The Law School wishes to congratulate Jonathan and Vikna for being selected from a hundred nominees in this prestigious listing.
The nominee selections were based on three main criteria: thought leadership, influence, and success.
Lawyers who have risen through the ranks to secure themselves top level positions at their respective law firms had the advantage in the selection process.
Jonathan Lee, 32 and Vikna Rajah, 36 are both partners at Rajah & Tann in Singapore.
Jonathan’s practice is focused on complex, high value disputes both before the Singapore Courts and before arbitral tribunals.
During his time in practice, he has amassed experience in a wide variety of cases, with a particular emphasis on banking litigation, regulatory issues, and shareholders’ disputes.
Jonathan has also spent time on secondment at the Ministry of Law, Singapore, as an Assistant Director in the Ministry’s Legal Policy Division.
In this capacity, he helped to engineer amendments to several key pieces of legislation, including the International Arbitration Act, the Evidence Act, the Legal Profession Act, and the Omnibus Insolvency Bill.
Jonathan has acted in some of the country’s most high profile litigation
Vikna advises multi-national corporations on complex income tax, goods and services tax, stamp duty and tax treaty issues.
He specialises in contentious civil disputes with the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (“IRAS”), tax structuring and criminal tax cases.
Prior to joining Rajah & Tann, Vikna was Senior Legal Specialist with IRAS where he advised the authority on all area of tax law, primarily in relation to complex, controversial or novel issues including tax avoidance and tax evasion.
He also represented IRAS before the Income Tax Board of Review, the Goods and Services Tax Board of Review, the High Court and the Court of Appeal. In addition, he was gazetted as a prosecutor where he secured multiple consecutive convictions.
Despite his young age, Vikna has already acted as lead counsel before the Court of Appeal in ABU v. CIT, which is one of the few cases in the world in relation to exchange of information between national tax authorities to go before a country’s apex court.
His practice is growing from strength to strength and he is regularly instructed by other top-tier law firms, magic circle firms and accounting firms.
He was recently engaged as lead counsel in a matter involving the taxability of over S$75 million in income as well as structuring a trust for almost S$1b in assets.
Dr. Ardavan Arzandeh, Lecturer in Law at the School had previously studied with Vikna Rajah and commented:
The University of Bristol Law School has a large body of talented and successful alumni in Singapore, many of whom are leading figures in their respective fields of endeavour. Jonathan and Vikna’s success continues this tradition. The Law School is exceptionally proud of their achievements and wishes them continued success for the future.