PM Lee Hsien Loong at Lee and Lee’s 60th Anniversary Celebrations

Ms Kwa Kim Li, lawyers and staff of Lee and Lee

I am very happy to be here today to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Lee and Lee. Both my parents started the firm together with my uncle Dennis Lee Kim Yew on 1 September 1955. At that time, Singapore was still a British colony. I was a toddler and now, I am almost qualified to join the Pioneer Generation!

Early Days at the Office

Lee and Lee’s first office was at 10-B Malacca Street. It was rented from Mr Lee Choon Guan who was Kim Li’s great grandfather. As a child, I would visit, once in a while, the office. The office that I can remember in my mind was on the third floor, above a row of shophouses. There was a coffeeshop downstairs. There was no front door on the street, just a narrow staircase going down one floor and the next floor, and then the office on top. The office was a long, narrow room, about the shape of the shophouse plot on which it sat, and the partners had small rooms right at the end, overlooking Malacca Street. But the rest of the office was open and, nowadays, I suppose we would call it an open-plan office.

It was a modest office furnished with second-hand furniture. It had one photocopy machine, a precious instrument that was very rare, not a Xerox machine – those had not been invented yet – but a wet chemical process, messy and finicky to use. I remember it particularly because on one occasion when my parents needed some documents copied urgently after work, after hours we made a trip to the office at 10-B Malacca Street late in the evening and opened up the office. We made the copies and took all the messy extra wet bits back home — quite an expedition. Nowadays, you just press print.

Lee and Lee shared the premises with Mr Lee Kip Lee, who is here with us tonight. He was one floor below, sharing the staircase and the toilet with Lee and Lee. Mr Lee is a friend of my parents, and he was one of Lee and Lee’s first clients. And I am very glad that he is here tonight, with his three sons, Dick, Peter and John. I have also known Dick Lee and knew that we were both Lees together, but I did not know that we had the Lee and Lee connection!

The firm started with just a few staff. Rahman, the office boy, was then only 15 years old. Molly Yap, my mother’s long-term PA, whom many of you will remember well, was also from the beginning, and Mr Ow Yong Thian Soo, who is still working with the firm. He started at the Malacca Street office, joining the firm 47 years ago as a junior stenographer, worked his way up the ranks, and my mother encouraged him to become an articled clerk. When he qualified, my mother took him on as her pupil. He was called to the bar in 1983 and is now a senior partner heading the real estate department. I am very glad that he is here this evening, and to present him a long service award later! There was also one blind telephone operator who came to work every day by bus and he told my mother – this was according to conversations with my dad years later – that he always knew when to get off the bus, even though he was blind, because when he crossed the Singapore River, he could smell it! And I have used his story a number of times to tell the story of how the Singapore River has changed. I could not confirm his name, but I am told Mr Goh Joon Seng remembers him as a stenographer who worked for my father, so we are not quite sure. But I can relate to his story, because when I went to the Malacca Street from Oxley Road, I had a similar experience. We would drive down River Valley Road, we turn right at Clarke Quay to cross the Singapore River. Before you cross the Singapore River, there is a spot which you will remember, which you may know now where there is sort of a four-way junction with a fountain in the middle. It is very beautiful. In the old days, it was a four-way road junction and in the middle, there was a public toilet. You always knew when you drove past the public toilet. Then we would take Read Bridge across the Singapore River, down Chulia Street and Market Street before you come to Malacca Street. At Chulia Street and Market Street, you had lots of shops along the shophouses selling delicacies, raw ones – sea cucumbers, squid, shark’s fins – and they would be laid out along the street to dry, and when you walked past, you could smell them also. So finally to Malacca Street. Therefore this journey to Lee and Lee was an odoriferous experience!

Today, Malacca Street is completely changed, no more shophouses or sea cucumbers, and at what used to be 10-B Malacca Street stands Republic Plaza, 64 storeys high! Lots of shops there, including one CYC Custom tailors. I mention them because they were one of my mother’s early clients and they have also been tailoring shirts for our family for a long time. Lee and Lee itself has long moved elsewhere.

Early Days of the Founding Partners

In the early days, my parents and Dennis Lee worked hard to get Lee and Lee off the ground and pay the bills. My father had started off at Laycock & Ong. He spent a lot of his time representing trade unions, working often pro bono — so much time that John Laycock wrote him a letter, expressing his displeasure but in typical British understated style. They were unhappy but they put it in a polite way. The letter was displayed at the “Remembering Lee Kuan Yew” exhibition held at the National Museum earlier this year. But in case you didn’t make the exhibition or didn’t see the letter, let me read it out to you because when you draft many letters, it is useful to know how to do these things.

“Dear Harry,

Ong and myself have been discussing the question of members of our firm appearing in these lengthy arbitrations or commissions on wages etc. which are now all the vogue. We have been suffering from these heavily during the past few months. Coupled with the absences of so many of our qualified lawyers during March, they have left us with a backlog of purely legal work in the way of our ordinary business which cannot easily be overtaken. We have come to the conclusion that we must not take any more of these wage disputes. They can never be short, we fear, because they are always preceded by long negotiations; and we can see clearly that it is likely there will be more, perhaps many more, in the near future.

If any special case arises, the same might be specially considered by us; in that case, please let us have full information before you accept any work.

