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The Singapore Law Gazette

Recklessly Misleading the Court in Singapore and England

This article examines recent lawyer disciplinary decisions in Singapore and England that have applied their respective criminal standards of recklessness to the prohibited conduct of misleading the Court. It also analyses the practical implications of the new test of recklessness for the Singapore legal profession.

I. Introduction

Two boys, not yet teenagers, decided to set fire to some bundles of newspapers which they found in the backyard of a shop. After throwing the ignited papers under a plastic dustbin, they left the shop behind with the papers going up in flames. The dustbin caught fire and the fire blazed through both the shop and its adjoining buildings, causing about £1m worth of damage.

An experienced private equities trader made two postings on a financial portal suggesting that a certain company had been raided by the authorities. The company’s share prices fell before it was clarified that no such raid had occurred. The trader had posted the false information based on unsubstantiated rumours.

What do these two cases have in common? More importantly, what do they have to do with lawyers’ ethics?

Both cases were concerned with criminally reckless behaviour – the boys were charged with arson, and the trader was charged with disseminating false information that was likely to induce the sale of securities by others. In each case (the House of Lords in the first (R v G),1[2004] 1 AC 1034. and the Singapore High Court in the second (PP v Wang Ziyi Able (“Wang Ziyi Able”)),2[2008] 2 SLR(R) 61. the Court set down a legal test of recklessness which today forms the basis of determining whether a lawyer has “recklessly” misled the Court in England and Singapore respectively.

This article examines recent lawyer disciplinary decisions in Singapore and England which have applied their respective criminal standards of recklessness to the prohibited conduct of misleading the Court and considers the key similarities and differences between the two disciplinary regimes. It also reviews the practical implications of the new test of recklessness for the Singapore legal profession under the Legal Profession (Professional Conduct) Rules 2015 (“PCR 2015”).

II. Recklessly Misleading the Court in Singapore: Absence of Honest Belief

The issue of when a lawyer is considered to be “reckless” in misleading the Court arose in a recent Singapore disciplinary decision, Law Society of Singapore v Udeh Kumar s/o Sethuraju and another matter (“Udeh Kumar”),3[2017] SGHC 141. which was concerned with breaches under the prior version of the Legal Profession (Professional Conduct) Rules (“former PCR”).4Cap 161, R1, 2010 Rev Ed.

Amongst other charges, the respondent lawyer was charged with “knowingly” misleading the Court under rule 56 of the former PCR in two separate instances. In the first case, the respondent lawyer applied to the Court via the e-Litigation system to seek a 2-week adjournment of the hearing of his client’s application to quash an order of the Director of the Central Narcotics Bureau. This matter had been adjourned on a number of occasions and the Attorney-General’s Chambers (“AGC”) had indicated to the respondent lawyer that it would not accede to any further adjournments.

However, the respondent lawyer did not check with the AGC and certified a request to the Court through the e-Litigation system that all the other parties concerned in the hearing of the application were available on the proposed adjourned date. The AGC was also not copied on the request. As a result, the Court adjourned the hearing for two weeks.

In the second case, the respondent lawyer applied to the Court to request a 2-week adjournment of a criminal appeal in a different hearing. In support of his request, the respondent lawyer stated that he:

  1. had only been recently informed that his client wished to appoint his firm to represent him in an appeal against the client’s conviction; and
  2. had been unable to take instructions from his client in prison because no visiting slots were available.

However, the Disciplinary Tribunal ascertained that these statements were false or inaccurate.

A key issue raised at the hearing before the Disciplinary Tribunal was whether the respondent lawyer had “knowingly” made the false statements in both cases.

In the first case, citing the old English case of Derry v Peek,5(1889) 14 App Cas 337. the Disciplinary Tribunal took the view that a false statement could be made recklessly without any real belief in the truth it stated. Although the respondent lawyer had argued that he was not familiar with the e-Litigation system and trusted his staff to operate the system, the Disciplinary Tribunal noted that his conduct went beyond carelessness. His request for adjournment containing the false or inaccurate certification was made recklessly without regard as to whether it were true or false. Hence, he had the requisite knowledge of misleading the Court.

