Jeffery serves in his usual ‘box’ as Group General Counsel & Chief Sustainability Officer of Jardines Cycle & Carriage, a leading STI-SGX listco. His other ‘box’ is as CEO of registered mental health charity Jardines MINDSET. He also serves on the board of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce.
Jeffery graduated in the last millennium (1987) with an LL.B. (Hons) from the National University of Singapore and practised law as an Advocate & Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Singapore and a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England & Wales. He is privileged to have over 30 years of private practice and in-house legal experience with international law firms and multinational companies such as Allen & Gledhill, DLA Piper, Siemens and Motorola. He has also served in a business capacity as President of Motorola Singapore for five years.
Besides receiving legal training, Jeffery has also sought to learn more about business and management through the completion of the Senior Executive Management Program, at Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management and Driving Strategic Innovation for Senior Management by MIT’s Sloane School of Management and Switzerland’s IMD.
This Letter is addressed to his younger self, a junior lawyer in an international law firm, on a Friday evening that quickly takes an unexpected twist.
Dear Jeffery,
It’s Friday evening. You’re in your senior partner’s office when suddenly, his assistant comes in and informs him of a call from the client whose project you are working on together. To your shock, he looks at his watch and says, “My vacation has started.” To his assistant, he says, “Jeffery will take the call.” He then turns and leaves, with nary a look at you.
Needless to say, you are not prepared for this moment. You will rise to meet the challenge anyway. When the senior partner returns from his vacation, a week from now, you will ask him why he had ‘set you up’ to take the client’s call. He will smile and reply, “If I cannot rely on the young lawyer in my team, how else can I exhibit my trust in you?” Hesitant though you may have been in the beginning, you will feel humbled and encouraged by the level of trust, and the empowerment embodied by that trust, shown to you by the senior partner.
Your journey in the law will come to be filled with such moments both exciting and frightening. You trained to be a Singapore qualified lawyer, and joining an international law firm will open your eyes to the global business environment that is so different from Singapore’s. Being exposed to unfamiliar cultures, working styles and a diversity of individuals from backgrounds different from your Singapore upbringing will challenge you to learn quickly and adapt fast. That is the nature of evolution and survival, from which lawyers are not exempt.
There is another challenge ahead of you. This time, it will be on a global scale. When COVID-19 hits, everyone – from leading legal lights to fresh law graduates – will collectively struggle to make sense of the “new normal” that has been thrust upon them.
One of the defining features of the pandemic lockdown will be seeing yourself, family, friends and business contacts contained within the ‘boxes’ of ubiquitous virtual meeting platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams. As you transition to the post pandemic’s new normal, you will need to go beyond the ‘box’ of being just a mere lawyer in the post-COVID world.
This is where your early curiosity about the world outside the law will come in handy. Remember when you drafted your first Management and Service Level Agreement for that global hospitality group? Law school only trained you on the legal principles. To draft the agreement, you had to step outside your legal ‘box’ and learn the commercial, financial, and operational aspects of the hospitality industry from experts in the area. It is a totally different way of looking at the world. You felt like a right fish out of water at the beginning, but quickly learnt that no question is ‘too basic’ or ‘too stupid’ to ask if you want to do a good job. Many years later, when COVID-19 shakes up the legal fraternity, many of your fellow lawyers will similarly roll up their ‘legal sleeves’ to understand the different economic support packages provided by various governments that are designed to keep businesses operating and advise businesses on how these can be best applied to help them survive in this pandemic time.
By this time, you will be in a position to make decisions which will impact lives, from mentoring junior lawyers to advising businesses looking to right-size their workforce. In providing legal advice, it is important that you bear in mind the human aspects of such difficult actions, and how they can be best tempered with the appropriate grace, sensitivity and human compassion in the implementation process. After all, in the words of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, ‘compassion is the chief law of human existence.’ And when mentoring junior lawyers, you will remember that Friday evening when your senior partner trusted you to take the call. Make trust and compassion the lodestones of your legal career.
Every cloud has its silver lining. Over the past months, you will have seen a coming together of the larger community to do good and bless groups in need within our society. From improving the lives of foreign workers living in dormitories, to having a level of independence in food supply through community gardens, to implementing initiatives that focus on the workplace and colleagues’ mental health - there is a sudden spontaneous explosion of opportunities in sustainability, CSR programs and doing good generally. To this end, leverage on your network, connections and reach across the businesses and external community you interact with to be at the forefront of such initiatives and do good.
This pandemic has done many things for all of us. For you, it will allow you to see more clearly what is essential and what is more possibly hubris, that can be winnowed like chaff to the wind. With your open mind, willing heart and a sense of courage and boldness, you can continue to reimagine what kind of ‘lawyer’ you are: one who plays a key role in rebuilding society, one challenge at a time.
See you on the other side, and all the best!
Jeffery from the future