Yours Sincerely,

John Laycock”

This is quite a classy letter and probably played a part in the foundation of Lee and Lee!

So my father moved next door – John Laycock was probably at 11 or 12 Malacca Street – set up at 10-B Malacca Street, Lee and Lee, and took on all sorts of cases to make a living. Divorces, chap jee kee runners, routine debt collection, and he continued to be active in the unions and politics. After he became Prime Minister in 1959, he tapped Lee and Lee for talent, and persuaded some of the partners to join him in politics. Eddie Barker became Minister for Law and drafted the Separation documents, including the Proclamation of Independence. Chua Sian Chin, who joined Lee and Lee in 1959 and became a partner in 1965. And he would enter politics and become the Minister for Health at the age of 34, making him the youngest cabinet minister in independent Singapore’s history. Then there was S Ramasamy, who I think was the chief clerk at Lee and Lee, and he became Legislative Assemblyman for Redhill constituency. Later on after we became independent, and after Separation, he served as Member of Parliament for two terms, also for Redhill constituency. And so 60 years on, Christopher de Souza is continuing the tradition!

As my father became increasingly involved in politics, he left Lee and Lee’s affairs to my mother and Dennis. My mother regarded her husband and children as her first priority but she did her work. Everyday she came home for lunch from the office so as to see her children. She would take a nap and then go back to work. When I had chicken pox – I must have been aged four or five years old – she nursed me at home, with her work files at my bedside. On days where business was slow, she would wait for new call-in clients at the office, because in those days there were no mobile phones, and she brought along her knitting to office because she loved to knit. In the evenings, she would bring home files to do and the files would come as big bundles in the open cane baskets which some of you may remember. She would stack them up and do them one by one, mostly conveyancing documents, and I would be fascinated with the documents – not with what was written inside, but what was pasted inside – because the conveyance documents and title deeds would have revenue stamps for what seemed to me like fabulous denominations, we had $500 stamps, $1,000 stamps, and also old faces because these were transactions from properties which were thirty or forty years old, from previous reigns. I used to collect stamps – these were 10-cents stamps, 50-cents stamps – and you would be very lucky to find a $5 postage stamp, and here were $500 stamps. My mother would look at me and say these are not postage stamps but revenue stamps, you don’t put them on envelopes! She would bring back old title deeds, some dating from the reigns of King Edward VII and once in a while, Queen Victoria. I don’t know if you still see them nowadays – one of the losses when we computerised land registry – you don’t have these marvellous things to enjoy. But recently, somebody sent me an old title deed, and it was one of my mother’s old pupils who has now retired as a lawyer. She found this old title deed which my mother had witnessed and signed, now all scrapped and cancelled so she sent me the deed. At least now I have one souvenir from that period.

My mother decided to do mostly solicitors’ work. When Kim Li joined the firm, my mother advised her, and in fact told her “umpteen times”, that “women should not do litigation because that would make them argumentative, and more difficult to find husbands!” And I understand my mother gave the same advice to other ladies in the firm, including Kim Li’s daughter, Joanna, who entered law school in 2005. I am reporting this to you as hearsay evidence, but on good authority, but of course I would never venture to offer any such advice to anybody. My mother developed the Conveyancing Practice and the Trust and Probate Practice at Lee and Lee. Many of the clients she acted for became her friends, and remain to this day clients of the firm. She retired from partnership in 1987, nearly 30 years ago, but she stayed on as a Consultant for many years after that.

Dennis Lee also played a major role in developing Lee and Lee and contributed to the legal fraternity as well. He was an active litigator especially in the early days and he would go to the courts and back, by trishaw. He was well-known for making his pupils sit in his room for the entire period of their tutelage. This was an imposition on him, it must have been quite an experience for the pupils, but they learnt very quickly! Dennis helped to develop the firm from a handful of lawyers into one of the largest law firms in Singapore. He was also active in the Law Society, serving on its Bar Committee and Inquiry Panel and still he found time to make his mark in banking and corporate work. He retired as Senior Partner in 1995 and remained as a Consultant till he passed away.

Over time, Lee and Lee grew in size and practice to become one of the leading law firms in Singapore. Today it has more than 200 staff, and over 100 lawyers. It has become a full service law firm with comprehensive legal expertise — banking, corporate, intellectual property, litigation and dispute resolution, and real estate. Your clients include major financial institutions, public-listed companies and multinational corporations, and several of your lawyers have also became High Court Judges — Justice Lai Kew Chai who has passed away, Justice Goh Joon Seng and Justice Andrew Ang who are here this evening with us.

My parents and Dennis Lee would have been very proud to see what Lee and Lee has become today. The firm was an important part of their lives and represents their legacies as lawyers in different ways — helping the unions and underdogs, nurturing young lawyers, developing capabilities in the firm from scratch and growing it into a leading law firm.

There is a Chinese saying, “创业难，守业更难” — meaning that it is hard to start a business, but it is even more difficult to keep it growing. Lee and Lee would not have continued to thrive and grow without the commitment and support of subsequent generations of lawyers and staff. So thank you for your contributions. May Lee and Lee continue to scale new heights, and experience success for many years to come. And I wish all of you a very happy Diamond Jubilee celebration!

Thank you very much.