Fountain Court is pleased to announce that the winner of the Christopher Bathurst Prize 2022 is Magdalene Ong.  Magdalene is an associate at the WongPartnership in Singapore.  The prize was awarded to her 13 September in Singapore, which was our first in-person prize giving reception since the pandemic. Stephen Moriarty KC and Paul Neo, the Chief Operating Officer of Singapore Academy of Law, presented the Prize.

It is the thirteenth 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 Stephen Moriarty KC of 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 in London.  We hope to welcome Magdalene to London in 2023.

Prior to the Prize-Giving, there was a Virtual Panel Lecture which examined some of the questions raised by this year’s problem. This focussed on: ‘Duty of Care and Professional Liability – An International Perspective’.  The Panel discussed the recent developments in the law of professional negligence, including the circumstances in which a duty of care would be held to arise, the scope of the duty, causation and limitations to recoverable loss.  Adopting a comparative law approach, the Panel considered recent significant decisions of the Singapore and English courts as well as the position under Australian and Indian law.  Siraj Omar SC (Singapore), Zal Andhyarujina SA (India), Kanaga Dharmananda SC (Australia) and Leigh-Ann Mulcahy KC (UK) were on the Panel, moderated by Stephen Moriarty KC. 

The Reception was held at Empress at the Asian Civilisation Museum and the guests included many old and new friends of Fountain Court, spanning the legal profession in Singapore and the Pan-Asia region. The delegation from Chambers included Stephen Moriarty KC, Leigh-Ann Mulcahy KC, Matthew Gearing KC, Andrew Pullen, Nathalie Koh, Alex Taylor (Senior Clerk) and Caroline McConnon (Practice Manager, Asia). They were joined by seven of its door tenants: Arvind Datar SA, Zal Andhyarujina SA and Gaurav Pachnanda SA from India and Professor Benjamin Hughes, Professor Lawrence Boo, Christine Artero and Professor Darius Chan who are all based in Singapore.