Our founder Shobna Chandran reflects on the value of versatility and advocacy in legal practice.

When I finished my Justice’s Law Clerkship in 2007, the conventional wisdom was to choose one or two specialisations and develop deep expertise in those areas. It was the golden age of arbitration, with liberalisation bringing international firms to Singapore. Many of my peers chose their lanes – insolvency, construction, medical negligence – and built deep expertise.

In private practice, I was fortunate to work with Senior Counsels whose work was shaped by complex and novel legal issues. In my early days, I gained exposure across diverse areas of law – appellate work, IP, insolvency, arbitration, fraud, regulatory investigations, equity and trusts.

Over the past five years alone, as lead counsel and all the way up to the Court of Appeal, I’ve argued cases spanning aviation leasing, arbitration, employment, insolvency, medical negligence, cryptocurrency, restitution, professional negligence and even prosecuting and defending in disciplinary proceedings.

What I’ve discovered is that at the heart of every dispute are three skill sets: getting to the bottom of the facts, surveying the law, and the art of advocacy.

These skills transcend practice areas. If you’re good at distilling facts and crafting legal arguments, there’s no area you cannot handle. The question is not whether you’re a generalist or specialist – it’s whether you know your limits and when to collaborate. When a case involves technical point in shipping or IP for example, I co-counsel with specialists. However, the fundamental advocacy skills remain the same.

Instead of fixating on the false dichotomy of generalist versus specialist, lawyers benefit most from being a generalist with 3–4 specialisations. For me, those areas are arbitration, equity and trusts, restitution, insolvency, and commercial disputes. But having that generalist foundation means that there are no boundaries limiting the clients I can serve. It allows me to confidently take on cases I might never have considered if I’d narrowed my focus too early.

The fundamental skills – being curious, knowing how to collaborate, and understanding when to bring in specialised expertise – transcend any single practice area. At the end of the day, we’re advocates first – and good advocacy does not have to be siloed by practice areas.

— Shobna Chandran, Principal and Managing Director, SC LLC

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