Bok (which was founded by Malaysians) and Chor Pee & Hin Hiong (which later fell into difficulties with the prosecution and conviction of Khoo Hin Hiong). There were only about 300 practising lawyers at the Bar at the beginning of the decade, so the sense of camaraderie was strong.

Legal practice was relatively leisurely, compared to today’s pace. I thought I was working hard by not going home till after 6pm, and usually had time to go home for a shower before an evening engagement. There was time for an active social life after work despite having to go to the office on Saturday mornings. I even had time to join ‘The Sceneshifters’ (an amateur operatic society) with Woo Tchi Chu and together we formed part of the tenor chorus for operettas like ‘Land of Smiles’ and ‘Rose Marie’.

When we went to the High Court on summons in chambers days, we would walk back to Raffles Place, and have coffee at the G H Café in Battery Road (which is now part of 6 Battery Road) together with its sinfully delicious kaya cake. If we missed coffee, we could always go there for lunch and sit at a table reserved for lawyers (a sort of ‘mess table’). There I lunched with some of the legal giants of the day (such as David Chelliah, K C Chan, Goh Heng Leong, Tan Tee Seng, Tan Wee Kian, Sachi Saurajen and Koh Eng Tian). None of them had any airs and were happy to talk to junior lawyers as equals and share their knowledge and experience with them. Another favourite haunt of lawyers was the Polar Café in High Street, whose curry and cream (custard) puffs were legendary.

When we appeared in the traffic courts against police prosecutors, the magistrates (like Giam Chin Toon) would invite us back into their chambers for coffee after the case was over and we would chat with the magistrate as well as the prosecutor. Relations between bench and bar were much closer then with such regular exchanges, culminating in the Bench and Bar Games against the Malaysians, which really roused the camaraderie of the Singapore lawyers. Our motto when we left for our biennial trips to Malaysia was ‘kalah tidak apa, wang tidak apa, semua tidak apa, style mau’.

Some of the major legal events that happened in the 70s included the following:

•The Law Society was still known as the Advocates and Solicitors Society of Singapore until it became a statutory body known as the Law Society of Singapore on 12 June 1970.
• The Supreme Court of Singapore was established on 9 January 1970 when it formally became independent of the Malaysian Court.
• In 1970 the Revised Edition of the Laws of Singapore was published, replacing the Laws of the Colony of Singapore (1955 Edition).
• The then Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, addressed the Law Society twice in this decade. The first occasion was at our Annual Dinner in 1970, when he criticised the Stock Exchange of Singapore (‘SES’) and urged the Law Society to pay heed to the weaknesses he had identified in the SES. He also defended the abolition of the jury system which had taken place at the end of the previous decade. The second occasion was at our annual dinner in 1977 when he castigated us for not heeding his earlier warning and gave notice of the Government’s intention to:
(a) make voting at Law Society elections compulsory;
(b) appoint a nominee to the Law Society’s council.

Although smoking had not yet been abolished inside air-conditioned buildings at that time, there was an informal ban on smoking when the Prime Minister was in a room, and the ballroom on these two occasions was noticeable for extended bathroom breaks by large sections of the audience, who disappeared into the lobbies outside for a puff or two.
• In 1971, the Attorney-General’s Chambers moved from the present Family Court building in Havelock Road to High Street, next to Parliament House.
• In 1971, Prof Tommy Koh became Dean of the Law Faculty and Prof S Jayakumar became our Head of Mission to the United Nations.
• In 1974, the Singapore Association of Women Lawyers was founded with Farideh Namazie as its first President.
• In 1975, the Board of Legal Education was established by the Legal Profession Act (Cap. 217).
• In 1975, the Subordinate Courts Complex was completed.
• In 1975, the Subordinate Courts Complex was completed.
• In 1979, Phyllis Tan became the first female President of the Law Society and in the same year, TPB Menon became the first local graduate to serve as Vice President.

Lawyers who worked in the Raffles Place area used to visit the office-cum-showroom of the Malayan Law Journal in Raffles Place next to Robinsons to browse through the latest law books. Bashir Mallal was an amazing man, who had no formal legal training but taught himself law to such an extent that he could give legal opinions and was conferred an Honorary LLD by the then University of Singapore. His death in 1972 marked the passing of an era.

