Philip Jeyaretnam UWCSEA 1975-1979 Lawyer and Writer

Philip Jeyaretnam, President of the Law Society, the youngest ever, and one of only 37 Senior Counsel in Singapore, is a commercial litigator, and partner in Rodyk & Davidson LLP’s Litigation Arbitration Practice Group in Singapore. He heads up their Projects, Construction and Investment Practice Group. He is an Adjunct Professor teaching construction and arbitration law for the Department of Building at the National University of Singapore, and was the first Chairman of the Society of Construction Law in Singapore from 2002 to 2004. He is a Governor of the IP Academy, a board member of the board of Legal Education, and Vice President and member of the Senate of the .

In addition to his legal career, Philip Jeyaretnam is one of Singapore’s most prominent authors of fiction. He was declared Young Artist of the Year for 1993 by the National Arts Council. His first book, First Loves, written in 1987, was on the Sunday Times Bestseller List for 18 months and was highly commended by the National Book Development Council of Singapore. His subsequent works include Raffles Place Ragtime, also a bestseller, written in 1988, Abraham’s Promise, 1995, and most recently, Tigers in Paradise, released in 2004. Awards for his fiction include the Montblanc/NUS Centre for the Arts Award and the Southeast Asia Write Award. In 1988, he received the Airey Neave Award for constitutional law writing on the rule of law.

In July 2005, Philip Jeyaretnam was appointed to the board of Singapore’s National Kidney Foundation and is also a board member of the Singapore Tourism Board. In addition, he chairs the Board of Directors of Practice Performing Arts Centre Limited, a non-profit theatre company and school.

After leaving UWCSEA, Philip went on to graduate from Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University in law, and was a Visiting Fulbright Fellow at Harvard Law School. Both of his parents are lawyers, and he credits his mother for his love of books.

He is married with 3 children.