In the second case, the Disciplinary Tribunal determined that the respondent lawyer had knowingly made the false statements to mislead the Court into granting an adjournment of the appeal. Although the respondent lawyer had claimed in cross-examination that it was in fact his staff who had written the letters containing the false statements, the Disciplinary Tribunal held that in any event, the respondent lawyer had been reckless in not checking the letters before they were sent out. Thus, he also had the requisite knowledge of misleading the Court.

At the show cause hearing, affirming the Disciplinary Tribunal’s views, the Court of Three Judges dismissed the respondent lawyer’s argument that recklessness as to the truth or falsehood of a statement was insufficient to constitute a breach of rule 56 of the former PCR. The Court cited two main reasons for its stance:

  1. the mens rea of recklessness under rule 56 was consistent with the approach in a prior Singapore case; and
  2. as a matter of principle, the focus of the test in Derry v Peek was on “the absence of an honest belief in the truth what is being stated”.6Supra (note 3), at [36]. Hence, based on the High Court’s decision in Wang Ziyi Able, making a statement recklessly (but not carelessly) would be subjectively dishonest.

On the facts, however, the Court did not need to apply the “absence of honest belief” test, as it found that the respondent lawyer had knowingly misled the Court in both cases. In the first case, the Court found that it was more likely that the respondent lawyer, who was “experienced in litigation”, had submitted the request for adjournment “personally”.7Ibid, at [48]. Even if was his staff who had submitted the request, the Court found that the staff must have acted on the respondent lawyer’s instructions to send the request with the false statement and not to copy the AGC on the request.

In the second case, the Court also found that the respondent lawyer had made the false statements knowing that they were untrue, as he had in fact been representing his client much earlier and had not even attempted to apply to the prison authorities to visit his client after his client’s conviction.

The Court concluded that the respondent lawyer had been “fraudulent in his dealings with the court” and due cause had been established for his improper conduct under section 83(2)(b) of the Legal Profession Act.8Ibid, at [55].

III. Recklessly Misleading the Court in England: Awareness of Risk

The House of Lords in R v G established the test of recklessness that is applicable to the English legal profession today. R v G was a landmark decision as the House of Lords departed from its previous decision, R v Caldwell,9[1982] AC 341. which held that recklessness would be shown if a person charged with arson under section 1(1) of the UK Criminal Damage Act 1971:

  1. did an act which created an obvious risk that property would be destroyed or damaged; and
  2. had either not given thought to the possibility of such a risk or had recognised that there was some risk involved but had proceeded to do it.10Supra (note 1), at 1050H-1051A.

The controversy in R v G was whether it was fair to apply the Caldwell test of recklessness to the two young boys who, due to their age, had not apprehended the risk of the fire spreading to the shop and its adjoining buildings. The House of Lords redefined the test of recklessness as one requiring “foresight of consequences”,11Ibid, at 1034G. i.e. a person charged with arson would only be considered to have acted recklessly:

in respect of a circumstance if he was aware of a risk which did or would exist, or in respect of a result if he was aware of a risk that it would occur, and it was, in the circumstances known to him, unreasonable to take the risk.12Ibid, at 1034H-1035A.

However, he would not be culpable if, “due to his age or personal characteristics, he genuinely did not appreciate or foresee the risks involved in his actions”.13Ibid, at 1035A. The boys’ convictions were accordingly quashed.

English academic commentary has referred to this test as an “awareness-based model of recklessness”14Findlay Stark, Culpable Carelessness: Recklessness and Negligence in the Criminal Law (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p 28., which “marks a reversion to the traditional, more subjective definition of reckless based on the defendant’s awareness of the risk”.15Jeremy Horder, Ashworth’s Principles of Criminal Law (Eighth Edition, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2016), p 201.

