Yale-NUS seniors pursue diverse career paths

The Double Degree Programme in Law and Liberal Arts (DDP) is jointly offered by Yale-NUS College and the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore, a five-year honours programme that gives students the best of both worlds – a liberal arts education and training in the law.  With the decidedly interdisciplinary nature of the programme, graduates are apt to consider diverse career pathways as they mull over their future plans.

Dakshayani Ravindran (Class of 2024) will be pursuing a legal career after graduation. She will be studying for the bar exam this year before beginning her training contract at a legal firm in January 2025. At Yale-NUS, she learned how to apply her legal skills and knowledge through participating in student organisations and working on her capstone project.

Dakshayani Ravindran (Class of 2024) will be pursuing a legal career after graduation. Image provided by Dakshayani Ravindran.

Dakshayani’s capstone project was heavily influenced by two classes she had taken at Yale-NUS: Law and Resistance, and Migration Policy. In these classes, Dakshayani reflected on the impact of legal issues on marginalised communities, and was inspired to study the legal consciousness of Sri Lankan migrant domestic workers in Singapore. “It [My project] seeks to understand how they view the law and respond to rights infringements. In doing so, I hope to understand how access to justice looks like for these individuals and how the law can shape identities, act as a form of consciousness raising and provide redress where infringements occur.”

Dakshayani also developed a global perspective on law through the Yale-NUS Summer Academic Scholarship. She pursued a 3-week course in The Hague in the Netherlands, focusing on International Criminal Law and International Humanitarian Law. There, she interacted with and learned from several organisations and individuals, such as the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. With the perspectives supplied by her Global Affairs minor, she saw how international law plays a role in responding to international humanitarian crises.

As Dakshayani moves into her next phase in life, she aims to contribute to society through her legal practice, whether through helping clients with their legal problems or working towards reforming the current justice system.

Benjamin Peck (Class of 2024) will be joining Tiktok as a Product Manager. Image provided by Benjamin Peck.

Benjamin Peck (Class of 2024) (Ben) will be joining TikTok as a Product Manager. During the semester break after his first year at Yale-NUS, he embarked on an internship at a venture capital firm which sparked his passion for technology and innovation. Through several stints with Boston Consulting Group, Oliver Wyman, and Grab, amongst other firms, he developed his interest in product management. He sees his legal training as relevant to scaling digital products through understanding regulatory limits and managing downside risk. According to Ben, reading Law helped him develop a strong personal voice and evaluate opportunities rigorously, which have been useful elements for prioritising features for development. Ben reflected, “As a Product Manager with a background in law, I am able to address these concerns well through my intuition for risks and opportunities embedded in these.”

Ben is also an Anthropology minor at Yale-NUS. Through the study of Anthropology, he learnt the importance of listening, asking good questions and being curious. He believes that these are skills and mindsets integral to Product Management, particularly in articulating the voice of the platform user and building solutions that adequately meet their needs. Through the mix of DDP and Anthropology, Ben developed “a unique skillset not possible anywhere else.”

Elizabeth Koh will be pursuing a legal career after graduation. Image provided by Elizabeth Koh.

Similar to Dakshayani, Elizabeth Koh (Class of 2024) will also be pursuing a legal career. After graduation, she will be studying for the bar exam while working as a research assistant under Professor Lynette Chua and Dr Jack Jin Gary Lee on the Governing through Contagion project, a historical-ethnographic project on the colonial and post-colonial governance of epidemics. In January 2025, she will be training with Drew and Napier’s Dispute Resolution department.

Elizabeth chose to pursue law as legal analysis requires her to be able to see different perspectives to enable problem-solving. Elizabeth realised this during her junior year, when she participated in the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Law Pro Bono Programme and helped out at Meet-the-People sessions in MacPherson SMC. There, she saw how lawyers and residents came up with solutions to residents’ concerns, and how these lawyers integrated the residents’ circumstances with the law to reach optimal solutions.

Elizabeth decided to pursue a career in litigation because she enjoyed mooting, which is a process where two parties debate about a point of law. Elizabeth commented, “I have had the privilege of crafting submissions and debating contentious areas of the law with the most brilliant people; I am constantly in awe of the seniors who extended their time and expertise to coach me, and the teammates who honed my arguments and stayed the course with me (and also fed me emotional support Tim Tams).”

At Yale-NUS, Elizabeth was inspired to take on a greater role in social work, starting her own pro bono project engaging the sex worker community in Singapore in 2021. Given the amendments made to the Women’s Charter at the time, Elizabeth’s team collaborated with Tamar Village to discuss these changes regarding online solicitation and other laws and legal remedies related to sex work. Overall, she reflected that “Yale-NUS is a constant reminder that there are people who genuinely care about the world. Even if you can’t change the world, it doesn’t hurt to be kind and thoughtful to the people around you.”

Updated as at 24 July 2024