14 - Doyen of the Bar

Summary

BACK IN THE LAW

David had returned to legal practice soon after he resigned as chief minister. In November 1956, he was back at his old firm of Battenberg & Talma. It is not known under what terms he returned to the firm, but a partly decipherable entry in his diary in January 1957 suggests that he was ready to branch out on his own. By the middle of 1957, he had established his own firm, David Marshall & Co. at the Bank of China Building. Initially, David operated as a sole practitioner. In 1959, he took on Leo Anthony Joseph (L.A.J.) Smith as partner and the firm became Marshall & Smith. Smith was a tall, fiery Englishman with a bald pate who had been called to Singapore Bar in 1948. At the Bar, Smith had a reputation as a “brainy” lawyer whose command of every case was backed by a thorough knowledge of the law. This partnership did not last long. By 1960, Smith had left and David took on another partner, Chung Kok Soon (better known as K.S. Chung), who had been called to the Bar just eight years before. Chung was the son of Chung Thye Phin, last kapitan of Perak. A very capable civil lawyer, Chung stayed with David for two years before striking out on his own. From 1962 onwards, the firm was David Marshall & Co. and remained thus until David retired from active practice in 1978.

Towards the end of his legal career, David took on two partners, Amarjeet Singh and Mohideen P.H. Rubin, but the firm remained David Marshall & Co. Amarjeet Singh — who was from the first graduating class of the Law Faculty at the University of Malaya in Singapore — joined David as a legal assistant in 1969 following a short career in the Legal Service where he had been magistrate and district judge. He had heard from another criminal lawyer, R. Ramason, that David was looking for assistants interested in criminal practice. Amarjeet applied and was taken on as an assistant or, in Amarjeet's words, David's “kaki-tangan man”. In 1971, David offered him a partnership and he remained in the firm until David retired. Mohideen Rubin became a pupil with David shortly after he graduated in 1966, but interrupted his pupillage to take up an executive position in The Straits Times.