The “awareness of risk”16Supra (note 14). test of recklessness was first applied to the English legal profession in Alastair Brett v The Solicitors Regulation Authority (“Brett”).17[2014] EWHC 2974 (Admin). In Brett, the English ethical rule in question (unlike rule 56 of the former PCR) expressly incorporated the mens rea of recklessness:

You must never deceive or knowingly or recklessly mislead the court.18UK Solicitors’ Code of Conduct 2007, Rule 11.01. [emphasis added]

The detailed facts of Brett have been discussed by this author elsewhere.19Alvin Chen & Helena Whalen-Bridge, Understanding Lawyers’ Ethics in Singapore(Singapore: Lexis-Nexis, 2016), paras 5.55-5.59. In summary, the English High Court found that the respondent solicitor had acted recklessly by allowing the Court to be misled by a false claim in a witness statement that he had drafted, and by not correcting the misleading impression. In the statement, the witness asserted that he had lawfully used information in the public domain to deduce the identity of the author of an anonymous blog, when in fact he had illegally accessed the author’s e-mail account and had disclosed this fact to the respondent solicitor.

Despite requests by the author’s solicitors to clarify the witness’s deduction process, the respondent solicitor, who was “a hugely respected and highly experienced solicitor in the field”,20Supra (note 17), at [91]. did not respond with a further witness statement or a correction. He also dismissed as “baseless” their allegation that the witness might have gained authorised access to the author’s e-mail account because of his history of hacking e-mail accounts.21Ibid, at [28]. Applying the “awareness of risk” test established in R v G, the English High Court held that “the evidence, particularly that of the contemporaneous correspondence and the lack of any response by Mr Brett to the demands contained in it”, demonstrated that the respondent solicitor had “acted recklessly … in allowing the court to be misled”.22Ibid, at [100].

More recently, the “awareness of risk” test was also applied by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (“SDT”) in Solicitors Regulation Authority v Nigel George Walshe (“Walshe”),23Solicitors Regulation Authority (Applicant) and Nigel George Walshe (Respondent), Case No 11620-2017 (Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal), Judgment dated 22 August 2017. which considered an ethical rule similar to the one in Brett.24UK Solicitors’ Code of Conduct 2011, Outcome 5.1: “You do not attempt to deceive or knowingly or recklessly mislead the court.” In Walshe, the respondent solicitor, who had been admitted as a solicitor since 1978, acted for the complainant in a number of clinical negligence claims from about February 2012.

Several months later, he entered into a personal relationship with the complainant. As the lawsuit progressed, he received an expert report by Dr D (“the Expert”) which was unfavourable to the complainant’s case. The complainant expressed concerns that her claims could be struck out in view of the expert report. She also informed the respondent solicitor that one of the defendants in the proceedings (“Dr I”) had been in the same medical school as the Expert and both of them had graduated in the same year. She suggested that the Expert might thereby have failed to disclose a conflict of interest.

The complainant’s suggestion triggered a series of e-mail correspondence between the respondent solicitor and the Expert concerning, amongst others, the potential conflict of interest issue. Unfortunately, the Expert had overlooked these e-mails as he was away on vacation and only gave a holding reply to the respondent solicitor upon his return. Subsequently, although the respondent solicitor had attempted, to no avail, to verify the complainant’s information independently, he did not follow up with the Expert on the potential conflict of interest issue. Instead, he concluded that the Expert was trying to avoid addressing the issue and, on this basis, took out an application to the Court to allow the complainant to apply for an alternative expert report.

At the hearing of the application, the respondent solicitor reaffirmed that the Expert had not responded to him at all on the potential conflict of interest issue. He also asserted that the Expert and Dr I had been at “the same medical school in London in 1983” and “would have been the same small group of people”.25Supra (note 23), at [44].

The SDT established that no actual conflict of interest existed and that the Expert “did not know or have any association with Dr I”.26Ibid, at [88]. In the circumstances, the “cumulative effect” of the respondent solicitor’s statements to the Court, which were submissions rather than facts, “was to give an incorrect impression to the Court and hence potentially to mislead the Court”.27Ibid, at [98.61].

