Patrick Dahm

That German-Singapore Lawyer

Dissertation Summarised

By

On 5 December 2025

In Law, Scribblings, Singapore

When my dis­ser­ta­tion came out late last year, a few col­leagues asked why a work so focused on Singa­pore, where Eng­lish is the lan­guage of the law, was writ­ten in Ger­man. Well, it was a Ger­man doc­tor­ate, plus the dis­ser­ta­tion was inten­ded as a con­tri­bu­tion to the debate on com­mer­cial courts in Ger­many. That’s why.

Still, they had a point, so I put togeth­er an Eng­lish sum­mary: ‘Should a Dis­pute Be Brought to the Singa­pore Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Court or to Arbitration?’

I’m pleased to share that it has now been pub­lished in this year’s Zeits­chrift für Zivil­prozess Inter­na­tion­al (ZZP Int (29) 2024, pp. 258 – 312). If the top­ic interests you, do have a look.

The Distribution Law of Singapore

By

On 3 February 2025

In Law, Scribblings, Singapore

Hear ye, hear ye! The fifth edi­tion of Hand­buch Ver­triebs­recht (Hand­book of Dis­tri­bu­tion Law), edited by Mar­tinek, Semler and Flohr, has been pub­lished. It’s a tome of 3,155 (plus LXXVII) pages that once again provides a sys­tem­at­ic and detailed present­a­tion of this area of law, both nation­ally (from a Ger­man per­spect­ive) and inter­na­tion­ally. One of the new addi­tions from my pen is a chapter on Singa­pore, which deals com­pre­hens­ively with its com­mer­cial agency, author­ised deal­er, fran­chise and com­pet­i­tion laws.

SICC or Arbitration?

By

On 9 November 2024

In Law, Singapore

My doc­tor­al dis­ser­ta­tion has been pub­lished as an e‑book and in print. Its title trans­lates as ‘SICC or Arbit­ra­tion? A Com­par­is­on of Pro­ceed­ings in the Singa­pore Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Court with the Advant­ages and Dis­ad­vant­ages of Inter­na­tion­al Arbit­ra­tion Pro­ceed­ings’. It does what it says on the tin, so here’s just a bit of background.

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Arbitrators: Balancing Active Engagement and Party Autonomy

By

On 21 October 2024

In Law

I was back in Kuala Lum­pur for Asia ADR Week 2024 and an Oxford-style debate on the top­ic of ‘The Extent and Lim­it­a­tions of Arbit­rat­ors’ Dis­cre­tion­ary Powers’.

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On the Diminishing Importance of Humanity in Arbitration

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On 30 July 2024

In Law

Last week­end the Asia ADR Sum­mit was held in Kuala Lum­pur. I had the hon­our and pleas­ure of par­ti­cip­at­ing in an Oxford-style debate on the top­ic: ‘This House believes that “human­ity” is dis­pens­able in arbit­ra­tion, and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence will sup­plant arbit­rat­ors in the future’.

Here is my state­ment and my rebuttal.

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From Munich with Law: My Way to a Doctorate

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On 26 April 2024

In Law

If you know me, you know that I don’t always do things in life in the ortho­dox order. After passing my first state exam­in­a­tion in law at the begin­ning of 2001, I wanted to do a doc­tor­ate. In fact, I had already made sev­er­al pre­par­a­tions for it. But then life inter­vened and took me from Ham­burg to Singa­pore. Which was fine, and I soon aban­doned the idea of becom­ing a Doc­tor of Law and con­cen­trated on my second state exam­in­a­tion, then my career, and whatever else was hap­pen­ing in my life (which, as life goes, wasn’t all smooth sail­ing). A while ago, how­ever, I picked up the idea again and pur­sued it fur­ther. Yes­ter­day I was in Munich for my oral doc­tor­al exam­in­a­tion at Lud­wig Max­imili­an Uni­ver­sity (LMU). I’m happy to report: I made it.

Me last night at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (symbolic picture).

