From Munich with Law: My Way to a Doctorate

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. That was fine. 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.

Does that mean I am a doc­tor now? No, not quite yet. Accord­ing to the reg­u­la­tions of the Fac­ulty of Law, the oth­er, main part of the doc­tor­ate, my dis­ser­ta­tion, still has to be pub­lished, and then some. But that is in the mak­ing [update: on 29 April 2024 I was gran­ted the right to call myself a doc­tor]. In case it is of interest to any esteemed read­er, the title of the dis­ser­ta­tion is:

‘SICC or Arbit­ra­tion? A Com­par­is­on of Pro­ceed­ings in the Singa­pore Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Court with the Advant­ages and Dis­ad­vant­ages of Inter­na­tion­al Arbit­ra­tion Proceedings’,

or, in the ori­gin­al German:

„SICC oder Schiedsgericht? Ein Ver­gleich des Ver­fahrens vor dem Singa­pore Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Court mit den Vor- und Nach­teil­en inter­na­tionaler Schiedsverfahren“.

Quite self-explan­at­ory, isn’t it? More on this when it comes out.

Yesterday’s oral exam­in­a­tion took place in the even­ing after the lec­tures of my exam­iners, both pro­fess­ors of law at the Fac­ulty. What a beau­ti­ful, pres­ti­gi­ous uni­ver­sity LMU is (foun­ded in 1472)! But I didn’t stay long, because the next morn­ing I left for Ham­burg, my home town, where I will spend the next few days meet­ing up with fam­ily, friends and col­leagues. Most import­antly, I wanted to vis­it my moth­er and tell her what I’d done (which I did about an hour ago, she’s still pretty ecstat­ic). In fact, very few people knew about this little pro­ject I’ve been work­ing on since August 2022. But now that it is mostly in the bag and my mum knows, I feel like telling the rest of the world. If any­one is interested.

The Textbook Chapter on Distribution Law

Soooo. How does one come up with the idea of doing a doc­tor­ate at my age? To explain, I have to go back about three years.

Remem­ber when, at the height of the Cov­id-19 pan­dem­ic, we were all forced to do most of our net­work­ing online? That’s how I met a Ger­man law­yer and uni­ver­sity lec­turer who, in 2021, asked me if I would like to con­trib­ute a chapter on Singa­pore to the forth­com­ing fifth edi­tion of the Ger­man text­book on dis­tri­bu­tion law that he co-edited. This text­book has been pub­lished by a renowned pub­lish­ing house since 1994 and is now a stand­ard text­book in the Ger­man leg­al com­munity. The fourth edi­tion was a tome of over two thou­sand pages, writ­ten by dozens of renowned authors. And now they ask me if I want to join their ranks? Of course I said yes!

I then wrote a chapter on agency, com­mer­cial agents, dis­trib­ut­ors, fran­chising and com­pet­i­tion law in Singa­pore. Hope­fully all to the high aca­dem­ic stand­ard for which the text­book is renowned. I sub­mit­ted my manu­script in June 2022.

The Project Idea

Nor­mally, as a law­yer or an arbit­rat­or, I’m work­ing on a spe­cif­ic case. I love that kind of work, but when I was writ­ing the chapter, it felt great to be look­ing at the big pic­ture. Now that I had fin­ished it, did I just want to go back?

No, I did not.

And so, on a quiet day in early August 2022, I was sit­ting in my study and sud­denly found myself typ­ing an e‑mail.

Dear Professor X,

I am writing to enquire whether you would be willing to supervise my doctoral dissertation. […]

In this e‑mail, I presen­ted the idea of a dis­ser­ta­tion on the Singa­pore Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Court (SICC), a creature that has been in exist­ence since 2015. Giv­en the ongo­ing dis­cus­sion about com­mer­cial courts in Ger­many, I thought it would be inter­est­ing to take a closer look at how Singa­pore does it. Plus, I meet the usu­al require­ments of law fac­ulties in Ger­many for admis­sion as a doc­tor­al stu­dent. What could go wrong?

So I sent this e‑mail to a uni­ver­sity lec­turer I know. Surely, I thought, he would be over­joyed to super­vise my doc­tor­al pro­ject, whereupon my next step would be…

Instead, less than an hour after I sent the e‑mail, that lec­turer had rejec­ted me.

And then anoth­er. And another.

Oei!

Real­ising that it wasn’t going to be that easy, I spent the next two months writ­ing to dozens of uni­ver­sity pro­fess­ors. Sur­pris­ingly, many did not even reply. Those who did had more or less con­vin­cing reas­ons for reject­ing me, so I kept on writ­ing. What is a boy to do.