The SDT opined that “a solicitor acting with appropriate caution would have taken into account the relative costs of making a further enquiry of [the Expert], as against the cost of making an application to the Court”.28Ibid, at [98.49]. Also, a prudent solicitor would have “checked that [the Expert] was aware of the issue and the urgency of providing a response”.29Ibid.

In addition, the SDT found that the respondent solicitor’s opinion that a conflict of interest existed was influenced by his personal relationship with his client. The SDT concluded that the respondent solicitor had recklessly misled the Court based on the “awareness of risk” test because:

  1. he was “well aware that there was a real risk that the Court would be misled if he was not frank and did not give full and complete information”;30Ibid, at [98.63]. and
  2. “[n]evertheless, [he] took the risk that the Court would be misled by failing to set out the full circumstances in the witness statement, making misleading and partial submissions and statements and failing to correct the erroneous views the Judge formed during the hearing”.31Ibid.

IV. Comparing the Singapore and English Lawyer Disciplinary Regimes on Recklessness

The Singapore and English disciplinary regimes are aligned insofar as they view recklessly misleading the Court as a disciplinary offence deserving of sanction. The SDT in Walshe had observed that “[r]ecklessly misleading a Court was a serious matter”,32Ibid, at [98.67]. while the Court of Three Judges in Udeh Kumar emphasized the “critical nature of the advocate and solicitor’s duty of candour”.33Supra (note 3), at [55].

Where the two regimes diverge or are likely to diverge on their respective tests of recklessness are: (i) the origin of the test; (ii) the way in which the test is applied; and (iii) whether the test requires dishonesty.

(A) Origin

The origin of the English test was relatively straightforward as the English High Court in Brett merely transposed the “awareness of risk” test in R v G to a lawyer disciplinary context. This was easily achieved, given that the relevant provisions in both the UK Criminal Damage Act 1971 and the UK Solicitors’ Code of Conduct expressly referred to the mens rea of “recklessly”.

By contrast, the origin of the “absence of honest belief” test in Singapore requires a closer look as the Court in Udeh Kumar did not explain why Wang Ziyi Able, a case concerned with a securities offence under section 199 of the Securities and Futures Act (“SFA”), was relevant to the prohibited conduct of misleading the Court.

Under the version of section 199 of the SFA considered in Wang Ziyi Able, it was an offence for a person to make or disseminate information that is false or misleading in a material particular that is, inter alia, likely to induce the sale of securities by others if, when making or disseminating the information:

(i) he does not care whether the statement or information is true or false; or

(ii) he knows or ought reasonably to have known that the statement or information is false or misleading in a material particular. [emphasis added]

The issue in Wang Ziyi Able concerned the interpretation of mens rea of the offence under section 199(i) of the SFA, i.e. “does not care whether the statement or information is true or false” (“‘does not care’ mens rea”). The Singapore High Court held that based on Derry v Peek, the “does not care” mens rea required the accused person to have some subjective dishonesty. The objective test of recklessness, which was commonly associated with negligence, did not apply, as otherwise both limbs of section 199 of the SFA would have effectively identical mens rea.34Supra (note 2), at [74]. This would, on the face of it, be tautologous and there was no reason to rebut the “presumption against tautology” in interpreting section 199.35Ibid.

From the above, it is clear that both Udeh Kumar and Wang Ziyi Able adopted the proposition in Derry v Peek that a statement made not caring whether it was true or false was made dishonestly.

The Court in Udeh Kumar, however, went a step further by holding that the mens rea of “knowingly” in rule 56 of the former PCR encompassed the mens rea of recklessness, which it equated with the “does not care” mens rea. The theoretical basis behind extending the mens rea of “knowingly” to include recklessness was not explained in Udeh Kumar. It is submitted that Derry v Peek only supported the position that a false or misleading statement could be made knowingly or recklessly, but did not equate recklessness with knowledge.

