HISTORY OF THE COMPETITION
Since 2011/2012, members of Essex Court Chambers have jointly hosted a mooting competition for junior lawyers (with fewer than 3 years’ Post-Qualification Experience) in Singapore, in conjunction with the Singapore Academy of Law .
This prestigious competition gives entrants an unrivalled opportunity to develop and demonstrate their advocacy and legal reasoning skills. It has traditionally attracted entries from teams of the highest calibre, both from Singapore law firms and other Singaporean legal organisations (including from the Attorney-General’s Chambers and Justices’ Law Clerks) and, in more recent years, other jurisdictions in the Asia-Pacific region.
The judging panels for the competition in previous years have comprised eminent members of the Singapore legal community, including two former Attorneys General of Singapore, Mr Sundaresh Menon SC and Mr Steven Chong SC (as they then were), as well as the Honourable Justice Quentin Loh, Justice Aedit Abdullah, Justice Vinodh Coomaraswamy, Justice Kannan Ramesh and Justice Ang Cheng Hock of the Singapore High Court and the Honourable Judge of Appeal Steven Chong of the Singapore Court of Appeal, together with senior practitioners at Essex Court Chambers, including Joe Smouha QC, Andrew Hochhauser QC, David Foxton QC (as he then was), Roderick Cordara QC, Jern-Fei Ng QC and Mr Michael Thomas CMG QC (former Attorney-General of Hong Kong). In recent years, the Honourable Justice Datuk P Nallini of the Malaysian Federal Court has also joined the judging panel for the Competition’s Grand Final.
The past winners of the competition have been:
- 2020/21 – Chow Zi En (Attorney General’s Chambers) and Wong Yan Yee (Wong Partnership)
- 2019/20 –Dennis Saw Teng Sheng and Ho Qi Rui Daniel (Supreme Court of Singapore)
- 2018/19 – Rachel Tan Xi’en (CIL Practice Fellow, NUS) and Dana Chang (Wong Partnership)
- 2017/18 – Victor Leong (Justices’ Law Clerks) and Joshua Hiew (Allen & Gledhill LLP)
- 2016/17 – Nicholas Liu and Bethel Chan (Justices’ Law Clerks)
- 2015/16 – Devathas Satianathan and Gek Min Yeo (Justices’ Law Clerks)
- 2014/15 – Raeza Ibrahim & Sadhana Rai (Drew & Napier LLC)
- 2013/14 – Daniel Gaw & Nicholas Poon (Justices’ Law Clerks)
- 2012/13 – Joshua Lim & Keith Han (Justices’ Law Clerks)
- 2011/12 – Pardeep Singh Khosa & Mahesh Rai (Drew & Napier LLP)