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Courts and Tribunals and the Amicable Settlement of Disputes in Singapore

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On 22 September 2023

In Law, Singapore

May courts or arbit­ral tribunals engage in the amic­able set­tle­ment of dis­putes between parties? More spe­cific­ally, may a Singa­pore court or arbit­ral tribunal act­ively do so? What do the inquis­it­ori­al pro­cesses men­tioned in the law have to do with it?

I have set out my thoughts in an art­icle that the Ger­man Arbit­ra­tion Journ­al (Schieds­VZ) has just pub­lished in its September/October 2023 issue.

Sup­ple­ment­al: Kluwer Arbit­ra­tion Blog has pub­lished a sum­mary of the article.

The galley proofs of my article ‘On the Powers of Courts and Arbitral Tribunals in the Amicable Settlement of Disputes by the Parties: A Look at Singapore and Selected Other Countries’. Inquisitorial processes are the key.

Wirtschaftsverwaltungsrecht Singapur, Anyone?

By

On 23 September 2022

In Law, Singapore

A law­yer shall not live by arbit­ra­tion alone (at least not this one). As much as I enjoy arbit­ra­tion, I also enjoy advising cli­ents in an area of law that has, over time, become a pro­fes­sion­al hobby­horse: eco­nom­ic admin­is­trat­ive law. This is the area of law that empowers or requires gov­ern­ment agen­cies to mon­it­or or inter­vene in the private sec­tor. The eco­nom­ic admin­is­trat­ive law of Singa­pore, in Ger­man: das Wirt­schafts­ver­wal­tungs­recht von Singapur. Repeat after me.

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Singapore’s New Law on Electronic Bills of Lading

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On 24 May 2021

In Law, Singapore

Peking, a steel-hulled four-masted barque, was one of the last generation of cargo-carrying iron-hulled sailing ships. She probably carried many bills of lading.
New tech­no­logy on the horizon

Singa­pore has adop­ted the UNCITRAL Mod­el Law on Elec­tron­ic Trans­fer­able Records, in a bid to get elec­tron­ic bills of lad­ing (eBOL) off the ground after pre­vi­ous efforts failed. The Singa­pore Cham­ber of Mari­time Arbit­ra­tion has pub­lished the ori­gin­al Eng­lish ver­sion of my art­icle on the new law. Trans­port­recht, the trans­port­a­tion law journ­al, has pub­lished the Ger­man ver­sion.

Panic Over New WhatsApp Policy?

By

On 13 January 2021

In Scribblings

A friend sent me this piece about WhatsApp’s new pri­vacy policy, ask­ing for my take on it: ‘Expert: No need to pan­ic over new What­s­App policy’.

All right, in brief, here’s my take.

The WhatsApp logo with a Facebook F in it instead of the original phone receiver.

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My 2020 TV Series, on Netflix and Elsewhere

By

On 27 December 2020

In TV

Patrick’s blog sup­ple­ment­al. Have you ever checked your view­ing his­tory on Net­flix or whatever else you turn to for enter­tain­ment on telly? I have, so here’s a list of all the new TV series I watched in 2020. It’s more than usu­al, on top of everything else that went down.

Hannah New as Eleanor Guthrie in Black Sails.

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My Year in Review, at Home, at Work, and in Other Places

By

On 27 December 2020

In Singapore

A lot went down in 2020. Bought and ren­ov­ated an HDB flat. Became a CIArb fel­low and an SMC-accred­ited medi­at­or. Oh, and I got mar­ried. A short, per­son­al end-of-year review sor­ted by theme.

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Enforceability of Foreign Emergency Awards in Singapore

By

On 26 August 2019

In Law, Singapore

An arbit­ral award made by an emer­gency arbit­rat­or sit­ting in Singa­pore is enforce­able in Singa­pore. The law is clear on this.

How­ever, the law is less clear on for­eign emer­gency awards. Are they enforce­able in Singapore?