This is not to say that recklessly misleading the Court should not be a valid ground for lawyer discipline; rather the concern is that by incorporating one type of mens rea (recklessness) into another type (knowledge) without a theoretical justification, an anomaly may result where, as will be discussed in Part V, both “knowingly” and “recklessly” appear as distinct mens rea in an ethical rule under PCR 2015 related to misleading the Court.

(B) Application

The application of the “awareness of risk” test in both Brett and Walshe was straightforward. Both cases involved experienced lawyers who were aware that there was a real risk that the Court would be misled by their false statements and failed to correct the misleading impression. Instead, they unreasonably took the risk of misleading the Court by drafting incomplete witness statements and, in Walshe, the respondent solicitor also made misleading submissions in Court.

On the other hand, as mentioned in Part II, the Court in Udeh Kumar did not have the opportunity to apply the “absence of honest belief” test. It is therefore necessary to return to Wang Ziyi Able to surmise how the test may be applied in a lawyer disciplinary case in Singapore.

In essence, the Singapore High Court applied a two-stage test in Wang Ziyi Able. At the first stage, the Court considered, from an evidential viewpoint, “whether there were reasonable grounds to believe in the truth of the statements” made by the trader on the portal.36Ibid, at [97]-[107]. The assessment here was an objective one, taking into the account “the perspective of a reasonable person calibrated against the relevant qualities and characteristics of the accused person”, such as his “qualification, profession, intellect, experience and skills”.37Ibid, at [87]. Although the objective analysis was not determinative, it would often constitute “relatively strong evidence” of whether there was a lack of honest belief.38Ibid, at [88].

On the facts of Wang Ziyi Able, the Court found that no reasonable grounds existed for the accused person, who was “a full-time and seasoned private equities trader at the material time”,39Ibid, at [119]. to believe in the truth of his statements. Among other things, the trader had failed to point out that his statements were based on reports that were subject to a qualification that the information about the raids was unverified. He had also failed to verify this information from other sources.

At the second stage, any objective evidence of a lack of honest belief may be outweighed or rebutted if, on a subjective analysis, the accused person believed in the truth of the information which he had disseminated.40Ibid, at [86]. Here, the accused person’s motive in making or disseminating the statement was generally irrelevant, although if an improper motive was proved, it was less likely that the accused person would succeed in proving that he had an honest belief in the truth of the statement.

On the facts of Wang Ziyi Able, the Court discounted the trader’s purported good intentions to share information with others. It also took into account the evidence that the trader himself had doubts about the veracity of the information about the raid.

From the above, it is likely that in any future lawyer disciplinary case in Singapore involving recklessly misleading the Court, the experience of the solicitor in question and the efforts made by him to verify the truth of the statements will be important factors in undertaking the first-stage objective evidential assessment of determining whether reasonable grounds exist for the solicitor to believe in the truth of his statements. If no independent sources are available, it will probably be necessary, as the facts of Walshe indicate, for the solicitor to verify the truth of the statement from the source itself.

As for the second-stage subjective analysis, a lawyer’s motive in making the false statement would likely be entirely irrelevant, because it would almost invariably be borne out of an obligation to advance the client’s interest, which is overridden by his duty to the Court.41See eg the general interpretive principle in Rule 4(a) in PCR 2015: “A legal practitioner has a paramount duty to the court, which takes precedence over the legal practitioner’s duty to the legal practitioner’s client.”

(C) Dishonesty

The third and perhaps most important distinction between the Singapore and English lawyer disciplinary regimes concerns whether the test of recklessness requires dishonesty. Based on Brett and Walshe, the English position is that recklessness is not synonymous with dishonesty as the respondent solicitor in each case was not alleged to have been dishonest. This stance is well illustrated by Brett, where the English High Court held that even though the SDT had accepted that the respondent solicitor had not been dishonest, it wrongly found that the respondent had “knowingly” allowed the Court to be misled because such a finding was “in effect, a finding of dishonesty”.42Supra (note 17), at [98].

