Games for Lawyers Not Litigants

Lawyers love games, especially those that take the form of a puzzle or a quiz. The Society has been running quiz nights at The Penny Black over the past few months. For our small 40^th Anniversary party at the premises (which attracted a much larger crowd than we expected – probably because of the roof-top band, The Illegals, from Rajah & Tann), directors in our secretariat dreamed up the idea of a Catchphrase contest and executed it superbly. Five teams battled it out, each with the help (or perhaps burden) of a Council member. Although all ran a good race, the victorious team (from Shook Lin & Bok) was truly outstanding. I was fortunate enough to join them for the ride. Our month-long knowledge quiz about the Society drew many participants, but of course only one winner, who walked away with a very elegant sponsored watch.

It’s no surprise really that lawyers should love puzzles and quizzes. First of all, to get into and through law school requires a competitive streak. It’s usually from law schools that the worst stories of excessive zeal originate – of pages torn from essential library books to hinder the opposition’s revision and the like. Secondly, much of legal problem solving involves logic in the form of deduction from stated premises or induction from experience. Thirdly, much of legal practice is actually about winning a game – whether it is defeating the opponent in a court case or driving the hardest bargain in a transaction. Fourthly, a dash of creativity can prove very valuable – for example, the lateral thinking or flash of intuition that lays bare the motivation of a witness under cross-examination.

It is the desire to solve puzzles that leads lawyers to treat random assemblages of facts as if they were puzzles. It sometimes results in one-dimensional solutions that ignore the complexities and even continuing mysteries of many of the stories and events that come before a court or tribunal for a decision, one way or the other. But that too should come as no surprise – litigation is not about establishing truth in any universal sense, merely about proving the greater entitlement of one particular person to judgment in one particular case (the prize) as against another.

Naturally, for litigants (or at least most of them) the process is not a game of any sort. The decision in the case has life-changing consequences for both winner and loser. That is why litigants who can afford it seek the best legal representation. But those who cannot afford it must also be assured of meaningful access to justice. This requires a mix of legal aid by the state and pro bono efforts by lawyers in order to bridge the gap. Fourteen months ago, I announced our establishment of a review committee with these words:

‘Access to justice comprises three aspects: timeliness of proceedings, simplicity of procedure, and availability and affordability of representation. I need not speak today about the first two aspects. The third, of available and affordable representation, has a mixed scorecard. The quality of lawyers is higher than ever, and comparable with any jurisdiction in the world. In civil and criminal cases, fees are, by any appropriate benchmark, reasonable.  The Singapore lawyer is perhaps the epitome of value for money. Yet there are litigants, especially in family cases and small civil cases, who go unrepresented. In criminal cases, the reach of the Society’s Criminal Legal Aid Scheme is limited. Thorough review is needed of how to deliver legal services to the less well-off, say households in the bottom 40 per cent.  The Society intends to study this issue, and make proposals to Government on how a public-private partnership might better meet the legal needs of the less well-off.’

The review committee, chaired by Jimmy Yim SC and Malathi Das, has done a tremendous job, and by the time this issue reaches you, you will have read from newspaper reports of Parliamentary proceedings and from the press releases of the Society, that a coming together of public and private sector is afoot, a great leap forward indeed, that we hope will benefit those up to the fortieth percentile in our community. It is proof of the old adage, that many hands make the heaviest task lighter. It demonstrates also that lawyers are not all logic and brains, but heart and feeling too. In this, the support of the profession will be vital, but it is a vital task indeed, to earn the ‘badge of honour that proves our collective worthiness to enjoy the rights and privileges of an independent Bar’.

Philip Jeyaretnam, SC

President

The Law Society of Singapore

1  Opening of Legal Year 2006, 7 January 2006

2  Opening of Legal Year 2007, 6 January 2007