The Malaysian Middle Temple Alumni | Ways of Working in a Post Covid-19 Era

Timings:

10:20 (BST) / 17:20 (MYT) ~ Zoom Meeting ‘room’ will be open. Ensure that you have joined before the event is due to start.

10:30 (BST) /  17:30 (MYT) ~ Talks followed by Q&A

11:50 (BST) / 16:50 (MYT) ~ Talks finish

Event Details: 

Booking opens at 16:00 on 2 September 2020.

Ways of Working in a Post Covid-19 Era

Speakers:

1. Introduction by Justice Pathmanathan on both jurisdictions and the aims of the event.

The Honourable Justice Datuk Nallini Pathmanathan began her legal career as an advocate and solicitor of the High Court of Malaya at Skrine in January 1986.  In 1995, she became a partner at Skrine.  She was then appointed a Judicial Commissioner in March 2007, and heard cases at the Shah Alam High Court (Criminal) before being transferred to the Kuala Lumpur High Court (Civil).  In October 2009, she was appointed a High Court Judge, and at the Kuala Lumpur High Court, she sat at the New Commercial Court and Admiralty Court.  In September 2014, she was elevated to the Court of Appeal. In November 2018, she was elevated to the Federal Court.

2. First UK speaker – Master Robin Knowles.

Master Knowles sits as a High Court Judge of the Queen’s Bench Division and is a Judge of the Commercial Court and the Financial List. He is the Judge with day-to-day responsibility for the Standing International Forum of Commercial Courts, of which Malaysia is a member, and the Chairman of the Judiciary’s International Training Committee. Before appointment to the High Court, he sat as a Recorder in the Crown Court for 15 years, and as a Deputy High Court Judge in both the Commercial Court and the Chancery Division. He is a qualified mediator and has sat as an arbitrator. He was elected a Bencher of Middle Temple in 2004 and was Chairman of the Commercial Bar Association (2005-7).

Master Knowles was involved in rewriting the Commercial Court Guide as part of the Woolf Reforms. He was a member of the Aikens working party on “supercases”. With Sir William Blair, he worked successfully to secure the new Queen’s Counsel system. With others, he led work to bring about the Rolls Building – the world’s largest dedicated business dispute resolution centre. He is a member of the Financial Markets Law Committee, and of the Law and Ethics in Finance Project led by Sir William Blair. He is Chairman of the International Committee of the Judicial College of England & Wales.

A member of the Civil Justice Council, Master Knowles chairs its continuing work on access to justice for those without means. He has a career-long involvement in the encouragement and coordination of legal pro bono work, nationally and internationally, and is on the board of a number of charities in the field, including the Bar Pro Bono Unit and the National Pro Bono Centre. Master Knowles also serves on the Financial Markets Law Committee. He was awarded the CBE in 2007 for service to pro bono legal services.

3. First Malaysian speaker – Justice Lim Chong Fong.

Mr. Justice Lim Chong Fong is a Chartered Arbitrator, Chartered Quantity Surveyor and Barrister at Law (Middle Temple).

He has worked as a quantity surveyor in the construction industry and practised as construction lawyer and arbitrator from 1985 to 2013. He was ranked as leading lawyer in construction dispute resolution by Chambers & Partners, Asialaw Profiles and The International Who’s Who of Construction Lawyers directories.

He has undertaken research on security of construction payment as Fulbright scholar at the William S. Richardson School of Law in Hawaii, USA and subsequently appointed by the Construction Industry Development Board Malaysia to formulate the draft Construction Industry Payment and Adjudication bill (now Act 746 of Malaysia).

Mr. Justice Lim has been appointed as Judicial Commissioner of the High Court of Malaya on 15 January 2014 and confirmed as Judge of the High Court of Malaya on 30 January 2017. He is presently serving in the specialist construction court after having served in the general civil and criminal courts and the specialist intellectual property court.