On the other hand, Wang Ziyi Able suggests that the “absence of honest belief” test in Singapore is inextricably linked to subjective dishonesty. A close reading of Udeh Kumar, however, suggests that the “does not care” mens rea may only be one form of recklessness caught under rule 56 of the former PCR, as the Court had, at the outset, rejected the respondent solicitor’s argument that the mens rea required for a breach of rule 56 of the former PCR was subjective dishonesty.43Supra (note 3), at [34]-[35].

V. Practical Implications for the Singapore Legal Profession under the PCR 2015

The critical issue is whether the “absence of honest belief” test applies to the various provisions in the PCR 2015 concerned with or related to “knowingly” misleading the Court. The Court in Udeh Kumar did not offer any observations on this issue, but it has practical implications for how the Singapore legal profession should interpret the relevant ethical rules under the PCR 2015.

The starting point of the analysis is rule 9(2)(a) of the PCR 2015, the equivalent of rule 56 of the former PCR, which prohibits a legal practitioner from “knowingly” misleading or attempting to mislead in any way the court or tribunal amongst others. Given that the principles underlying rule 9(2)(a) reflect and reinforce the Singapore jurisprudence on an advocate’s duty of candour under the former PCR, it is highly probable that the term “knowingly” in rule 9(2)(a) would be interpreted to include recklessness, of which the “does not care” mens rea features prominently, but perhaps not exclusively.

It follows that the same reasoning is likely to apply to other similar rules in the PCR 2015 which deal with misleading conduct:

  1. Rule 8A(4): A legal practitioner must not knowingly mislead or attempt to mislead in any way an adjudicator, a mediator or other person conducting the alternative dispute resolution process.
  2. Rule 8A(5): A legal practitioner must not knowingly assist or permit his or her client to mislead an adjudicator, a mediator or other person conducting the alternative dispute resolution process.
  3. Rule 10(6): A legal practitioner must not knowingly assist or permit his or her client –
  4. to mislead a court or tribunal; or
  5. to do any other thing which the legal practitioner considers to be dishonest.

A more challenging issue is posed by rule 9(2)(f) of the PCR 2015, which states:

A legal practitioner must not knowingly or recklessly cite the law out of context, interpret the law in a manner calculated to mislead the court or tribunal, or otherwise advance any submission, opinion or proposition which he knows or ought reasonably to know is contrary to the law. [emphasis added]

Citing the law out of context is an instance of misleading the Court. Here, if the mens rea of “recklessly” is taken to refer to the “does not care” mens rea, a presumption against tautology may arise because “knowingly” and “recklessly” should not mean the same thing. It is therefore uncertain whether the mens rea of recklessness in rule 9(2)(f) should be interpreted to mean another form of recklessness which does not involve subjective dishonesty.

This interpretive conundrum is complicated by the fact that rule 9(5) of the PCR 2015 requires an advocate to remedy any breach of rule 9 committed “unknowingly” or inadvertently.44Jeffrey Pinsler SC, Legal Profession (Professional Conduct) Rules 2015: A Commentary (Singapore: Academy Publishing, 2016), p 266 at [09.105]. However, in light of Udeh Kumar, would “reckless” breaches under rule 9(2)(f) have to be disclosed and remedied in accordance with rule 9(5)? If the implication of Udeh Kumar is that “knowingly” always encompasses recklessness, rule 9(5) is not applicable if an advocate recklessly committed a breach of rule 9(2)(f) as the mens rea of “unknowingly” is not satisfied. However, if “knowingly” is distinct from “recklessly” under rule 9(2)(f) (to avoid a tautologous interpretation), a reckless advocate would have to comply with rule 9(5) as the mens rea of “unknowingly” is satisfied. The proper interpretation of “unknowingly” therefore has significant consequences for reckless advocates as they may be held liable for an additional breach of rule 9(5).