Another enduring memory for all lawyers who worked in the Raffles Place area was Robinsons Department Store in Raffles Place (now occupied by OUB Centre) where we would go for lunch or simply window shopping during lunchtime. One day in 1972, I set out for court in the morning and, when I returned, I found that Robinsons had been destroyed by a fire which also killed the kindly liftman who would say hello to me whenever I visited the store. My office (which was next door) had not been damaged by the fire, but suffered damage from the water pumped into the building by firemen anxious to protect it from the flames next door. I found that my carpet had shrunk by several feet owing to the water, and made an unsuccessful claim on our insurance company, which denied liability on the grounds that our fire insurance policy only responded to claims for damage from fire, not water which put out the fire.

My own work experience was being gained incrementally, as I counted many ‘firsts’. My first (and only) murder trial was in 1974 where Amarjeet Singh and I were assigned to defend two robbers who had killed the victim of their crime. Both our clients were convicted and were eventually hanged. My client was most reluctant to appeal against his conviction, and I was only able to persuade him to sign the appeal papers by telling him that his wish to be executed early could not be fulfilled until his co-accused’s appeals had been disposed of. In 1973, I argued my first case in the Court of Appeal which was for a sum of $1,400. Even then, that was not a large sum, and I was fearful of the reception I might receive from the Court of Appeal. To my relief, they heard me out patiently, and gave judgment in my client’s favour which established that the right of a buyer to reject defective goods could be lost after a reasonable time (1972-1974 SLR 189), which I later discussed in an article in 1992 published in the Lloyds Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly at page 334.

I was also doing a good deal of corporate finance work, as my firm was acting for about a third of the new merchant banks in Singapore, which were at the vanguard of the new kind of corporate work that we were seeing for the first time. IPOs (or flotations, as they were then called) were starting to become popular, and lawyers were beginning to understand the urgency that such work demanded, which would change the pace of legal life (at least in corporate work) forever. I assisted in the first IPO in Singapore of a close-ended investment trust (Harimau), and the first take-over of a publicly listed company under the new Companies Act (Haw Par of M&G).

In the early 1970s the property market was as hot as it is now, and I was fortunate to have a big client from Hong Kong who went on a spending spree in Singapore, buying several large properties and thus underwriting my introduction to conveyancing practice. I also undertook my first experience as a developer’s lawyer for sales of units in an apartment block (Cavenagh House). The market remained on the boil until the Prime Minister announced on 10 September 1973 that only Singaporeans could purchase residential property. Overnight he brought the property market down from its giddy heights (again, this is a relative term: the best apartments were then selling for less than $100 per square foot) and killed the conveyancing market for almost the rest of the decade. I then switched to acting for landlords in granting commercial tenancies (ICB Building and Shing Kwan House) as well as acting for finance companies financing purchases of commercial units (Katong Shopping Centre).

On the extra curricular front, I began my practice of Family Law when I was asked to teach the subject at the University of Singapore as a part-time tutor. This led to my being appointed to a committee to advise the Ministry of Social Affairs on reforms to the Women’s Charter, after which I continued my interest in the subject by actively practising in this area for the rest of my career.

I also committed myself to pro bono activities. With my experience of Family Law, I volunteered for the Panel of Lawyers to assist the Legal Aid Bureau. More interestingly, I also joined the Samaritans of Singapore (‘SOS’) as a consultant, advising their clients who felt suicidal because of legal problems. I served under their first Chair, Margaret Jeyaretnam, wife of Ben and mother of Philip, and a wonderful person in her own right. Eventually, I became Chair of the SOS and served for three terms in that office.

The 70s were therefore a decade when lawyers led a busy (but not too busy) and eventful life and had time for each other. We were certainly a lot poorer than lawyers are now, but (arguably) we enjoyed our lives a little more.

Michael Hwang, SC
AAS NO. 15/1968

Big fall in M&A activity involving S'pore firms

Business Times – 26 Mar 2012
Deals in Q1 down to 187 from 273 a year ago, while their value fell 36.5%

By LYNETTE KHOO

(SINGAPORE) A bleak picture on the local merger and acquisition (M&A) scene has emerged, showing M&A activity involving Singapore-domiciled companies sliding to the lowest level in value since the second quarter of 2009.

The total value of announced Singapore M&A deals in the first quarter registered year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter declines of 36.5 per cent and 24.6 per cent, respectively, to US$5.7 billion, latest data from Thomson Reuters shows.

