Speech by Mr Edwin Tong, Senior Minister of State for Law & Health, at the Law Society Pro Bono Services’ Fundraising Dinner “Just Makan”

29 MAR 2019

29 Mar 2019 Posted in Speeches

Chairman, Law Society Pro Bono Services, Mr Gregory Vijayendran, SC,
Chairperson, Just Makan Fundraising Committee, Mr Thio Shen Yi, SC,
Colleagues and friends,

Good evening. I am very glad to be here tonight.
Thank you for inviting me to be part of your fundraising event in celebration of pro bono work in Singapore.
Pro bono work is a cornerstone of our legal fraternity – we will always seek to uphold that in the policies that we make and the things that we do. We can speak of good schemes – the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme (CLAS), Community Legal Clinics, etc. – but as Greg^[1] mentioned, it will not be workable without the people around me today. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to these individuals, collectively or individually, all of you, for making these services so readily available, and for being so giving of your time and so generous, despite the pressures of practice, which I am only too familiar with, and also of course, the demands that your own families have made of you as well. So can you join me as we applaud these people, and give them the recognition they deserve.
The Law Society’s pro bono scheme has really grown from strength to strength, and if I may be permitted to just trace a little bit of history:

a. In 1985, many years ago, they started the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme.

b. Law Society has now gone into a broad range of activities that help many different groups, and this includes Community Legal Clinics and Law Awareness talks for the general public. There are also specialised legal assistance programmes for the elderly, students, employees, foreign workers, and other specialised groups; in particular, the more vulnerable class of persons in society.

c. Law Society’s pro bono activities have grown so much that its pro bono arm has gone from being just a small department within the Law Society – run by a classmate of mine, the redoubtable Lim Tanguy, for many years the champion of pro bono services in the Law Society – to a standalone charity now, the Law Society Pro Bono Services or ‘LSPBS’
This growth of pro bono work was made possible only through the strong support of so many donors and volunteers from within the legal fraternity.
Law Society and LSPBS could not have helped so many people over the years without all of you today.
Your generous contributions have made a real difference in people’s lives.

Criminal Legal Aid Scheme (CLAS)
Perhaps this is seen most significantly in CLAS, the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme.
CLAS, as I said, was started in 1985 as a ground-up initiative by Law Society and its volunteer lawyers. Over the years, volunteers have selflessly committed their time, expertise, and of course, in such work, more than just legal skills, more than just time, the passion and dedication that you put into each and every single case.
With the rising number of litigants-in-persons in recent years, more support was needed.
In 2015, Government started providing direct funding under the Enhanced CLAS, and worked closely with the Law Society, the Criminal Bar and the Courts to enhance the scheme.
The number of accused persons assisted each year is now almost four times the number of cases assisted before Enhanced CLAS was launched. These accused persons are unlikely to have been able to afford lawyers on their own.
The growth of cases served by CLAS required strong support from the legal fraternity. Our lawyers and law firms, collectively and individually, rose to that challenge:

a. Individual lawyers volunteered with CLAS, as I mentioned;

b. Law firms pledged to take on a fixed number of CLAS cases each year; and

c. The five largest law firms we have – Allen & Gledhill, Dentons Rodyk, Drew & Napier, Rajah & Tann and WongPartnership – seconded or sponsored young lawyers to join the CLAS Fellowship.
We will be recognising several of these law firms and volunteer lawyers with awards later this evening, all of them richly deserved.
I’ll give you a real life example of how lives have been changed by CLAS:

a. There was a young man, 33 years old, who suffered from a mental condition called cyclothymic disorder. This gave him serious mood swings between periods of depression and also hypomania.

b. He was charged with housebreaking, as he had entered a neighbour’s flat one night by opening the window. He loitered inside the flat but did not take anything. He had committed similar offences before and was looking at a stiff jail sentence.

c. He sought help from CLAS as he could not afford his own lawyer. His CLAS lawyer found out about his mental condition; not initially, but after some probing and some research, he found out that this could have explained why he repeatedly committed such offences, as unlike other housebreakers, he would enter houses and loiter without taking anything.

d. His lawyer explained this to the Court, and the Court agreed to sentence the young man to probation with psychiatric treatment and close monitoring by his family.

e. This gave him a better chance of recovering with the help of his family members, instead of going to jail, which the IMH psychiatrist assessed might in this case actually worsen his condition.
This case was done by a CLAS Fellow, Siraj Sheik Aziz, who was sponsored by the CLAS Fellowship firms. Thank you very much, Siraj.