More critically, if the paramount ethical concern under rule 9(5) is with an advocate’s duty to correct misleading impressions once he is made aware of them, it should not matter whether the original contravention was made inadvertently, knowingly or recklessly. The real mischief, as illustrated by the facts of Brett and Walshe, is that the advocate knowingly or recklessly fails to correct misleading impressions even though he has become aware or has reasonable grounds to believe that the statements are false. Accordingly, rule 9(5) merits a review as to whether its mens rea targets the correct ethical mischief.

VI. Conclusion

The importation of the criminal standard of recklessness into lawyer ethical codes in Singapore and England has been a recent phenomenon, but it should not come as a surprise. As pointed out by an American academic, the legalisation of lawyer ethical codes and the increasing frequency of disciplinary enforcement means that “mens rea issues are likely to attain greater prominence”.45Nancy J. Moore, “Mens Rea Standards in Lawyer Disciplinary Codes” (2010) 23(1) Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 1 at 6. Using the English lawyer disciplinary regime as a yardstick for comparison, this article has sought to raise critical questions surrounding the test of recklessly misleading the Court in Singapore, and its potential implications. Just as there should be “no criminal liability without fault”,46Supra (note 15), p 173. lawyers should not be disciplined if the requisite mens rea is absent. The mens rea standard of recklessness under the PCR 2015 should not deserve any less attention than its exposition in the criminal law.

* The views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and do not represent the views of RHTLaw Taylor Wessing LLP.

Endnotes

Endnotes
1 [2004] 1 AC 1034.
2 [2008] 2 SLR(R) 61.
3 [2017] SGHC 141.
4 Cap 161, R1, 2010 Rev Ed.
5 (1889) 14 App Cas 337.
6 Supra (note 3), at [36].
7 Ibid, at [48].
8 Ibid, at [55].
9 [1982] AC 341.
10 Supra (note 1), at 1050H-1051A.
11 Ibid, at 1034G.
12 Ibid, at 1034H-1035A.
13 Ibid, at 1035A.
14 Findlay Stark, Culpable Carelessness: Recklessness and Negligence in the Criminal Law (United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p 28.
15 Jeremy Horder, Ashworth’s Principles of Criminal Law (Eighth Edition, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2016), p 201.
16 Supra (note 14).
17 [2014] EWHC 2974 (Admin).
18 UK Solicitors’ Code of Conduct 2007, Rule 11.01.
19 Alvin Chen & Helena Whalen-Bridge, Understanding Lawyers’ Ethics in Singapore(Singapore: Lexis-Nexis, 2016), paras 5.55-5.59.
20 Supra (note 17), at [91].
21 Ibid, at [28].
22 Ibid, at [100].
23 Solicitors Regulation Authority (Applicant) and Nigel George Walshe (Respondent), Case No 11620-2017 (Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal), Judgment dated 22 August 2017.
24 UK Solicitors’ Code of Conduct 2011, Outcome 5.1: “You do not attempt to deceive or knowingly or recklessly mislead the court.”
25 Supra (note 23), at [44].
26 Ibid, at [88].
27 Ibid, at [98.61].
28 Ibid, at [98.49].
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid, at [98.63].
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid, at [98.67].
33 Supra (note 3), at [55].
34 Supra (note 2), at [74].
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid, at [97]-[107].
37 Ibid, at [87].
38 Ibid, at [88].
39 Ibid, at [119].
40 Ibid, at [86].
41 See eg the general interpretive principle in Rule 4(a) in PCR 2015: “A legal practitioner has a paramount duty to the court, which takes precedence over the legal practitioner’s duty to the legal practitioner’s client.”
42 Supra (note 17), at [98].
43 Supra (note 3), at [34]-[35].
44 Jeffrey Pinsler SC, Legal Profession (Professional Conduct) Rules 2015: A Commentary (Singapore: Academy Publishing, 2016), p 266 at [09.105].
45 Nancy J. Moore, “Mens Rea Standards in Lawyer Disciplinary Codes” (2010) 23(1) Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 1 at 6.
46 Supra (note 15), p 173.

Chief Legal Officer and Director, Representation and Law Reform
The Law Society of Singapore
E-mail: [email protected]