The new civil procedure rules for the General Division of the High Court in Singapore, excluding the Singapore International Commercial Court - the Rules of Court 2021 - were gazetted on 1 December 2021, and will come into operation on 1 April 2022. This article examines the impact of the new civil justice regime on the Singapore courts’ approach to assuming jurisdiction over foreign-based defendants (the “service-out jurisdiction”). Prior to its publication, it had been anticipated that ROC 2021 would significantly alter the manner in which the service-out jurisdiction would be asserted. However, as this article highlights, under ROC 2021, and the accompanying Supreme Court Practice Directions 2021, the courts’ overall approach to exercising jurisdiction over defendants outside Singapore is destined to remain largely unaltered. In general terms, this outcome is to be welcomed, as it avoids the conceptual and practical problems that would have arisen had some of the more far-reaching reforms proposed when drafting ROC 2021 been, in fact, implemented.

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