Community Legal Clinics
Another pro bono programme which touches the lives of so many people is the Community Legal Clinics.
These clinics provide free basic legal advice to around 2,000 vulnerable members of our community each year.
Those who seek help at these clinics are often stressed and worried. They really are faced with a myriad of different legal problems and they often don’t know who to turn to, where to turn to, and what to do. The lawyers who volunteer at these clinics provide a listening ear, work out what the problems are, give legal advice and most importantly, handhold and guide them on the next possible steps.
For example, John (which is not his real name), drives a rental car for a living. John went on holiday and found another driver to take over the car for two weeks, which is really not that uncommon.

a. He gave the other driver money to pay for the car rental, but the other driver ran away with the money, and the car rental company then demanded more than $5,000 in damages. Not at first blush necessarily a large sum of money, but for someone like John, it meant the world.

b. He didn’t know what to do and sought the help of lawyers at the Community Legal Clinics. At the clinic, the volunteer lawyer advised him on his rights and how he could resolve this, and eventually it was resolved.

c. A few months later, John took the time to write a thank-you note to LSPBS. He said that he had been able to resolve the issue peacefully through greater knowledge of the situation. He especially thanked his volunteer lawyer. He wrote this, and I quote, “Dickson – if you happen to read this, I just want to express my gratitude for your advice. I am thankful for people like you”.
Stories like this go on ad nauseam; each of you will have a different story to tell, each of you will have a different perspective. But like Greg said, each of you has served one person in society who is vulnerable, and was otherwise unable to manage himself or herself. Indeed, each year, out of the 2,000 people who seek help at the legal clinics, around 80% of them say that the advice they received from the volunteer lawyer was useful and they follow the steps recommended by the lawyer.
Again, this is all thanks to the volunteer lawyers who generously gave up their time and expertise to see each and every different case, big or small.
As Greg mentioned, last September, I attended the launch of the Law Awareness Weeks @CDC. This is a very good program that has grown from strength to strength over the years as well. I spoke to many lawyers and law students who were very passionate about giving up their time, and this happened over several weekends, so it is not an easy ask for lawyers and volunteers. Every one of them had a story to tell about their experience. They all found some aspect of their volunteer work – whether it was meeting with the residents in need, dealing with the problem, feeling a sense of satisfaction that they had helped in some way, big or small – they all had a difference experience, and they all found the experience very meaningful.
Finally, funding support from LSPBS’ donors and partners is obviously also very critical. For all that we want to try and do to help our society and to put out pro bono services as much as we can, without the efforts of donors and fundraisers like Shen^[2] and his team tonight, this would not be possible. For example, the funding has enabled LSPBS to expand its legal clinic network to support additional “satellite clinics” around Singapore, and has also provided LSPBS with resources to run specialised legal clinics for vulnerable groups such as victims of sexual abuse.

Conclusion and Call to Action
In the time that I have, I have provided only a few examples of the many, many different stories that volunteer lawyers have. If you go around the table and exchange ideas, you will see that what I have said is true – there are so many different stories, and different contexts and different colour to the stories; so please do catch up with each other. You have a whole suite of pro bono programmes and services that seek to enhance access to justice and you play such a critical role in what I believe is a cornerstone pillar of our legal fraternity. As I said, there are many more of such examples which serve to show the strong bond between the legal fraternity and the community at large.
So I encourage all of you to give and bid generously at tonight’s Live Auction and also the silent one, and support this very meaningful cause. All proceeds from Just Makan will enable LSPBS to carry on making a difference in the lives of so many people.
Lastly, I do want to share another quote with you, on why we do pro bono work. This is something that the first female judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, said in 1999, not that long ago and still holds true today. She said, and I quote:

“Public service marks the difference between a business and a profession. While a business can afford to focus solely on profits, a profession cannot. It must devote itself first to the community it is responsible to serve. I can imagine no greater duty than fulfilling this obligation. And I can imagine no greater pleasure.”
I believe that’s the sentiment of everyone in this room today, and that’s why you’ve given, and that’s why you continue to give, to pro bono services. On that note, I would like to thank all of you in our most esteemed and noble profession, every donor and every volunteer, everyone who has given time and effort and compassion, for playing a part in giving back to the community. Your efforts have made all of this possible, and long may it continue.
Thank you very much.

^[1] Chairman, Law Society Pro Bono Services, Mr Gregory Vijayendran, SC. ^[2] Chairperson, Just Makan Fundraising Committee, Mr Thio Shen Yi, SC

Last updated on 03 Apr 2019