Then, at the begin­ning of Octo­ber 2022, I sent my e‑mail to someone who replied with­in fif­teen minutes that he was inter­ested. My future super­visor had appeared! A day later, anoth­er pro­fess­or I had writ­ten to at the same time also expressed interest. How the turntables!

It was­n’t easy to say no to someone who was inter­ested in super­vising my dis­ser­ta­tion. I really had the right chem­istry with both of them. I know the second one would have been a good super­visor too, because he con­tin­ued to take an interest in my work. We kept in touch, and once he even sup­plied me with some lit­er­at­ure that I found dif­fi­cult to obtain. But it seemed fair to apply the prin­ciple of pri­or­ity and so I went with the first per­son. As it turned out, I could­n’t have asked for a bet­ter supervisor.

Research Issue Fever

I spent the next two months find­ing the exact top­ic and flesh­ing it out. I wrote a short exposé, which my super­visor approved, and looked into work organ­isa­tion issues. Among oth­er things, I read this blog on how to do a Ger­man leg­al doc­tor­ate from A to Z, phew. I also read the SICC’s Rules of Pro­ced­ure, the Singa­pore Inter­na­tion­al Com­mer­cial Court Rules 2021, from cov­er to cov­er. Yes, all 366 pages. Let’s just say it’s not an activ­ity sub­ject to enter­tain­ment tax.

I also star­ted read­ing rel­ev­ant lit­er­at­ure, still in a rather dis­or­gan­ised way, and think­ing about it. Unfor­tu­nately I was doing this at night, when I really wanted to sleep. One night I had the flu and was toss­ing and turn­ing in bed. I was sleep­less and fever­ish, puzz­ling over the research ques­tion and the struc­ture of the dis­ser­ta­tion in my mind’s eye. It was very frus­trat­ing because I was so ill and could really do with some shut-eye, when sud­denly everything fell into place and made sense. It was my very own Kekulé moment. Nice. But now I was so excited about this dis­cov­ery that I couldn’t sleep for that reas­on. Any­way, this led to a first out­line that my super­visor accep­ted, after which I could start writ­ing. It was early Decem­ber 2022.

‘Writ­ing’ is not quite the right word. Although I had nev­er before thought through the struc­ture of a major pro­ject in such detail, it was just that: a struc­ture. To fill it with sub­stance, I went sec­tion by sec­tion, first read­ing everything about the part I was work­ing on. Then I would sketch out my ini­tial thoughts and put them in the appro­pri­ate place in the out­line. Later I would usu­ally add more notes. When I real­ised that I had really read everything that had been writ­ten about that part, I sat down in front of this annot­ated out­line and pro­duced a coher­ent text from it.

In this way, the first chapter, which intro­duces the SICC and describes the research ques­tion, my meth­od­o­logy and approach, wrote itself. There fol­lowed a draft of the ‘first main sec­tion’ (as my super­visor called it), an over­view of the advant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of arbit­ra­tion spe­cific­ally in Singa­pore and Ger­many. More an exer­cise in com­plete­ness and thor­ough­ness than an intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenge, I inter­rup­ted work on it over the Christ­mas hol­i­days. Back to Ger­many for the first time since the pan­dem­ic. A much-needed break dur­ing which I thought about my pro­ject, but did­n’t work on it. Not one bit.

Administrative Stuff and a First, Incomplete Draft

After return­ing to Singa­pore, I con­tin­ued to ‘write’ the ‘second main sec­tion’ in early 2023. I also had to deal with all the admin­is­trat­ive stuff that comes with a doc­tor­ate. The uni­ver­sity wanted me to sub­mit a Ger­man police clear­ance cer­ti­fic­ate, so I went to the embassy to apply for it and get cer­ti­fied cop­ies of my edu­ca­tion­al cer­ti­fic­ates. With these, I applied for admis­sion to the Fac­ulty as a doc­tor­al stu­dent. Then came the applic­a­tion for enrol­ment at the uni­ver­sity. Soon after that I was a stu­dent again; it’s been a while. But none of it was par­tic­u­larly com­plic­ated. In gen­er­al, I’ve been amazed at how smoothly everything has gone, how accom­mod­at­ing every­one I’ve approached has been. I’m used to bur­eau­cracy and obstacles being put in my way in Singapore.

That’s how the first six months of 2023 passed. I got into the routine of work­ing on my dis­ser­ta­tion in basic­ally every free minute. Paid work always came first, though, because one is not a ren­ti­er, and besides, this is Singa­pore, the most expens­ive city in the world. Part of the routine: morn­ing and after­noon trips to my favour­ite cof­fee shop next door. And the digit­al mix­tapes that my etern­al bas­ket­ball coach reg­u­larly provided me with (without hav­ing any idea what I was work­ing on).