4. Second UK speaker – Master Jo Delahunty.

Master Delahunty comes from a single-parent family, went to state schools, and was the first member of her family to stay in education beyond the age of 16 – even to contemplate university. Her school careers adviser did not recommend it: Jo was told that she was ‘bright enough to work in a bank, but not front of house’ as she had ‘too much attitude’ (which Jo would prefer to call ‘an independent and enquiring mind’).

She won a place to St Anne’s College, Oxford and read Jurisprudence. One can only hope her careers adviser has followed her success…

She practises from 4 Paper Buildings, Temple. Jo took Silk in 2006, was appointed a Recorder in 2009, and elected a Bencher in 2011. She was made Gresham Professor of Law in 2016, a role that she takes in addition to her Silk practice.

Jo found her vocation in family law, and child protection work became a passion. She rose to prominence for her work in contentious cases involving complex medical evidence and the death of, or catastrophic injuries to, a child. Her specialisms include ‘fabricated induced illness’ cases and ‘shaken baby’ allegations, where genetic and benign conditions can mimic abuse. Jo also confronts child abuse allegations arising from inter-generational and inter- sibling sexual abuse; ritualised abuse; ISIS radicalisation allegations; and cases involving vulnerable adults.

Alongside her practice in the family division, Jo was instructed from 2013-16 on behalf of 77 of the bereaved families in the Hillsborough Inquest. She has received many ‘outstanding achievement’ awards for this work.

She is outspoken on matters of concern to the Bar and was in the vanguard in raising issues to practitioners, such as judicial bullying and sexual harassment within the profession. She has sought to make the workings of the family justice system more transparent and explicable.

She is Patron of the charity Amend (Association of Multiple Endocrine Neoplasia Disorders).

In 2019 Jo received the Freedom of the City of London, marking the centenary of votes for women.

5. Second Malaysian speaker - Dato' Nitin Nadkarni

Nitin is the Head of Lee Hishammuddin Allen & Gledhill’s  International Arbitration Practice and the Tax, SST & Customs Practice. Nitin’s main area of practice is in international arbitration, focusing on oil & gas, energy, construction and engineering, and infrastructure projects. Nitin also specialises in income tax and customs litigation and disputes.

Nitin has more than 30 years’ experience representing major governmental organisations, multinational corporations, national and international contractors, sub-contractors, financial institutions and high-profile individuals in arbitration, litigation, income tax and customs disputes.

Nitin has acted as counsel or sat as arbitrator in disputes arising from projects in or arbitrations seated in Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, London, Switzerland, Vietnam, United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Paris and Algeria under ad hoc and institutional rules such as AIAC, ICC, SIAC, and LCIA rules.

Nitin has also acted as counsel in benchmark income tax disputes on major points of tax law

6. Third UK speaker – Master Amanda Pinto.

Master Pinto was awarded an Exhibition to study Law at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. She did a common law pupillage at 4 Paper Buildings and was the first woman to be taken on at John Mathew QC’s criminal set at 5 Paper Buildings.

While pregnant with her second baby, she completed a Diploma in the History of Art at Birkbeck College; but ultimately, decided to stay at the Bar.

Having thought she would never do criminal work, Master Pinto fell in love with the daily advocacy and human context that it offered. She increasingly concentrated on fraud cases, working  both for and against the Serious Fraud Office, FCA and HMRC. She now specialises in fraud and allied cases at 33 Chancery Lane, focussing on international and jurisdictional law in business wrongdoing.

Master Pinto is a co-author of Corporate Criminal Liability and of the corporate criminal liability section of Blackstone’s Criminal Practice. She was appointed a part-time Judge in 2003, QC in 2006 and a Bencher of Middle Temple in 2014.

She was Chair of the International Committee of the Bar Council from 2014-18, was the Director of International Affairs for the Criminal Bar Association, and the UK’s representative on the Council of the International Criminal Bar 2009-17. She was Vice-Chair of the Bar Council for 2019 and is now Chair for 2020, as well as being an Advocacy Trainer at the Inn. Master Pinto recently organised international campaigns to ensure that victims of war crimes have access to full medical care, and to secure the release of a lawyer arrested for representing an unpopular client.

