Opening Remarks by Senior Minister of State for Law and Education, Indranee Rajah, at the Young Singapore International Arbitration Centre Conference 2015

04 JUN 2015

4 Jun 2015 Posted in Speeches

Introduction

Good morning. I must say that when I first heard about the conference, I was very excited about the initiative and to be able to spend some time this morning with all of you.
To say that the legal landscape in Singapore is evolving and changing would be a bit of an understatement. When I started off as a lawyer, arbitration was viewed as something close to an ‘alien’ enemy of the court, meaning that the attitude of the industry as a whole as well as the court was not friendly towards arbitration. That was the time when foreign lawyers could not arbitrate in Singapore, when arbitration, such as it was, when it was appealed and went to court, would be regularly overturned.
It has been a far cry since then. The change really came in 2003 when we had the Remaking Singapore Committee. One of them was a working group for Legal Services. Minister Shanmugam, who was then still in practice, along with myself, were on that committee and we made various recommendations for arbitration including the setting up of a center for arbitration and this is what we see today. So it has made tremendous strides in the past few years and we are glad to see that arbitration has really taken off in a big way in Singapore.
Society has changed and is changing. The world is becoming more complex and we have to respond to these changes. My colleagues and I at the Ministry have therefore been adding to the pot new areas of work such as in commercial dispute resolution, updates to legislation in a number of areas. The latest offering we have is the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC). I will say more about it later because the question that often crops up is where does the SIAC sit and where does the SICC sit.

Development of Singapore as Asia’s dispute resolution hub
It is an established fact that Asia has witnessed exponential growth in trade and business, outperforming the global economy. By extension, regional demand for legal services in ASEAN is also expected to increase.
Law firms and lawyers have benefitted from the surge in international arbitration activity here and we think that there will be more. This was the result of a series of calculated measures on our part over several years to open up our arbitration practice and today as a result of those measures; Singapore is the 3rd most preferred arbitration seat in the world; while the SIAC is the 4th most preferred arbitral institution.
Singapore lawyers and firms have benefitted greatly from this as many of our local firms have been involved in around half of SIAC’s arbitrations. I must also add that Singaporean lawyers are also getting a healthy share of appointments as arbitrators with over 60% of party appointments in 2014.
We cannot and should never rest on our laurels. Given the regional economic outlook, there are many more opportunities to seize. We want to build on the success of what we have so far, we have a number of plans in place to expand the scope of Singapore as a dispute resolution hub.

Capitalise on dispute resolution options
What I would like to ask you to do really, is to capitalize on this. We have the arbitration in SIAC and then we have SICC. People often ask us what is the difference between the two, when should I use one and not the other and will one cannibalize the other. When we conceptualised the SICC, the idea was to complement, not to compete with or take away from SIAC. But rather to think of them as two different dispute resolution products and we have added the third which is the Singapore International Mediation Centre.
Imagine the scenario where you are dealing with your client. He has a dispute which he wants resolved and the question is which dispute resolution platform you would use. Arbitration is for those who would want to keep it confidential, prefer that there is no right of appeal and that is really the essence of arbitration. Finally, there is also the ability to choose specific arbitrators for specific areas.
SICC was conceived very much as a court still, so the default is that it is open court. So that is already one big difference. Another difference is third party proceedings. As you know, for arbitration, it is really the parties to contract but often in disputes, it is not just the parties to contract who may have the potential liability because the defendant in the arbitration may say that it is the fault of a third party then you cannot get the third party in the arbitration unless the third party consents.
What the SICC does is that it brings in the normal court procedure of allowing the court to add a third party or a fourth party to the proceedings without them having a choice. But we also realise that if you are going to set up a Court and you want attract international litigation, then you should also give some flexibility so to that extent, we have had some relaxation of the rules of evidence and on discovery to allow a certain element of choice and foreign lawyers can also appear but within prescribed parameters.
In essence the two are different products but for you as practitioners, it is great because either one is critical to you. In terms of the SICC, for the local lawyers, it enables you to get international work and work with international partners. If it is a purely foreign law matter then foreign lawyers do have the opportunity to appear provided they meet the requirements and criteria. But the point here is that, from the client’s perspective, you are now able to say to your client that there are different products that you can advise on which will suit to their needs. For you, it is an opportunity to be exposed to international dispute resolution.
I should also mention about the Singapore International Mediation Centre (SIMC) because we also realise that there is a demand for alternative means of dispute resolution as opposed to just slugging it out in arbitration or litigation. This is because at some stage, some disputes are so costly, so complex, that it really makes sense to mediate. So mediation via SIMC can offer win-win situations to parties because there is a flexible mix of legal and non-legal solutions. What they will be doing is focusing on providing quality international commercial mediation services for cross-border disputes.
Where we want to position ourselves is really at the cross-cultural understanding and ability to resolve disputes. Singapore sits at the cross roads of the East and the West and anybody who has been involved in a cross-border conflict knows that cultural issues come to the fore when you are trying to achieve resolution.
Interestingly, the SIAC and SIMC are offering an innovative hybrid option - the Arb-Med-Arb Protocol which will provide the unique benefit of enforceability of mediated settlements under the New York Convention.