All in all, it was really fun. There were days when I had to take a breath­er, but that was­n’t very often, so things pro­gressed rel­at­ively quickly. In mid-July 2023 I felt like sub­mit­ting a draft. I knew it was far from fin­ished, but I needed some guid­ance. Was I still on the right track or had I lost my way some­where? Bet­ter to ask now than later.

More Drafts

My super­visor sug­ges­ted that I divide the chapter on pro­ced­ur­al and pro­fes­sion­al law, which was ini­tially very large, into two parts: one on the con­sti­tu­tion and organ­isa­tion of the courts and pro­fes­sion­al law, and anoth­er on pro­ced­ur­al law. But for reas­ons I can­not fathom, the size of the pro­ced­ur­al chapter grew con­sid­er­ably as I imple­men­ted his sug­ges­tions. So the next thing my super­visor sug­ges­ted was that I move more parts of this main chapter into addi­tion­al sub-chapters. Aye, sir.

By the end of Septem­ber 2023, I was finally (finally!) ready to move on to the ‘third main sec­tion’, the actu­al research issue, in which I would tie togeth­er the first and second parts and exam­ine the extent to which the strengths and weak­nesses of arbit­ra­tion are also present in the SICC. At last, I was able to put into writ­ing all the many aspects that had been on my mind for months – since that fever­ish night in Novem­ber 2022, to be pre­cise. Not sur­pris­ingly, it didn’t take long, only a month. In my mind this chapter was pretty much written.

At the end of Octo­ber 2023, I sent the second, now com­plete, draft to my super­visor. His feed­back came just one day later: he sug­ges­ted only cos­met­ic changes, which I care­fully made.

In the first week of Novem­ber 2023, my super­visor declared the draft ready for sub­mis­sion. I pro­duced the final ver­sion and sent it to him inform­ally in early Decem­ber. He reviewed it, again inform­ally, just before Christ­mas. How­ever, fur­ther legis­lat­ive and judi­cial changes in Singa­pore had been announced for 5 Janu­ary 2024, which I thought would be use­ful to con­sider. So I decided to wait until then before form­ally sub­mit­ting the dissertation.

Submission and Evaluation, the Oral Examination

As if on cue, on Fri­day, 5 Janu­ary 2024, the Singa­pore author­it­ies announced the expec­ted changes. I had anti­cip­ated them, so the final tweaks to my text were a mat­ter of minutes. Print­ing it out, how­ever, was not, as I had decided to leave that task to my trusty inkjet print­er. It coped hero­ic­ally with the two times 337 pages, but groaned and creaked aud­ibly towards the end of the job. (It has since recovered.)

The pro­fes­sion­al bind­ing, on the oth­er hand, took less than ten minutes. Off to Fed­Ex with the two manu­scripts, along with all the admin­is­trat­ive stuff involved in sub­mit­ting a dissertation.

In the weeks that fol­lowed, I pre­pared for the oral exam­in­a­tion, which at LMU’s Fac­ulty of Law does not con­sist of a dis­pu­ta­tio, that is, a defence of the dis­ser­ta­tion, but of a rig­orosum, a ‘rig­or­ous exam­in­a­tion’ that goes bey­ond the top­ic of the dis­ser­ta­tion and con­sists of a leg­al present­a­tion fol­lowed by a leg­al discussion.

In mid-Feb­ru­ary 2024 I received the (offi­cial) first and second reviews of my dis­ser­ta­tion. Now I could turn my atten­tion to pub­lic­a­tion. In oth­er words, it now made sense to approach legit­im­ate pub­lish­ers with pub­lic­a­tion requests. I found one I’m happy with.

The invit­a­tion to the oral exam­in­a­tion came soon after, so I could plan my trips to Munich and Ham­burg. After the oral exam­in­a­tion last night, I more or less went straight to the air­port to fly north.

And here we are.

Oh, the fifth edi­tion of the text­book on dis­tri­bu­tion law with my coun­try chapter on Singa­pore, the impetus for my doc­tor­al pro­ject? Still unpub­lished! It’s a long story (not my fault). Let’s see if I can get my dis­ser­ta­tion out before the text­book, because if I do, I’ll have squeezed the entire doc­tor­ate in between the begin­ning and the end of this dis­tri­bu­tion law saga. Not that it mat­ters, but it would be fun to think about.

That was my account of how and why I embarked on the pro­ject of becom­ing a Doc­tor of Law. I’m stop­ping here because my mum is pre­par­ing lunch, she says it’s almost ready and I should lay the table.

Yes, Moth­er.