Congratulations to our 2020 Justices’ Law Clerks!

(Top to bottom, L to R) Class of 2020: Megan Chua, Ho Linming, Jonathan Tan, Huang Qianwei Violet, Chong Ren Jie, Perry Peh (not in picture)

How do judges make decisions?

Six of our students from the Class of 2020 will soon find out and get to play a part in the process because they have been selected as Justices’ Law Clerks (JLC) this year. First introduced in 1991 by former Chief Justice Yong Pung How, the JLC programme offers top young law graduates the opportunity to train under senior judges and gain valuable exposure to court perspective.

As JLCs, Megan Chua, Ho Linming, Jonathan Tan, Huang Qianwei Violet, Chong Ren Jie and Perry Peh will undertake legal research, draft bench memorandums and provide hearing related assistance to Judges of the High Court and the Court of Appeal.

We congratulate them for having earned their places in the JLC programme with outstanding academic and extra-curricular achievements.

Megan was the top student in her Final Year Exams and received the Adrian Clark Memorial Medal and the Singapore Academy of Law Prize. She also won the APAA Patent Law Book Prize for Law of Intellectual Property, all within the Academic Year of 2019/20.

Linming won the Peter English Criminal Law Prize and received the Law Society of Singapore Book Prize awarded to the top two students in Year 1 Exams. He was also a Finalist in the 2019 Advocacy Cup. Having successfully completed the Exchange Plus Programme, he has also attained a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne.

Jonathan was the NUS Pro Bono Group President in the Academic Year of 2017/18, and during his term he developed the Automated Court Document Assembly platform with the Community Justice Centre. He was also the overall Champion and Runner-up for Best Memorial in the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition (United Kingdom National Rounds 2020) while representing King’s College London on exchange and won Best Speaker for the preliminary rounds in the University of New South Wales Private Law Moot 2019.

Violet has represented NUS as a part of the winning team in several international moots, including the Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition 2020 (Singapore National Round), Nuremberg Moot Court 2019, and the Frankfurt Investment Arbitration Moot 2018. She has also finished an exchange programme in Hebrew University of Jerusalem and completed the Public International Law course by The Hague Academy of International Law.

Ren Jie is a graduate of the Double Degree Programme in Law and Liberal Arts from Yale-NUS College and NUS Law. He also earned a scholarship to study Sanskrit at Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Nepal, and won the Sheila N. Hayre Prize for his final year thesis on the philosophical foundations of the doctrine of wilful blindness.

Perry won Lai Kew Chai Prize in Equity & Trusts and the Koh Han Kok Prize for Public International Law. He was also the Deputy Chief Editor (Journal) of the Singapore Law Review editorial board in 2018/19.