Patrick Dahm (emergency arbitrator, among other things) caught by a CCTV camera taking a picture of himself on the CCTV screen

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Facebook and Libra: The House of Medici on Speed

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On 17 July 2019

In Law

Face­book and Libra, that’s like the House of Medici on speed. The Medici fam­ily were mer­chants first. Dur­ing the Itali­an Renais­sance they became bankers, then princes. Then they pro­duced four popes of the Cath­ol­ic Church. It took them a few cen­tur­ies to do all that. But in announ­cing Libra, Face­book is claim­ing cyber prince­dom (cyber papacy even?) barely fif­teen years after its found­ing. No won­der the gov­ern­ments of today are stunned.

The moderator and panelists of The Dappers' event Introducing Libra: Facebook’s brainchild, on 16 July 2019.

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Libra: A Sovereign Currency for Cyberspace?

By

On 4 July 2019

In Law

Face­book, unar­gu­ably one of the biggest over­lords of cyber­space, has pro­posed a crypto­cur­rency: Libra.

That’s inter­est­ing. Why Face­book? What’s happening?

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and proponent of cryptocurrency Libra, to be managed by the Libra Association.

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Law, Lies, and Videotape

By

On 10 May 2019

In Law, Singapore

I was work­ing for Samuel Seow Law Cor­por­a­tion when its founder and man­aging dir­ect­or assaul­ted female staff mem­bers in his office last year. When videos of the incid­ent sur­faced a few days ago, my phone was on fire. A few sen­sa­tion­al­ists were fish­ing for gos­sip (wrong num­ber, guys), but the major­ity had an actu­al desire to talk. For the first time, I couldn’t answer every­one who con­tac­ted me in time. That’s why I wrote this post.

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On Arbitration, Football and Vacuum-Cleaning Robots

By

On 7 December 2018

In Law

The Singa­pore Insti­tute of Arbit­rat­ors invited me to debate the fol­low­ing motion: ‘This House Believes That Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Have Replaced Arbit­rat­ors with­in Twenty-Five Years’. In short: can – will – algorithms replace arbit­rat­ors with­in a generation?

We were debat­ing this last night. Here are my open­ing and clos­ing statements.

Group picture of the debaters, the judges and the moderator, all arbitration practitioners

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Bugis

By

On 20 September 2018

In Singapore

After eight years of liv­ing in the Orch­ard area, and two years in Novena before that, I’ve moved to a more down-to-earth part of Singa­pore: Bugis. That once infam­ous dis­trict, which to this day retains its gruff char­ac­ter. I guess I was drawn to it to com­pensate for all these years in Atasland.

Special Operations Command van parking in Bugis

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BeA – Insecure Professional Communication for German Lawyers

By

On 6 September 2018

In Law

As of this week, Ger­man law­yers are required to use an elec­tron­ic com­mu­nic­a­tion tool designed espe­cially for them: the spe­cial elec­tron­ic law­yers’ mail­box (beson­deres elektron­isches Anwalt­s­post­fach or beA). The prob­lem is that the beA is inher­ently insec­ure, so it seems bet­ter to avoid using it. This would include, if pos­sible, not lit­ig­at­ing before a Ger­man court if there’s a chance that the oppon­ent or the court might use the beA in the pro­ceed­ings. This seems all the more appro­pri­ate where there is a risk of snoop­ing or foul play by the oppon­ent or third parties, or where the stakes are high – and when aren’t they?

My beA card
One card to bring them all and in the dark­ness bind them

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Guerrilla Tactics in Arbitration

By

On 5 April 2018

In Law, Scribblings

I don’t like how we use the term guer­rilla tac­tics in inter­na­tion­al arbit­ra­tion. Refer­ring to guer­rilla dis­ap­prov­ingly implies meth­ods of tra­di­tion­al war­fare are alright. Artil­lery or old-school tac­tic­al form­a­tions – okay. Sneaky ambushes or hit-and-run attacks – not okay.

