Three aspiring lawyers involved in questionable situations had been admitted to the Bar following Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon's assessment that they are "fit and proper persons for admission in terms of their character".

One recorded two upskirt videos of a woman on the MRT in 2017, while the other two were caught for plagiarism at university.

Chief Justice believes that the man who took upskirt video is "reformed"

According to a judgment published on Oct. 9, 2023, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon stated that he was satisfied that the applicants were all fit and proper persons for admission as Advocates and Solicitors of the Supreme Court in terms of their character.

In May 2017, one of the applicants, Chester Lee Jun Ming, recorded two upskirt videos of a woman on public transport.

Lee pleaded guilty to one charge of insulting the modesty of a woman in January 2018.

He was convicted and sentenced to one month in prison.

In the judgment, while Menon pointed out that the severity of Lee's offence "cannot be understated", Lee's application came six years after his offence.

Menon said he was satisfied that Lee had "sufficiently reformed his character in the intervening period, and to that extent, [Lee] was no longer the same person he was when he committed the offence".

The Chief Justice brought up Lee's conduct immediately after his offence and during investigations. He complied with the instructions of the MRT staff once he was apprehended, and he admitted his actions to the police when they arrived.

Lee also promptly informed his employer of his charge and "expressed remorse for his actions".

"While none of this in any way negated the severity of Mr Lee's offence, it at least showed, even soon after he committed the offence, that Mr Lee already had some level of appreciation that what he had done was very wrong. The fact that he had such an appreciation even then made it more likely that six years later and after serving a term of imprisonment, he had 'learnt the requisite lessons'".

Menon also said that a "significant period of time" had passed since Lee's offence and incarceration and that since then, he had maintained a clean criminal and academic record.

He noted that since his offence, Lee had served his one-month imprisonment term, maintained a full-time job, enrolled in and graduated from law school, passed the bar examinations and completed a practice training contract.

Menon wrote, "An individual who has taken active steps to improve himself and his professional prospects is likely to also have taken steps to resolve his character issues".

In addition, when his one-month imprisonment is taken together with his clean record since this supports the conclusion that his character was "indeed different" from what it was at the time of his offence.

When it was time for his application for admission to the bar, Lee made full disclosure of his offence, and Menon noted that "the level of disclosure" was unlike other candidates who had not been "completely forthright" about their misconduct that happened far in the past.

Lee also did not "downplay his culpability" in his application, recognising what he had done was "wrong, despicable, and disrespectful to women".

As such, Menon was satisfied that Lee had reformed his character since his offence and was fit to be admitted to the bar.

Applicant caught plagiarising his own work was more of "carelessness"

The second applicant, Chong Weng Teng, submitted an academic research paper reusing the work he previously submitted for another module.

This was against the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Plagiarism Policy and Law's Ethical Conduct Guidelines.

After submitting his research paper, Chong was informed by the Vice-Dean of the NUS Faculty of Law that he self-plagiarised.

He admitted to the offence, "expressed his apologies to the inquiry panel and indicated that he would accept any penalty without question or appeal".

He was awarded zero marks for the paper and failed the module, as the paper constituted 80 per cent of his grade.

Menon pointed out that Chong's academic offence was found not to have arisen from a lack of academic integrity but from his failure to check the NUS plagiarism guidelines and his "ignorant assumption" that plagiarism only involved copying someone else's work.

Chong also immediately took ownership of his mistake by admitting and apologising for it and accepting a "very serious" punishment that could have delayed his graduation without reservation.

As such, Chong's carelessness in this case "did not suggest a flaw in his character," and his lack of diligence was "not so serious" that it was indicative of a total disregard for the standards applicable to him.

Thus, Menon was satisfied that Chong was a fit and proper person for admission to the bar.

Other applicant involved in plagiarism "misunderstood attribution rules"

The last applicant was accused of plagiarism after failing to attribute her sources properly.

Lin Shuang Ju was asked to write a full-length article for a Singapore Management University (SMU) student legal publication club.

The article was eventually published in the Singapore Law Journey (Lexicon) after multiple rounds of extensive editing on Jul. 5, 2023.

On Jul. 24, 2023, Lin was accused of plagiarising another author's article within her own article.

Following SMU's internal investigations, the university found some evidence of plagiarism, in the sense of some use of the work of others without appropriate attribution. However, that could be remedied with increased attribution and appropriate editing.

Lin then wrote a letter of apology to the author on Aug. 5, 2023, for failing to cite his work adequately, that she had no intention to pass off his work as her own, and that she believed sufficient attribution had been provided in the article.

She also mentioned that this was her first time writing an academic article, and she would work with Lexicon to revise the article.

The author replied later on Aug. 8, 2023, that he fully accepted her apology and would consider the case closed once Lexicon issued a correction with the appropriate citation.

Menon noted that Lin had not demonstrated any dishonesty and accepted that her plagiarism came from a fundamental misunderstanding of the rules of attribution, not a lack of academic integrity.

He also pointed out that this was Lin's first academic article, and she was "unfamiliar with the degree of originality needed in a published academic article and assumed that paraphrasing other articles and citing them was acceptable".

Menon also considered how Lin "promptly" wrote a letter of apology to the author, which was genuine enough for him to accept it in full.

As such, Menon concluded that Lin, like Chong and Lee, was a fit and proper person for admission in terms of her character.

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