Legal eagles recall old days to mark Law Society's 40th year

A committed and good journalist, salute him...
"Mr Hwang acquired a reputation for short but incisive court reporting that showed up a lawyer's or judge's competence or otherwise."

ST> Home>
Legal eagles recall old days to mark Law Society's 40th year
19 Oct07.

CJ and top counsel share personal reflections in special issue of Law Gazette
By K.C. VIJAYAN (Law Correspondent )
MENTION the name TF Hwang, and lawyers who cut their teeth in the 1960s and 70s will smile.
One or two might even scowl. "TF" was a journalist who could make or break a lawyer's day with his reporting.
Mr Hwang acquired a reputation for short but incisive court reporting that showed up a lawyer's or judge's competence or otherwise.
Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong fondly recalled the then Straits Times court reporter's regular post-retirement column, "Down Memory Lane".
Mr Hwang died in April last year.
CJ Chan added that, given Mr Hwang's knowledge of the law, "magistrates would become reticent whenever he was in the courtroom".
Writing in the latest issue of the La~ Gazette, he recalled other nuggets about what law practice was like in Singapore from 1963 to 1986. He was then in private practice.
He and other luminaries were asked to write about the era by the Law Society to mark its 40th anniversary.
The other personal reflections included those from Singapore's Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh and Senior Counsel K.S. Rajah and Michael Hwang.
Among other things, CJ Chan reminisced about professional ethics, compensation for solicitors' frauds and the founding of tile Law Society.
He noted a lawyer's trade in the 1960s was "generally slow and easy going' and he did "everything that came along".
This was "unlike today when young lawyers had to specialise", and there is lack of opportunities for lawyers in large firms "to get into the act".
He said the changes in law practice have "been vast and in some areas unrecognisably so".
"If I were to start practice today, it is most unlikely that I will end my legal career in public service, such are the current and future economic and social forces that bear, and will bear, on law practice," he said.
Senior Counsel K.S. Rajah, who started work as a deputy public prosecutor in 1963, said in those days, "trade unions, students and secret societies were in defiant mood but prosecutors were expected to be fair, reasonable and present their cases fairly to court".
Among other things, he said as DPP, he would direct a police officer to produce an accused person before a magistrate when told the latter wanted to make a confession.
He noted that in the Gold Bars murder case in 1973, seven confessions were taken this way.
Mr Rajah noted that the procedure adopted by magistrates then was different from the current practice of the police in recording confessions at police stations.
Senior Counsel Michael Hwang said lawyers in the 1970s led an 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," he said.
Writing in a personal capacity on law and diplomacy in the same commemorative issue, Professor Tommy Koh said the "Singapore's school of diplomacy is a fusion of hard-headed realpolitik and pragmatic idealism".
"Singapore's leaders and diplomats are known and respected for their unsentimental and logical analysis of international situations and regional trends," he observed.
vijayan@sph.com.sg