A law graduate who” copied and pasted” from a sample essay in an open-book exam four years ago and lied about it during a subsequent investigation was allowed to practice law after a five-month delay on her application.
Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon stated in the grounds of his decision, which was made on Friday ( Mar 9 ) that he thought the student, Ms. Stasia Ong Pei Qi, had” sufficiently demonstrated that she had learned from her past misconduct.”
In addition, Ms. Ong, who was a student at the National University of Singapore’s ( NUS) Faculty of Law ), had made voluntary disclosures of her misconduct.
Ms. Ong sat for an open-book exam that accounted for 70 % of the device’s level in April 2020, during the second trimester of her next year. She” copied and pasted” some text from a senior student’s sample essay for one of the essay questions.
After realizing that Ms. Ong’s response to the writing query shared significant similarities with the responses of three other students, the university set up an inquiry a month later.
When questioned, Ms. Ong claimed that she had been working on her document examination response in two distinct Microsoft Word files.
One report, in her opinion, contained the specimen essay with minor changes, whereas the other contained a duplicate of the same sample essay that she was “working to update anew.” She claimed to have submitted the “wrong” document, which contained only minor changes.
So, this implied that the person had prepared a separate document that she had significantly modified and which lacked significant resemblance to the responses provided by the three additional students. There really was n’t such a document, according to Chief Justice Menon.
Consequently, the applicant’s claim that she had “intentionally” submitted the “wrong” document was misleading was untrue.
NUS was not aware of the “untrue speech.” However, it determined that she had committed copying and gave her no marks for the problem.
She then completed her academic research without any further tragedy.
However, when Ms. Ong submitted her app for club admission in 2023, she revealed that in addition to lying during the inquiry, she likewise plagiarise.
She also admitted to an NUS employee earlier that year about the false statement she made during the investigation, which led the school to revise her quality for the affected module from” C” to” D. Additionally, a notice of warning was issued.
Following her software, both the Attorney-General and the Singapore Institute of Legal Education asserted that Ms. Ong was” not a fit and proper person to be admitted to the Bar at that time” and requested a five-month deferment period to allow the applicant to reflect on her steps.
The Law Society of Singapore, however, did not object to her app being handled at the time, leaving no need for a deferment.
Ms. Ong consented to the deferral.
On January 20, 2024, the postponement time expired, and the case was therefore resumed for reading. The app received no objections from any of the parties involved.