Joe-Han Ho
⚒️ What do you do?
I am a barrister practising out of 39 Essex Chambers, London. While I am based in the UK, my practice has a strong international flavour and I travel regularly especially back to Asia.
I am currently working on two matters which come on for trial later this year. The first is a $40m arbitration where I represent a Barbadian insurer. This started life as a vanilla insurance dispute but then morphed into a serious fraud matter.
The second is a $2b banking dispute where I represent a consortium of Indian banks. The stakes are rather higher here, but it is actually a more vanilla dispute!
🏆 What is your proudest achievement?
When I was a schoolboy, I was participated in a national Tamil poetry recitation competition!
We had to recite three couplets from the Tirukkuṟaḷ, explain their meaning in English, and discuss how those lessons applied to life. This was not straightforward for me, not least because I did not speak Tamil and I did not (then) relish public speaking.
However, one of my teachers who spoke Tamil made a tape recording of the couplets for me, and also gave me valuable guidance on the content of my speech. I practised intensively, and eventually took 2nd place!
⌛ There are now 25 hours in a day! How do you spend your extra hour?
I am a skilled practitioner of Tsundoku, the Japanese art of buying books and never reading them. So, I would use this extra hour to read the books I have acquired but never found the time to read.
🚀 If you weren't a lawyer, what would you do?
I would open a supper club.
I have a passion for cooking and entertaining and eating, so this is probably a natural progression. I had a barbecue yesterday which featured banchan, seared tongue, and grilled boozy pineapple, with ice-cold bandung and Malaysian coffee on tap. That can be Menu No.1.
😋 Your favourite food haunt
The morning market at SS2, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.
The coffee shack there has the most fragrant coffee, and allows food bought elsewhere to be eaten at the table, which allows one to buy the delicious ‘siu yoke’ and nasi lemak at the same market. Bliss…
*Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.