Re Ong Pei Qi Stasia

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Sundaresh Menon CJ
• Judgment Date: 08 March 2024
• Docket Number: Admission of Advocates and Solicitors No 317 of 2023
• Court: High Court (Singapore)

Re Ong Pei Qi Stasia

[2024] SGHC 61

Sundaresh Menon CJ

Admission of Advocates and Solicitors No 317 of 2023

General Division of the High Court

Legal Profession — Admission — Applicant who disclosed previous wrongdoings applying to be admitted as advocate and solicitor in Singapore — Whether applicant could be considered fit and proper person to be admitted

Held, allowing the application:

(1) The requirements to be considered in assessing an application for admission as an advocate and solicitor entailed the consideration of all the relevant circumstances including: (a) the circumstances of the applicant's misconduct; (b) her conduct in the course of any investigations that could have been held in connection with the misconduct; (c) the nature and extent of and the circumstances surrounding the initial and subsequent disclosures about the misconduct made by the applicant in her application for admission; (d) any evidence of remorse; and (e) any evidence of rehabilitation including steps that had been planned or already taken towards achieving the applicant's rehabilitation: at [14].

(2) The applicant's misconduct in passing off her senior's work as her own was serious in nature. That the applicant had made the Untrue Statement during the Inquiry added to the gravity of her misconduct: at [16].

(3) While the seriousness of the applicant's misconduct could not be gainsaid, the applicant had made full disclosure of her misconduct which cast a very positive light not just on her appreciation of her wrongdoing, but also her genuine desire to make a fresh start on the right footing. The applicant had disclosed the Academic Offence at the first opportunity when she filed her admission affidavit and despite that fact that it was an internal disciplinary record within the University. Not only that, the applicant had gone further by disclosing, both to the University and to the stakeholders that she had made the Untrue Statement years earlier during the Inquiry, which but for her disclosure, would have remained undiscovered: at [17] and [18].

(4) The applicant's disclosure of the full details of what had transpired was a remarkable demonstration of her appreciation of her duty of candour to the court which set a positive example of what aspiring lawyers should strive for in such circumstances. Her voluntary disclosures reflected her willingness to right past wrongs and represented a very significant step in her rehabilitation. Having undergone a period of deferment which effectively lasted more than five months, the applicant has had the opportunity to reflect on her misconduct and to understand the ethical implications of the same: at [19] and [21].

(5) Considering the applicant's candour from the inception of her admission application, the lessons she had learnt during the deferment period, the references provided by her supervising solicitor and another senior member of the Bar and the absence of objections to the applicant's admission application by the stakeholders, no further deferment of the application was necessary: at [22].

Case(s) referred to

Suria Shaik Aziz, Re[2023] 5 SLR 1272 (refd)

Tay Jie Qi, Re[2023] 4 SLR 1258 (refd)

Wong Wai Loong Sean, Re[2023] 4 SLR 541 (refd)

Facts

The applicant, Ms Ong Pei Qi Stasia, committed plagiarism in one of her modules in her second year of university in 2020. She had copied and pasted text from a set of notes passed down from her senior in school.

On 19 May 2020, the applicant received an e-mail from the National University of Singapore (the “University”)'s Faculty of Law (“NUS Law”) requiring her to attend an inquiry (the “Inquiry”). At the Inquiry, a member of the University staff asked the applicant to explain why her answer bore substantial similarities to the answers to the same question that had been submitted by three other students. The applicant stated that she had worked off a set of notes and prepared a separate document which was substantially amended but had accidentally submitted the wrong document which contained only slight amendments. In truth, there was no document which had been substantially amended. Thus, the applicant made an untrue statement when she said that she had accidentally submitted the wrong document (the “Untrue Statement”).

Following the Inquiry, the University concluded that the applicant had committed the academic offence of plagiarism (the “Academic Offence”). The University was unaware of the Untrue Statement at that time. The applicant subsequently completed her undergraduate studies without any further incidents.

On 15 May 2023, the applicant filed her application for admission to the Bar in the course of which she voluntarily disclosed that she had committed the Academic Offence and that she had made the Untrue Statement during the University's Inquiry into her plagiarism. Following these disclosures, both the Attorney-General and the Singapore Institute of Legal Education objected to the applicant's admission application and sought a period of deferment of five months to allow the applicant to reflect on her actions. The applicant agreed to the deferment.

The period of deferment came to an end on 20 January 2024 and the matter was restored for hearing, with none of the stakeholders objecting to the application.

Lim Wei Loong Ian and Elizabeth Tan (TSMP Law Corporation) for the applicant;

Jeyendran Jeyapal and Chow Zi En (Attorney-General's Chambers) for the Attorney-General;

Darryl Chew Zijie (Chia Wong Chambers LLC) andKimberly Ng (Salem Ibrahim LLC) for the Law Society of Singapore;

Chong Soon Yong Avery (Avery Chong Law Practice) for the Singapore Institute of Legal Education.

8 March 2024

Sundaresh Menon CJ:

Introduction

1 HC/AAS 317/2023 (“AAS 317”) concerned an application by Ms Ong Pei Qi Stasia (the “applicant”) for admission as an advocate and solicitor of the Supreme Court. In view of the applicant's academic misconduct during her period of study at the National University of Singapore (the “University”)'s Faculty of Law (“NUS Law”), the Attorney-General (“AG”) and the Singapore Institute of Legal Education (“SILE”) had previously sought an adjournment of the application for five months, and the applicant had agreed to the same. I refer to this as the “period of deferment” because its effect was to defer consideration and disposal of the application. The period of deferment ended on 20 January 2024 and the application was then listed for hearing. At the hearing before me on 27 February 2024, I found that the applicant was a fit and proper person and I admitted her as an advocate and solicitor. These are the grounds for my decision.

Facts

2 I begin by briefly recounting the facts which led to the present application. On 28 April 2020, nearly four years ago, the applicant, who was an undergraduate student at the time, sat for an open-book examination accounting for 70% of her grade for a module. Her answers were typed and for one of the essay questions, the applicant “copied and pasted [some text] from [a set of] muggers notes” (these being notes passed down from senior students) onto her answer. The text in question was in fact taken from the sample essay of a student who was her senior. On 19 May 2020, the applicant received an e-mail from NUS Law requiring her to attend an inquiry.

3 On 22 May 2020, NUS Law convened an inquiry into the applicant's potential commission of an academic offence (the “Inquiry”). A member of the University staff sought an explanation for the fact that the applicant's answer to that essay question bore substantial similarities to the answers to the same question that had been submitted by three other students. The applicant explained that she had been working on her draft exam answer with two separate Microsoft Word documents opened on her computer and that she had been amending them simultaneously. One document contained the sample essay with slight amendments and the other document contained a copy of the same sample essay which she was “working to amend afresh”. She elaborated that she had submitted the “wrong” document when she submitted the document bearing the slight amendments. This therefore implied that the applicant had prepared a separate document which she had substantially amended and which did not bear substantial similarities to the answers submitted by the...