VAW2023 SPEAKER

KOH Swee Yen, Senior Counsel, is the Head of the International Arbitration Practice and a Partner in the Commercial & Corporate Disputes Practice.

Her practice has a particular focus on complex, high-value and cross-border disputes across a wide spectrum of matters from commercial, energy, international sales, trade, transport, technology to investment. She regularly appears before the Singapore Courts (including the Singapore International Commercial Court) and in international arbitrations under the major institutional rules, including ICSID, ICC, ICDR, LCIA, SIAC, and UNCITRAL.

Swee Yen graduated with First Class Honours from the National University of Singapore (NUS). She was awarded the Singapore Academy of Law prize for being the top student in her final year, and won subject prizes for Evidence and Procedure and Intellectual Property Law. Swee Yen served as a Justices’ Law Clerk to the Chief Justice of Singapore before entering private practice. During her time in practice, she received appointments as Law Clerk to assist the Competition Appeal Board in the first and subsequent appeals lodged against the Competition Commission of Singapore’s Infringement Decisions relating to price fixing matters, and was also on the Supreme Court’s Young Amicus Curiae scheme in 2010.

Swee Yen is the Co-Chair of the IPBA Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Committee, and a member of the ICCA-ASIL Task Force on Damages. She was the former Vice-Chair of the IBA Arbitration Committee, and was also on the Editorial Board of the ICC Dispute Resolution Bulletin. She is currently a Board member of the Swiss Arbitration Association. She has sat as an arbitrator in ICC, LCIA and SIAC administered arbitrations, and is on the Panel of Arbitrators of the Asian International Arbitration Centre, Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre and Korean Commercial Arbitration Board. She is a member of the Governing Board for the Centre of International Law, NUS, and the President of the Singapore branch of the International Law Association. She has also been appointed to the Executive Committee of the Foundation for International Arbitration Advocacy.

Swee Yen has been a member of the Rules of Court Working Party since 2005, and was also a member of the Civil Justice Commission whose work culminated in the promulgation of the new Rules of Court 2021 which seeks to effect transformative changes to the litigation process in Singapore.
She is appointed by the Ministry of Home Affairs as a member of the Public Entertainment Appeal Board, Criminal Law Advisory Committee (Hearing) and is also a member of the Casino Regulatory Authority’s Patron Dispute Committee.