Japanese premises at night, approached by ninjas
The place of the hear­ing at night

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Priyageetha Dia's golden flags

Gilded with Law

By

On 28 March 2018

In Art, Law, Singapore

Priy­ageetha Dia has gil­ded Singa­pore with gold foil, again. And a lot of people have called her urb­an art inter­ven­tion illeg­al, again. But what if she and her art had been on safe leg­al ground all along? What if it wasn’t so clear wheth­er the remov­al of her golden flags was leg­al or not?

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Initial Coin Offering: an Inaccurate Term and an Imperfect Regulator

By

On 19 March 2018

In Law, Singapore

Patrick Dahm flaunting his Aviato t-shirt

This is my speech at the first Com­pu­ta­tion­al Law & Block­chain Fest­iv­al – Singa­pore Node on 17 March 2018. In it, I tried to explain what ini­tial coin offer­ings are, why gov­ern­ments all over the world eye them curi­ously, and how gov­ern­ments reg­u­late them – if they reg­u­late them. I also ques­tioned why brick and mor­tar gov­ern­ments reg­u­late some­thing so digital.

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No, I Won’t Help You Whitewash Your Token Sale Scam

By

On 2 March 2018

In Law

Over lunch the in-house coun­sel of a tech com­pany asked me wheth­er I ever decline work. We were mak­ing small talk, but funny she should ask. Because I have indeed chosen not to work on one or the oth­er ini­tial coin offer­ing or token sale lately.

I do what I do for a liv­ing, so I’m not prone to decline work by default. But these pro­jects didn’t smell right.

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The Efficient Breach of Smart Contracts

By

On 13 February 2018

In Law

Smart con­tracts are described as self-execut­ing: how they are formed is how they will be per­formed. This is why some of us see no (or at least less) room for leg­al dis­pute over them.

It shouldn’t be this way. Where it’s effi­cient, it should be pos­sible to breach a smart con­tract. Even though this may lead to a leg­al dispute.

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The Arts and the Law in Singapore

By

On 7 February 2018

In Art, Law, Singapore

Last Fri­day we were cel­eb­rat­ing the offi­cial open­ing of our new office, arts and enter­tain­ment law firm that we are. This is the speech I gave before the party took off.

Group picture with Patrick Dahm and party guests

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red crab

The Shire of Christmas Island

By

On 19 March 2017

In Travel

It was time for me to go diving again, so I betook myself to Christ­mas Island, this extern­al ter­rit­ory of Aus­tralia in the Indi­an Ocean. Under water I encountered sharks, dol­phins and oth­er creatures of the sea. Above water I went hik­ing, climb­ing and bird­watch­ing in hon­our of the words of someone very dear to me: ‘Take many pic­tures, do many things you don’t get to do in Singa­pore and remem­ber each and every one of them.’

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Close-up of Priyageetha Dia's golden staircase at Jalan Rajah

The Art of Walking a Fine and Golden Line

By

On 12 March 2017

In Art, Law, Singapore

Was Priy­ageetha Dia’s golden stair­case art or van­dal­ism? Wrong ques­tion, in my view. Some­thing can be both. Just that this art wasn’t.

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Suits Is Real

By

On 11 February 2017

In TV

As an object of my fan ador­a­tion. Ah, the enter­tain­ment. You have to love Suits, the TV series, and the par­al­lel uni­verse it cre­ates. Someone on the inter­net called it shal­low. Well, yeah, it isn’t Dostoyevsky, but who wants to read Rus­si­an lit­er­at­ure all the time!?

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Smartifying Blockchains, Legally

By

On 23 January 2017

In Law

Yes, block­chain tech­no­logy can do things which con­ven­tion­al ledgers or registers can­not do. A few days ago I argued that this didn’t mean block­chain should replace tra­di­tion­al ways of record­ing leg­al trans­ac­tions whole­sale. Tra­di­tion­al ways of record­ing leg­al trans­ac­tions embed func­tions which block­chains don’t embed yet. Where the law demands it or wherever else it makes sense we should think about imple­ment­ing them.

