This letter is published in collaboration with the SMU Yong Pung How School of Law’s Freshman Mentorship Programme.
Kai Yun graduated from the Singapore Management University School of Law in 2014. She is currently a Partner in the Restructuring & Insolvency and Special Situations Advisory practices at WongPartnership. She never thought of becoming a lawyer growing up. Instead, she had enjoyed chemistry in school, and had accepted an offer for chemical engineering, a course she thought she had wanted, only to realise in horror at orientation camp that there were simply too much fluid mechanics and algebra for her to survive. So off to law school she escaped.
She certainly never considered staying in practice for as long as 9 years, let alone becoming a Partner in an area she had never studied. However, she has ended up where she thinks she belongs now. Kai Yun finds that she enjoys her current job tremendously – advocacy in practice is great fun to her (now that it no longer concerned hypothetical people fighting over hypothetical assets), and she finds it fulfilling to be able to help companies restructure and keep as many jobs as possible. Things have turned out well so far, and she looks forward to seeing what else she can do in the future.
This letter is addressed to her younger self in 2011, having just completed her first year of law school.
Hello, 2011 Kai Yun!!
Are you enjoying yourself right now during the summer break?
I am sure you are having lots of fun with your friends, going out for late night drives and supper runs. You must be busy organising Law Camp now, making bloody styrofoam heads and getting creepy dolls and wigs from Mustafa for Fright Night. You must also be occupied packing and preparing for your first ever school trip to Taiwan with your law school friends!
Instead of reading ahead or doing moots like other sensible law students, you were always finding ways to earn enough to pay for all your little adventures. You did not come from money, and outside of school fees, it was expensive to keep up socially. You flipped and sold your textbooks as soon as the semester ended, became a tour guide with the Duck Tours, and kept up a part-time sales job selling toys during the semester. You were always better at making money and playing, but perhaps not so great at completing the required readings ahead of time.
This is going to be my first bit of advice for you. Don’t be penny wise, pound foolish.
I know that internships pay so much less than what you could earn on your other jobs. You were horrified that most internships barely cover your transport and food expenses in the CBD (which mostly means you might incur a net financial loss just by interning), and chose which internships to take up based on how much they paid. You did end up in a couple of internships which paid more than double the market rate, without really doing much more than administrative work. That was not the wisest idea.
This brings me to my second bit of advice for you. Seek out mentors and think about how you can contribute to that relationship.
The good news is that despite your immaturity back then, you are quite a fortunate person! Even though you had not planned for this initially, you somehow secured an internship at a boutique shipping firm, Ang & Partners (yes, because it starts with “A” and was the very first booth in the school career fair that you visited).
This internship turned out to have been a turning point for you and was where you met your first mentor in law, Mr Gan Seng Chee. Through this internship, you finally realised the value of mentorship, and learned how much impact it can have on your career trajectory.
You were just a nobody, but your mentor was so generous with his time despite his own busy schedule. He set aside time to teach you everything you needed to know about trade flows, bills of lading, letters of indemnity, and how charterparties worked. While you did not eventually become a shipping lawyer, what you learned then continues to serve you today, as you work on one of the biggest trials over commodity fraud in Singapore.
You learned through this time that mentorship is a two-way relationship. It turned out to be fruitful because you had so many questions and were deeply curious about the issues you were instructed to research. You realised that people are often happy to share if you demonstrate an interest to learn about their practice area and their journey. You will not get nearly as much out of any mentorship experience if you remain a passive observer, with no views or questions of your own, and are just waiting to be fed information. Nobody owes it to you to mentor you. You get as much out of it as you put in. Seek out mentorship, but make sure that you are also prepared to put in the effort to make it worthwhile.
Finally, the last bit of advice. Don’t forget that law school is but the beginning of a long journey. Stay grounded and keep your ego in check. Give back when you are able.
One thing that has stayed with you all these years is hearing your friends in other faculties bemoan how difficult it was to work with law students on their group projects. The most common complaint was how some law students behave like others should worship the ground they walk on, simply by virtue of being in the law faculty.
Well, don’t be that person!
Being in law school does not mean you are the smartest person in the room, only that you made a choice to go to law school when others might not have. Having the wisdom to recognise the difference will serve you well. Law school is the means to an end, and not the end in itself.
Keep yourself grounded and learn to be a better listener. There is always something to be learned from everybody that you meet. Even as a lawyer in 2024, you are constantly learning. Don’t let ego get in the way of you becoming a better person and lawyer.
With all this said, definitely don’t forget to have lots of fun. You are going to be ok!
Cheers,
Kai Yun