Branding and Marketing
I also wanted to take this time to talk about the importance of branding and marketing yourselves. The arbitration circuit is not like the litigation circuit in the sense that there is overlap certainly in the Singapore context. In Singapore, many of our counsel who do litigation also do arbitration. But in other jurisdictions that is not always the case. So a question that comes up from young practitioners doing arbitration is how do I break into this circle, how do I get into the arbitration circuit, how do I make a name for myself.
It is really about understanding that you need to be your own brand, you need to find your own market niche, you need to have something about you that is different from the others and other people need to know about that. So that is something you need to think about if you are intending of specialising in a particular area, you need to have a plan, it doesn’t just happen. But for the very few or the very fortunate, who are in a developing market, the growth maybe organic and your rise to the top maybe accidental. But I think in the current climate, where there is a lot of competition, if you do want to get to the very top of international arbitration, you do have to have a plan.
The value of today’s event is that it gathers all of you in the same room which gives you the opportunity to network with each other. In another 10 years, I assume all of you will be at the top of your profession and you will be the leading arbitration practitioners and the leading arbitrators. But you need to have friends in the community, people whom you can call and refer cases to, people who you know will be good arbitrators, people whom you can get the sensing of if they are on the other side. All of that comes from the networking that you do.

Development of Young Lawyers
The Government can and will do our part to develop the necessary framework and sectoral infrastructure.
On 8 July, the Ministry and Singapore Academy of Law will be holding a conference to examine the driving forces that are shaping our legal landscape. Flyers for the conference are in your conference pack and I would urge you to attend. The conference will bring together a group of respected legal futures experts and thinkers to discuss how these driving forces are already manifesting and to engage the legal community on future possibilities. In a world where change is relentless, it is imperative that Singapore lawyers keep abreast of global developments and technological trends that will inexorably impact your careers.
Let me cite one such example of data analytics. In many countries, including Singapore, data analytics is being used in a big way to analyse data, to pick out patterns, themes, etc. The accountants have their own version of the software which allows them to do their forensic accounting where they are able to pick out certain patterns of the way money moves, so that they can identify instances such as fraud.
Lawyers only have documents to rely on but if you start going into data analytics, it could probably pick up the patterns, behaviours or certain facts a lot faster thereby saving you days and possibly weeks of time when trying to identify what the fraudster has done.
I am not saying that there is a one size fits all software out there but rather I am saying that this is a tool which I can see going forward, if you have very complex cases where you are looking for patterns or behaviour, where you are looking to check for facts, or where you looking for a certain theme which will make up your case theory, data analytics is going to be increasingly important.
It is just one example of what technology can do, but you can see that some law firms will be outsourcing certain types of services, because as things get more competitive, your clients are not going to want to pay for the usual ‘$X per hour’ but rather for value. This means that if you are spending thousands of hours on discovery just going through documents, as opposed to having a technological solution to that, your client might not be so willing to pay.
So where does that leave the lawyer? You have to climb higher and higher on the value chain, which means that the low value tasks have to be outsourced or delegated. And that is what the Legal Futures Conference is about, it is about asking lawyers to think about the future of lawyering and to see what we can do to adapt to that change and be ahead of it before it is forced upon us.
With that I would like to wrap up by saying that I would encourage you to:
1. Be constantly hungry for exposure that will help you develop your skills in advocacy
2. Stay up to date on developments in the law and dispute resolution.
3. Acquire multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural skills to complement your legal work
4. Take calculated risks and do not be afraid to seek opportunities in the region even if it means stepping out into something new and untried.
5. Maintain high standards of practice, ethics and service standards.
In other words - uphold the best traditions of the Bar and always strive to be a lawyer par excellence.

Conclusion
I believe firmly that Asia is where the growth is; our suite of commercial dispute resolution options in Singapore will play a large part in dispute resolution and that it will be a wonderful opportunity for all of you to grow and develop as young arbitration practitioners.
Thank you very much.

Last updated on 04 Jun 2015