Ben Chester Cheong

Ben Chester Cheong is a Singaporean legal academic and lawyer with 10 years' experience and a Visiting Fellow at University of Reading, School of Law since November 2024. Ben is a Law Lecturer (permanent contract) at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS), School of Law since December 2018. Since August 2024, he is also the inaugural Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE)-START Overseas PhD Scholar at SUSS. Ben graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge in June 2015 with a Master of Law. In the following year, he placed 3rd out of 664 candidates in the Singapore Bar Examinations (Part B) and is the highest performing Cambridge graduate in that year’s Bar Examination. He completed his undergraduate degree in law (with first class honours) at the University of Exeter and was ranked 2nd out of 241 students, with several academic awards including two Dean’s Commendations, the Stones Prize for best LLB dissertation, and the top student for the Commercial Law module.

Ben has published extensively on most law and legal policy topics, spanning private and public law, legal and political theory, and technology law, and his work has been cited over 190 times, including by the Singapore government, INTERPOL, and WIPO. His research output has appeared in top-tier legal journals, such as the Law Quarterly Review, Journal of Business Law, Statute Law Review, Capital Markets Law Journal, International Company & Commercial Law Review, Company Lawyer, European Papers, and Journal of Planning & Environment Law. He has also published in other leading journals including the International Cybersecurity Law Review, SN Social Sciences, Asian Journal of Legal Education, Singapore Academy of Law Journal, SAL Practitioner and Singapore Policy Journal. He is an invited referee for over a dozen journals, including the Journal of Corporate Law Studies, Journal of Financial Crime, Journal of Money Laundering Control, and Climate Policy. His legal expertise has been sought after by leading media outlets globally, such as The Straits Times, The Business Times, ChannelNewsAsia, TodayOnline, Nikkei Asia, Al Jazeera, Voice of America, The Star, and Chinese Social Sciences Today.

Within 2+ years of joining SUSS, Ben received the university-level Outstanding Teaching Award in 2022 and the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2021. From 2018 to 2023, Ben served as course convenor for Law of Business Organisations (LBO), a compulsory module covering the legal aspects of partnership, company law, and corporate insolvency. He is also a lecturer in Contract Law, Equity & Trusts, and Legal Methods & Systems. Ben has taught Advanced Corporate Practice at the Singapore Bar Examinations (Part B). Ben is dual-qualified and admitted to practice law in Singapore and England & Wales. Ben previously served as an international finance lawyer at American law firm Baker McKenzie, where he has worked on loan transactions in excess of US$500 million, initial public offerings and bond issuances. He is currently Of Counsel at RHTLaw Asia (since September 2020), and Centre Researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (C-EENRG) (since April 2024).