Mr Ong Ying Ping
You wouldn’t describe someone who started a solo law practice one week after getting his practising certificate as ‘conventional’, especially if he had rejected an offer, after a third interview, of an exciting position as a cadet pilot at a major airline.
That’s how Ong Ying Ping started out in April 1990 – on a vague promise that work would come his way. For all the atypical beginnings of his firm, Ying Ping became a keen student of the rules by which courts arrive at a fair and just result, and kept at it for more than 20 years.
The lost adventures of his alternate career paths have been satisfactorily substituted with success at the Court of Appeal in three distinct areas of law in the last three years:
- In 2014, on service of process outside Singapore: see Serafica Rogelio T and others v Transocean Offshore Ventures Ltd [2013] 3 SLR 1040
- In 2015, on criminal procedure regarding bail conditions: see Public Prosecutor v Sollihin bin Anhar [2015] SGCA 16
- In 2016, on determining the appropriate date to divide matrimonial property: see ARX v ARY and another appeal [2016] 2SLR 686
All his experience deepens Ying Ping’s convictions first, that triumph and disaster are to be similarly treated as deceptive impostors; and second, that legal solutions are only part of a bigger human picture.
Above all, the ethos of the firm bearing his name is to keep improving.