The number of deals stood at 187 in the first quarter, down from 273 in the same period last year.

A similar trend unfolded in the South-east Asian region, with the total deal value slipping 19.2 per cent from a year ago and 11.9 per cent from the fourth quarter to US$20.3 billion.

Wong Ai Ai, principal at Baker & McKenzie.Wong & Leow, noted that deals are taking a longer time to negotiate and close due to gaps in pricing expectations and buyers’ concerns over risks. ‘Deals that were being looked at in the last half of 2011 have either not been completed or have fallen away for these reasons,’ she said.

Singapore companies have slowed down their buying spree abroad, with the overseas deal count falling from 104 in the first quarter last year to 68 this year, though the aggregate value of these deals were 12.3 per cent higher year-on-year at US$2.9 billion.

The total deal value was bolstered by United Fiber System’s proposed acquisition of Indonesia’s Golden Energy Mines through a reverse takeover valued at US$987.8 million.

At the same time, Singapore companies were also less targeted by overseas acquirers, with 30 announced inbound M&A deals in the first quarter compared to 50 deals in the same quarter last year.

This resulted in a 91.6 per cent plunge in the aggregate value of inbound M&A deals to US$224.3 million – the lowest quarterly level since the first quarter of 2004. Chinese acquirers still accounted for the bulk of Singapore’s inbound M&A deals with a 35.1 per cent share.

According to data from Thomson Reuters, Malaysian companies are most targeted in the region by acquirers, followed by Indonesia, Vietnam and then Singapore.

‘There’s been a lot of recent excitement over deals announced across the Causeway, and over the potential assets for sale in Indonesia, so relative to all that activity, Singapore may not look so exciting or well-priced,’ Ms Wong said.

‘But a lot of deal structuring is being done through Singapore, even though the companies involved may not be Singapore companies.’.

Private equity (PE) firms closed smaller M&A deals in the first quarter, with PE-backed deals involving Singapore companies falling by 95.4 per cent year-on-year to US$10.2 million although the deal count remained at five.

In the South-east Asian region, PE-backed M&As marked a 87.8 per cent fall to US$70.2 million while the number of deals declined from 19 in the first quarter last year to 13 this quarter.

Than Su Ee, head of Mezzanine Capital Unit (Private Equity & Special Opportunities) at OCBC Bank, noted that the let-up in M&A activity among PE funds in the last six to nine months is a reflection of the uncertainties surrounding global economic conditions.

‘This is changing as investors are increasingly of the opinion that the eurozone crisis and US economic troubles may have turned the corner,’ he said.

With improvements in economic climate and market liquidity, PE investors are expected to take advantage of better market conditions to undertake M&A financing or exit from their investments, he added. ‘Unless there are any major global economic or political surprises, we should see a return of private equity funds activities in M&A over the next 24 months.’

Slower M&A activities in the first quarter has translated to lower fees for advisors. Estimates from Thomson Reuters/Freeman Consulting Co show M&A advisory fees from completed transactions involving Singapore companies fell 39 per cent from a year ago to US$50 million this quarter.

Leading the pack is Morgan Stanley, which chalked up fees of US$4 million and accounted for 8 per cent of total fees. Daiwa Securities enjoyed the highest jump in estimated fees, enjoying an increase of more than 19-fold from a year ago to US$1.7 million in the first quarter.

World’s Largest Law Firms

This list of the world’s largest law firms by revenue is taken from The American Lawyer and is ordered by 2010 revenue:

