David Cheong Kok Wah

There are very few people that I regard as close friends. David Cheong was one of them.

I first met him in 1976 when I started my pupillage. He was the litigation clerk in the firm. I remember turning up at the firm on the first day of my pupillage and discovering the front door still locked. No one had turned up for work although it was already 9am. The staff then started streaming in and I decided to sit in the conference room, as no one knew anything about my starting pupillage that day. No one even knew what a pupil was and I subsequently discovered that it was because I was the firm's first ever pupil. As I sat in the conference room wondering what I had gotten myself into, David walked in and introduced himself to me. He, at least, knew what a pupil was and expressed surprise that no one told him I would be coming. He quickly put me at ease and, since I was waiting for my master to turn up, he gave me a file to start work on. With a mischievous smile, he told me that it was a messy, probate file that no one in the firm was attending to and that I ought to start by looking at it and sorting it out. Thankfully, my master turned up and after I reported to him, he gave me another file to attend to. I was then able to cheerfully return the messy, probate file to David.

As the days went by, I got to know David. It was difficult to ignore him. He was always grumbling about something or scolding someone. Usually, it was the court clerk. Sometimes it would be clients. I remember forming the impression that he was a man who just wanted matters attended to as soon as possible. He would get particularly annoyed when clients kept calling him up and complaining that their matters were not being attended to when it wasn't his fault. I learnt something important, watching and hearing him grumble constantly. I learnt that it was important to attend to clients' matters as soon as possible. Their matters, while often appearing routine or unimportant to us, were important in their eyes, and having entrusted their matters to us, they had every right to expect us to attend to them.

As the days and months went by, we became friends. We used to lunch together regularly. I started to help him more with his work and research, as he often had no one to help him. I noticed that he was very interested in the law. He often had his own firm views as to what the law was and was utterly unafraid to express them. He was certainly not someone to bite his tongue and refrain from expressing his views. This was another valuable lesson he taught me, although I have to say that I have never been as bold as him when telling people what I think.

After my pupillage, I continued in the firm as a legal assistant. I noticed that there was a subtle change in David's behaviour towards me. When I realised that he was treating me as one of the lawyers in the firm and, therefore, above him in rank,
I remember feeling a great sense of respect for him. He was older and more experienced than I was; yet he was fully prepared to treat me as a superior. As our friendship grew, I encouraged him to study law. At that time, clerks could take up the law course as an articled clerk and, upon completing the same, could practise as lawyers. It was a real struggle for him. He obviously could not be a full-time student since he still had to work. At the same time, he had become a father and had to look after a growing family. His health was also not good, as he had been suffering since birth from a defective heart. Yet, with such seemingly insurmountable odds, David triumphed and was admitted to the Bar. By that time, he had already left the firm we had both been working in.

Although he was practising in a different firm, we got closer as time went on. He was primarily a conveyancer but called me often to discuss the few litigation matters handled by him. Although his cases did not involve large sums of money, he would still go all out to try and secure victory for his clients as though millions of dollars were involved. As time went by, practising started to take its toll on his health which was not good even at the best of times. He developed asthma and this, coupled with his bad heart, would have felled many a lesser mortal. But not David. He may have grumbled about everyone and everything under the sun but I can honestly say that he never grumbled nor was bitter about the cruel hand that fate dealt him. He suffered his bad health stoically. In fact, many times he refused to accept that he was unwell and would still doggedly turn up for work.

The last few years of his practice were particularly tough. He started getting fewer and fewer conveyancing matters because of the fierce undercutting by other conveyancers desperate for business. Although he badly needed the income, he still would not compromise. He still gave quotations based on the scale fees and naturally was not appointed, with the banks steering clients to those lawyers with whom they had arranged 'packages'. Due to his deteriorating health, he could not conduct trials either. At his request, I helped him out by conducting the trials for him. His spirit was amazing. Despite the fact that his asthma did not permit him to get up early, he would still turn up for trials well before the commencement of hearing. He had a deep sense of not short-changing his clients. He refused to use his poor health as an excuse not to do what was required to fully prepare for hearings. Working with him is certainly an experience that I will miss, especially his good humour that never failed him even during the darkest moments of a trial.

David Cheong would never have been appointed a Senior Counsel nor be retained by big clients. He, however, epitomised the great majority of lawyers who go about their work quietly for the small client and whose work never gets noticed. To me, he was a good lawyer: he did his best for his clients and was scrupulously honest with them. To sum up David, he was someone who did his utmost for his clients, whoever they were, and was honest with them. Not only was he a good lawyer, he was, above all, a good man. I, for one, will always miss him. By the way, David and I eventually sorted out that messy, probate file.

George Pereira
Pereira & Tan