Here’s in more detail what I had in mind.

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Blockchain: The Roll of Deeds of the Internet

By

On 13 January 2017

In Law

After read­ing Caitlin Moon’s instruct­ive blog Block­chain 101 for Law­yers I com­men­ted that we should ‘think of it as a cybernot­ary who can authen­tic­ate — everything’.

I’ve changed my mind.

For the avoid­ance of doubt, I’m all for catchy ana­lo­gies. They help under­stand much of what’s going on in cyber­space. Even bet­ter than a catchy ana­logy, though, is an ana­logy that’s catchy and apt.

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Two birds in a dispute

How Do We Resolve Disputes? What’s with Those Algorithms?

By

On 10 January 2017

In Law

This really very long and quasi-aca­dem­ic post is based on a speech I gave to MBA stu­dents of the Man­age­ment Devel­op­ment Insti­tute of Singa­pore some­time in 2016. Sub­ject: how do we resolve dis­putes and what bor­ders, geo­graph­ic­al or oth­er­wise, do we cross in doing so? Bor­ders and oth­er­wise, ged­dit, I was talk­ing about dis­pute res­ol­u­tion in cyber­space and algorithms.

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Singapore to Ratify Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements

By

On 10 May 2016

In Law, Singapore

Here’s my piece on Singa­pore’s rat­i­fic­a­tion of this Con­ven­tion on Peter Ber­t’s dis­pute res­ol­u­tion blog.

The National Coat of Arms of Singapore
Dark forest scene. Insecure

Security in Cyberspace, Fifty Years into Its Colonisation

By

On 15 April 2016

In Law

The space where all data exchange and com­mu­nic­a­tion of the Inter­net hap­pens, cyber­space, is neut­ral. Noth­ing insec­ure adheres to it in and of itself. Insec­ur­ity is brought in by man who pop­u­lates cyber­space, and by the tools that he has brought along. So how to regain secur­ity in this space – cybersecurity?

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The Supreme Court of Singapore

Singapurischer Internationaler Handelsgerichtshof eröffnet

By

On 7 January 2015

In Law, Singapore

Anfang 2015 wurde der Singapur­ische Inter­na­tionale Han­dels­gericht­shof (Singa­pore Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Court oder SICC) eröffnet. Das Gericht ist als Teil des singapur­ischen Supreme Court für inter­na­tionale Han­dels­sachen zuständig und ver­eint schiedsgericht­liche und gericht­liche Ele­mente. Singapur will dam­it seine Pos­i­tion als inter­na­tionales Streit­sch­lich­tung­szen­trum ausbauen.

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‘Language’ Difficulties between Civil Law and Common Law

By

On 28 November 2014

In Law

Parties to a leg­al dis­pute may believe they under­stand each other’s legalese or the leg­al ‘etiquette’ applic­able. When really they don’t. This may hap­pen when a party from a civil law jur­is­dic­tion sets foot in a com­mon law envir­on­ment, or vice versa. In inter­na­tion­al arbit­ra­tion pro­ceed­ings, for example.

Appar­ently the High Court of Singa­pore had to decide a case just like this.

Court scene: a barrister (cross-)examining a witness

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A Grain of Civil Law – Some (Not So) New Chords for the International Arbitration Jazz

By

On 1 October 2014

In Law

Scene in Italy: group of children free-riding the tram
Faster, cheap­er

Inter­na­tion­al arbit­ra­tion has a prob­lem: pro­ceed­ings that take too long and are too expens­ive. To help solve this we should com­bine the best aspects of civil law and com­mon law pro­ced­ure better.

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The Midnight Clause in International Arbitration

By

On 18 June 2014

In Law

This is my speech at the In-house Con­gress in Jakarta, Indone­sia, on 23 April 2014. It was on why it’s import­ant your com­mer­cial con­tracts con­tain an arbit­ra­tion clause that works well.

Full moon at midnight

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