Rank	Name	Revenue	Office Reach	Headquarters
1	Baker & McKenzie	$2,104.0m	International	US
2	Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom	$2,100.0m	International	US
3	Clifford Chance	$1,874.5m	International	UK
4	Linklaters	$1,852.5m	International	UK
5	Latham & Watkins	$1,821.0m	International	USA
6	Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer	$1,787.0m	International	UK
7	Allen & Overy	$1,644.5m	International	UK
8	Jones Day	$1,520.0m	International	USA
9	Kirkland & Ellis	$1,428.0m	International	USA
10	Sidley Austin	$1,357.0m	International	USA
11	White & Case	$1,307.0m	International	USA
12	Weil Gotshal	$1,233.0m	International	USA
13	Greenberg Traurig	$1,173.0m	National?	USA
14	Mayer Brown	$1,118.0m	International	USA
15	Morgan, Lewis & Bockius	$1,068.5m	International	USA
16	K&L Gates	$1,034.5m	International	USA
17	DLA Piper USA	$1,014.5m	National…	USA
18	Gibson Dunn	$995.0m	International	USA
18	Sullivan & Cromwell	$995.0m	International	USA
20	Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton	$965.0m	International	USA
21	Reed Smith	$942.0m	International	USA
22	WilmerHale	$941.0m	International	USA
23	Dewey & LeBoeuf	$941.0m	International	USA
24	DLA Piper International	$910.0m	International	UK
25	Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker	$889.0m	National?	USA
26	Morrison & Foerster	$884.0m	National?	USA
27	Simpson Thacher & Bartlett	$870.5m	National?	USA
28	Hogan & Hartson	$864.5m	National	USA
29	Bingham McCutchen	$860.0m	International	USA
30	Lovells^[3]	$849.0m	International	UK
31	Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe	$847.5m	International	USA
32	Davis Polk & Wardwell	$846.0m	International	USA
33	McDermott Will & Emery	$829.0m	International	USA
34	O’Melveny & Myers	$826.5m	International	USA
35	Shearman & Sterling	$801.0m	International	USA
36	Ropes & Gray	$789.5m	International	USA
37	Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld	$719.0m	International	USA
38	Dechert	$713.0m	International	USA
39	Winston & Strawn	$705.0m	International	USA
40	Herbert Smith	$704.5m	International	UK
41	King & Spalding	$677.5m	International	USA
42	Debevoise & Plimpton	$668.0m	International	USA
43	Foley & Lardner	$667.0m	National?	USA
44	Paul Weiss	$665.5m	International	USA
45	Goodwin Procter	$658.0m	International	USA
46	Proskauer Rose	$643.0m	International	USA
47	Fulbright & Jaworski	$642.5m	International	USA
48	Slaughter & May	$628.5m	International	UK
49	Hunton & Williams	$615.0m	International	USA
50	Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy	$601.5m	International	USA
51	Wachtell	$585.0m	International	USA
52	Covington & Burling	$583.0m	International	USA
53	Baker Botts	$575.0m	International	USA
54	Cravath, Swaine & Moore	$568.5m	International	USA
55	Vinson & Elkins	$562.0m	International	USA
56	Eversheds	$556.5m	International	UK
57	Bryan Cave	$555.0m	International	USA
58	Alston & Bird	$551.0m	International	USA
59	Willkie Farr & Gallagher	$549.5m	International	USA
60	Holland & Knight	$545.5m	International	USA
61	Squire Sanders	$545.0m	International	USA
62	Pillsbury Winthrop	$533.5m	International	USA
63	Arnold & Porter	$524.0m	International	USA
64	McGuireWoods	$509.0m	National	USA
65	Cooley Godward	$507.0m	International	USA
66	Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati	$501.0m	International	USA
67	Norton Rose	$481.0m	International	UK
68	Howrey	$480.0m	International	USA
69	Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal	$472.5m	International	USA
70	Garrigues (law firm)	$466.0m	International	Spain
71	Nixon Peabody	$465.0m	International	USA
72	Ashurst	$459.0m	International	UK
73	Cadwalader	$456.5m	International	USA
74	Seyfarth Shaw	$453.5m	National	USA
75	Perkins Coie	$433.0m	International	USA
76	Kaye Scholer	$432.0m	International	USA
77	Fried Frank	$424.5m	International	USA
78	Katten Muchin	$420.5m	International	USA
79	Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan	$419.0m	International	USA
80	Fish & Richardson	$417.0m	International	USA
81	Fidal	$411.0m	National	France
82	Locke Lord Bissell & Liddell	$399.0m	International	USA
83	Minter Ellison	$398.5m	International	Australia
84	McCarthy Tetrault	$397.0m	International	Canada
84	Schulte Roth	$397.0m	International	USA
86	Loyens & Loeff	$396.0m	International	Netherlands
87	Mallesons Stephen Jaques	$392.0m	International	Australia
88	Simmons & Simmons	$391.5m	International	UK
89	Duane Morris	$387.5m	International	USA
90	Allens Arthur Robinson	$380.8m	International	Australia
91	Freehills	$378.0m	International	Australia
92	Troutman Sanders	$376.5m	International	USA
93	Drinker Biddle & Reath	$373.5m	National	USA
94	Littler Mendelson	$370.5m	International	USA
95	Jenner & Block	$367.5m	International	USA
96	Sheppard Mullin	$361.0m	International	USA
97	Clayton Utz	$351.0m	International	Australia
98	Venable	$349.5m	International	USA
99	Finnegan Henderson	$349.0m	International	USA
100	Dorsey & Whitney	$342.0m	International	USA