She is a Champion of the First 100 Years, celebrating a century of women being admitted as lawyers. She has contributed to several Law Commission consultations, and co-drafted the UK’s response to the EU roadmap for procedural rights for those suspected or accused of crime in the UK and for the rights of the victim. In 2007, she helped to draft an amicus brief to the Iraqi High Tribunal, persuading it to indict the strategic use of rape as a war crime.

Master Pinto is a devoted mother of three, and a keen cook and dog-walker.

7. Third Malaysian speaker  – Master Cecil Abraham.

Called in 1969, Master Abraham has a highly successful dispute resolution practice and is one of the leading litigators in Malaysia.  He is also a well-respected arbitrator. He is Deputy President of the Malaysian Middle Temple Alumni, and a Door Tenant of 3 Verulam Buildings in London.

His career at the Malaysian Bar spans 50 years. Within that time, he has appeared in all the divisions of the High Court of Malaya. He has appeared regularly before the Court of Appeal, the Federal Court, the Special Court and the Privy Council. He has over 300 reported decisions of note to his name. He is first and foremost an advocate and is regarded by his peers and clients alike as one of Malaysia’s leading counsel known to be devastatingly effective in court. He has a strong reputation for dealing with complex disputes, in which the stakes are high, and is known to work hard to achieve a satisfactory result for his clients.

Master Abraham’s practice covers a wide breadth of areas that includes Corporate and Commercial, Environmental, Banking and Securities, Insurance, Maritime, and Competition Law as well as Arbitration. He holds the distinction of having acted for the former Prime Minister of Singapore, the late Master Lee Kuan Yew, and several Prime Ministers of Malaysia.

He is also regularly appointed as an arbitrator in domestic and in international commercial arbitrations and is the only Malaysian to be regularly appointed as an arbitrator in investment treaty disputes.

He has been regularly recognised as a leading individual by Legal 500 Asia Pacific, Asia Law Profiles and is ranked in Tier 1 by Chambers & Partners Asia Pacific as well as Who’s Who Legal in the area of dispute resolution for both litigation and arbitration. In 2016, he was named by Asian Legal Business as Dispute Resolution Practitioner of the Year. In 2019, he was named by Benchmark Litigation as Dispute Resolution Practitioner of the Year.

8.    Q&A, moderated by Justice Pathmanathan.

9.    Closing remarks to include a summary of the Amity Visit to Malaysia in 2021 by Master Andrew Hochhauser.

Please Note:

Times and details are subject to change.  Please check this webpage for the most up to date information.

Accessing the remote Event:

This remote event will take place using software called Zoom.  A link for the 'meeting room' will be sent by email between 12-24 hours before the scheduled start time.

It is preferable to join the event on a laptop, but if that’s not possible then use your phone/tablet. Download the app from zoom.us

Data Protection & Photography at this Event:

Please be aware that photography, audio and video recording may take place at our events. These may be used for promotional purposes by the Inn, including in printed publications, on our website, and on our social media accounts. If you do not wish to have your photograph taken or to have images of you used, please alert the EducationTeam at the start of the event. We are unable to guarantee that you will not be included in the background of photographs that are being taken. Contact: 020 7427 4800, education@middletemple.org.uk

All personal data that the Inn stores and processes is held in accordance with the Data Protection Act 2018 and the Inn’s Data Protection Policy. You can ask the Inn to stop using your images at any time, or request to see the personal data that the Inn holds on you. For more information please visit the Data Protection page  http://www.middletemple.org.uk/about-us/data-protection

Booking Tickets:

Members of the Inn can book tickets online by clicking ‘Add to Cart’.  Please note that you must log in to book (if you have not yet created a log-in please register first). 

Non-members can book by emailing members@middletemple.org.uk. 

Unless the event sells out earlier, booking will close on the day before the event.

Cancellations:

Where we have a waiting list we will be able to offer your ticket to someone else, so please do let us know if you are no longer planning to attend.

To cancel a ticket please email members@middletemple.org.uk