Fountain Court Chambers is delighted to announce that the winner of the Christopher Bathurst Prize 2021 is Hanyin Foo. Hanyin is an associate at Stephenson Harwood in Singapore. We awarded her the Prize at the Christopher Bathurst Virtual Panel Lecture and Prize Giving on 16 November.
It is the twelfth year that chambers has awarded the prize in memory of the late Christopher Bathurst QC (Viscount Bledisloe), who as a member of Fountain Court developed a substantial practice in Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore, while also being a leading practitioner at the Commercial Bar in London. Christopher served as Head of Chambers between 1989-1994. The prize was again kindly supported by the Singapore Academy of Law.
Participants were asked to submit a piece of written legal advice of not more than 3,500 words. The competition question and winning advice can be found here.
Entrants were judged on a variety of criteria, namely originality, critical analysis, succinctness, clarity, persuasiveness and pragmatism. The judges were Michael Brindle QC, former Head of Chambers and a door tenant at Fountain Court, Siraj Omar SC of Drew & Napier and Dr Sandra Booysen, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore. Fountain Court Chambers is grateful for their support and commitment to the prize.
The prize is an all-expense-paid two-week internship at Fountain Court Chambers in London. We hope to welcome Hanyin to London in 2022.
The Panel Lecture prior to the Prize Giving examined some of the questions raised by this year’s Christopher Bathurst Prize problem, being the common feature of commercial contracts: “no oral modification” clauses. They discussed the different interpretations of no oral modification clauses in Singapore, England, Australia and India with a view to assessing the merits and disadvantages of the various approaches. Siraj Omar SC (Singapore), Gaurav Pachnanda SA (India) and Kanaga Dharmananda SC (Australia) and Nathalie Koh (UK) were on the Panel, moderated by Andrew Pullen. Stephen Moriarty QC and Dr Sandra Booysen presented the Prize. Please click here to watch the webinar. All the authorities mentioned can be found here.