Don't settle

apple

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

~ Steve Jobs

Drew days

drew2002

Legal luminary Cashin dies at 89

Legal luminary Cashin dies at 89
Ex-Rugby Union president had colon cancer
By Carolyn Quek, Teh Joo Lin & Terrence Voon

ONE of Singapore’s longest-serving lawyers – who took on the inquiry into the 1983 Sentosa cable car tragedy and the sensational Adrian Lim murder trial – died early on Thursday morning after a long battle with cancer.

Mr Howard Edmund Cashin, 89, had practised law here for more than 50 years. So passionate was he about his profession that he spent almost every day in court, said his widow, Mrs Lily Cashin, 53.

Outside the courtroom, he pursued his other passions – rugby and cricket – and was the Singapore Rugby Union’s (SRU) president between 1977 and 1987.

Speaking to The Straits Times at their bungalow in Sarimbun, near Lim Chu Kang, Mrs Cashin said he retired from law practice after contracting colon cancer in 2003.

The cancer went into remission in 2007 after intensive treatment, but resurfaced late last year. Mr Cashin decided to forgo treatment and the cancer took its toll, but he remained mentally alert, even during his last days.

Though he was bedridden when his wife told him the English cricket team had won The Ashes test series, he cried: ‘Oh, that’s wonderful.’

Mr Cashin read law at Oxford and returned to Singapore after World War II. He spent many illustrious years at law firm Murphy & Dunbar.

Dr Myint Soe, 75, a partner with the firm for many years, said he was a meticulous lawyer who excelled at cross-examining witnesses, ‘especially those who were not telling the truth’.

High Court judge Choo Han Teck, 55, once Mr Cashin’s assistant, said he was effective in court because he understood human nature well.

‘He was able to get witnesses to say things they should say – not an easy thing to do in court,’ said Justice Choo.

While he was SRU president, Mr Cashin slapped a life ban on local rugby star Song Koon Poh for flouting the rules. Now 55, Mr Song, says he has no hard feelings towards the man who he feels took Singapore rugby to new heights. ‘He was also the only man to give local rugby a chance then. His passing is a great loss,’ said Mr Song.

Law amended to make it easier for returning lawyers to practise

18 August 2009 2107 hrs (SST)
CNA

SINGAPORE: Parliament has passed amendments to the Legal Profession Act to make it easier for returning lawyers to practise in Singapore. The changes will also ensure Singapore continue to grow as a legal hub.

A law graduate currently has to undergo pupillage at a law firm before being admitted to the Bar in Singapore. But some pupils may have little direct contact with their pupil masters.

Hence, a new Training Contract will replace the pupillage to ensure that trainees have a structured learning programme for six months. It will also ensure the law firms take greater responsibility in the pupil’s training.

Law Minister K Shanmugam said: “The current system doesn’t train pupils adequately and you need to impose that obligation on the law firms. If they are not resourced to train their pupils, we will try and find a way in which they can arrange with other law firms to go and get their pupils trained.

“But the pupils’ interests and the profession’s interest on the whole must not suffer. People should take on pupils with the clear idea that the pupillage period, the entire pupillage period, should be used to train the pupils (and) not to use them as additional labour.

“It is no answer really to say that the law firms may not be in a position to train the pupils. It is not fair to the pupils – which is why we now say we will provide the framework.”

Another change to the Legal Profession Act is the doing away with the existing overlapping powers between the Board of Legal Education and the Law Minister. This is in preparation for the establishment of the proposed Institute of Legal Education next year.

The change will give the Law Minister single exemption power and allow him to exempt lawyers from certain practice training requirements based on their experience and standing. This will shorten the training period and encourage more graduates to return.

The move, however, raised concerns among some members of the House. Ellen Lee, MP for Sembawang GRC, asked: “Why should the minister be the only authority to so decide without consulting the other relevant bodies? What KPIs are in place to measure the quality of applicants’ contributions?”

Mr Shanmugam said: “It’s a government policy. What sort of criteria can we waive? How many lawyers do we need? Should we expand the criteria? These are issues that the minister should decide and be answerable in Parliament here.

“And bearing in mind, currently the minister has and does exercise substantive powers of exemption. So, it’s not a new development.”

Mr Shanmugam said that many Singapore lawyers are sought after by international firms as they are well-educated and have a reputation for hard work.

In view of the fact that Singapore firms are also short of lawyers, it is important to ensure that those trained overseas can come home and practise here, without too many hurdles.

On increasing the intake of law students here to meet aspirations, Mr Shanmugam said that the National University of Singapore (NUS) has almost reached its optimal level. The Singapore Management University (SMU) has also expressed that it wants to keep the cohort small.

Singapore acts to lure overseas-trained lawyers back home

Singapore acts to lure overseas-trained lawyers back home
By Imelda Saad | Posted: 13 February 2009 1755 hrs
CNA

SINGAPORE: Major changes are on the cards for Singapore’s legal education system.

The changes are aimed to ensure Singapore has an adequate supply of local lawyers who can compete against global competition and to strengthen Singapore’s position as a key regional legal education hub.

Law Minister Law Minister K Shanmugam announced the changes in Parliament on Friday.

In hoping to attract overseas-trained Singapore lawyers to come back and practise law at home, the Law Ministry will abolish the one-year-long Diploma in Singapore Law course.

Mr K Shanmugam noted that the course, which is a requirement for all returning lawyers, has proven to be a disadvantage as lawyers feel they can pick up most of what’s taught during practice.

Hence, from June this year, such students will be offered an optional three-month conversion course.

To enhance legal training, measures include:

– revamping the Practice Law Course;

– replacing the pupillage system with training contracts, with the intention of putting the onus on law firms to ensure that trainees have a constructive and structured learning programme;

– the possibility of making continuing legal education mandatory to ensure practising lawyers are up to date on any changes to the law and are familiar with emerging areas of law.

To ensure a steady supply of lawyers, graduates with a Second Class (Lower) degree from approved universities will be admitted to the Singapore Bar without the two-year minimum legal experience requirement.

Adding to this, the Singapore Management University’s Law School will put in place additional measures to add to the pool of lawyers.

The first batch of graduates from SMU will join the industry in 2011.

The NUS Law Faculty will also increase its intake from 220 to 250 students a year.

Together, Mr K Shanmugam said, these moves will result in an almost 70 per cent increase in the number of local law graduates in a few years’ time – from 220 to 370 annually.

He added the incoming Qualifying Foreign Law Practices (QFLPs) will also bring in more lawyers as they consolidate their regional offshore work here.

To oversee the legal education in Singapore, a new statutory board – tentatively called the Institute for Legal Education – will be set up.

Mr K Shanmugam said: “Most essential for a vibrant legal sector are good quality lawyers. Therefore ensuring that legal education and training is top notch is extremely important”.

The minister also gave an update on moves to free up legal services in Singapore.

The Law Ministry notes that despite the current economic crisis, there is potential in the medium term for the legal sector to expand in certain areas.

One example is arbitration as Singapore is fast becoming an arbitration venue of choice.

By mid-2009, Singapore will have the Maxwell Chambers to house arbitration hearings under one roof.

Mr K Shanmugam said: “Our advantage is our connectivity and world class infrastructure, our judicial philosophy in respect to arbitration and being accessible at a much lower expense than some of the other popular arbitration centres.”

Another good sign is that international law firms have been setting up new offices in Singapore in recent months.

In the past four months alone, four new firms opened up offices here, one of them among the Global Top 40.

Another two firms have already registered with the Attorney-General’s Chambers and have announced plans to open new offices in Singapore.

Foreign law firms good for S'pore

ST Aug 27, 2008
Young lawyers get to practise with global firms and gain exposure
By Selina Lum

CHANGES to the Legal Profession Act passed in Parliament yesterday will now open up the hitherto protected legal sector to allow foreign firms more leeway to operate here.

The presence of strong local and foreign law firms will strengthen Singapore’s reputation as the region’s legal services centre, said Law Minister K. Shanmugam.

Young and talented Singaporean lawyers too stand to gain as they will now have more opportunities to practise in big international firms and gain international exposure, he said.

The amendments to the Act follow recommendations made last September by a committee, headed by Justice V. K. Rajah, tasked with developing the legal sector.

They come nine years after the Government first sent signals that the sector should be liberalised.

Three key changes will result from yesterday’s legislative amendment:

Come October, five foreign law firms will be allowed to hire Singapore-qualified lawyers to practise Singapore law in certain areas, namely high-end work in corporate and banking sectors.

Second, an existing scheme in which a local firm ties up with a foreign one has been enhanced, among other things, allowing the foreign part of the venture to share up to 49 per cent of the local constituent’s profits.

Third, the scope of work that foreign firms can carry out in international commercial arbitration involving Singapore law has been widened.

Four of the five parliamentarians who spoke on the issue yesterday were practising lawyers. To a man, the latter expressed concern about the impact of the liberalisation on local law firms. They also had reservations about whether the moves would really benefit Singapore as envisioned.

Mr Shanmugam said he understood their concerns about competition but pointed out that a number of areas would continue to be ‘ring-fenced’ beyond the reach of foreign firms.

These include constitutional and administrative law, conveyancing, criminal law, family law, succession law, trust law for individuals and litigation.

Local firms also stood to benefit if the economy as a whole prospered. ‘We must remember that the decision to liberalise was taken because we believe that it is in the overall economic interest of Singapore. It should also benefit the legal services sector as a whole,’ he said.

Explaining a key driver behind the moves, Mr Shanmugam noted that financial-sector representatives had asked ‘very strongly’ for the legal market to be liberalised.

‘We survive as an economic entity by reason of being open, by reason of being economically competitive. The financial services sector is one of the key pillars of our economy and we have to listen to the feedback from that sector,’ he said.

He later addressed a point made by Mr Sin Boon Ann (Tampines GRC), who was concerned that top local firms could become ‘footnotes in our history books’.

Mr Shanmugam, a partner in Allen & Gledhill until he became Law Minister earlier this year, said he would be the last person to disagree with the point that the major law firms contribute significantly to the legal heritage and legal culture in Singapore.

But when dealing with policy issues, one had to look at things in terms of the benefit to the public, he said.

Singapore’s interest was best served by allowing competition, enabling more choices for young lawyers and creating a more vibrant economic legal market.

‘When that calculation comes through, it cannot be dominated by emotion,’ he said.

To Nominated MP and accountant Gautam Banerjee, who asked for even more liberalisation, he said: ‘We start at five (foreign firms). I think it’s better for us to proceed cautiously and make sure we get it right.’

Law Jokes

ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh?

Q. What do you call an attorney with a 60 IQ?
A. Your Honor.

ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Would you repeat the question?

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, “Where am I, Cathy?”
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan.

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.

ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.

ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.

World's Largest Law Firms

This list of the world’s largest law firms by revenue is taken from The Lawyer and The American Lawyer and is ordered by 2006 revenue:

1. Clifford Chance, £1,030.2m – International law firm (headquartered in the UK);
2. Linklaters, £935.2m – International (UK);
3. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, £884.6m – New York City (USA);
4. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, £882.1m – International (UK);
5. Latham & Watkins, £776.1m – National (USA);
6. Baker & McKenzie, £742.9m – International (USA);
7. Allen & Overy, £736.3m – International (UK);
8. Jones Day, £706.0m – National (USA);
9. Sidley Austin, £617.6m – International (USA);
10. White & Case, £574.7m – International (USA);
11. Weil, Gotshal & Manges, £558.5m – New York City (USA);
12. Mayer Brown, £538.5m – International (USA);
13. Kirkland & Ellis, £533.0m – Chicago (USA);
14. DLA Piper (USA), £489.3m – National (USA);
15. Sullivan & Cromwell, £480.8m – New York City (USA);
16. Greenberg Traurig, £472.8m – National (USA);
17. Shearman & Sterling, £458.8m – International (USA);
18. Wilmer Hale – £447.8m, Washington, D.C. (USA);
19. O’Melveny & Myers, £444.0m – Los Angeles (USA);
20. Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, £442.0m – National (USA);
21. McDermott Will & Emery, £439.3m – National (USA);
22. Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, £417.6m – New York City (USA);
23. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, £409.9m – Los Angeles (USA);
24. Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, £399.5m – New York City (USA);
25. Lovells, £396.2m – International (UK);
26. Hogan & Hartson, £384.6m – National (USA);
27. Morrison & Foerster, £377.5m – San Francisco (USA);
28. DLA Piper (Europe), £366.5m – International (UK);
29. Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, £366.5m – National (USA);
30. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, £339.6m – National (USA);
31. Foley & Lardner, £335.4m – Milwaukee (USA);
32. Davis Polk & Wardwell, £332.1m – New York City (USA);
33. Bingham McCutchen, £325.8m – National (USA);
34. Eversheds, £323.1m – International (UK);
35. Slaughter and May, £321.2m – London (UK);
36. Holland & Knight, £319.5m – National (USA);
37. Dechert , £317.0m – National (USA);
38. Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, £315.4m – National (USA);
39. Winston & Strawn, £313.7m – Chicago (USA);
40. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, £309.3m – New York City (USA);
41. Reed Smith, £309.1m – Pittsburgh (USA);
42. Ropes & Gray, £306.6m – Boston (USA);
43. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, £304.4m – San Francisco (USA);
44. Fulbright & Jaworski, £296.2m – Houston (USA);
45. Herbert Smith, £296.2m – International (UK);
46. Debevoise & Plimpton, £294.2m – New York City (USA);
47. King & Spalding, £282.7m – Atlanta (USA);
48. Vinson & Elkins, £280.2m – Houston (USA);
49. Cravath, Swaine & Moore, £275.0m – New York City (USA);
50. Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, £272.5m – New York City (USA);
51. Cadwalader, Wickersham and Taft, £265.4m – New York City (USA);
52. Heller Ehrman, £261.0m – San Francisco (USA);
53. Hunton & Williams, £261.0m – Richmond, Virginia (USA);
54. Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham – £257.71m – National (USA);
55. Arnold & Porter, £255.8m – Washington, D.C. (USA);
56. Proskauer Rose, £249.2m – New York City (USA);
57. Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, £246.2m – Chicago (USA);
58. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, £243.4m – New York City (USA);
59. Willkie Farr & Gallagher, £243.4m – New York City (USA);
60. LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, £241.8m – National (USA);
61. Baker Botts, £238.7m – Houston (USA);
62. Goodwin Procter, £228.0m – Boston (USA);
63. Simmons & Simmons, £226.9m – International (UK);
64. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, £226.4m – Palo Alto (USA);
65. Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, £225.3m – National (USA);
66. Bryan Cave, £219.0m – National (USA);
67. Alston & Bird, £217.0m – Atlanta (USA);
68. Dewey Ballantine, £215.7m – New York City (USA);
69. Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, £214.3m – New York City (USA);
70. Ashurst, £214.0m – International (UK);
71. Katten Muchin Rosenman, £212.4m – Chicago (USA);
72. Howrey, £211.3m – Washington, D.C. (USA);
73. Kaye Scholer, £210.7m – New York City (USA);
74. Norton Rose, £210.2m – International (UK);
75. Covington & Burling, £208.8m – Washington, D.C. (USA);
76. Nixon Peabody, £205.2m – National (USA);
77. McCarthy Tétrault, £203.8m – National (Canada);
78. Freehills, £194.8m – National (Australia);
79. Mallesons Stephen Jaques, £190.7m – National (Australia);
80. McGuireWoods, £187.4m – Richmond, Virginia (USA);
81. Seyfarth Shaw, £184.9m – National (USA);
82. CMS Cameron McKenna, £181.3m – International (UK);
83. Fidal, £181.3m – National (France);
84. Schulte Roth & Zabel, £176.4m – New York City (USA);
85. Dorsey & Whitney, £175.0m – Minneapolis (USA);
86. Perkins Coie, £174.7m – Seattle (USA);
87. Pinsent Masons, £172.0m – International (UK);
88. Minter Ellison, £171.7m – National (Australia);
89. Clayton Utz, £163.7m – National (Australia);
90. Cooley Godward, £163.7m – Palo Alto (USA);
91. Addleshaw Goddard, £161.3m – National (UK);
92. Duane Morris, £159.6m – Philadelphia (USA);
93. Jenner & Block, £158.0m – Chicago (USA);
94. Baker & Hostetler, £156.0m – Cleveland (USA);
95. Allens Arthur Robinson, £154.9m – National (Australia);
96. SJ Berwin, £154.9m – International (UK);
97. Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, £153.0m – Boston (USA);
98. Thelen Reid & Priest, £152.7m – San Francisco (USA);
99. Loyens & Loeff, £151.9m – Rotterdam (Netherlands);
100. Denton Wilde Sapte, £147.5m – International (UK).

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