Keeping the peace
When Marsha Shahrin’s friends first found out she got into NUS Law, they started roping her in to settle their disputes. With a laugh, the Year 4 senior puts to rest the common myth that all lawyers like to arbitrate. “I am known amongst friends for my non-confrontational personality. I personally prefer to pre-empt instead of adjudicate disputes, by drafting contracts in a way that prevents future disputes, for instance.”
Nevertheless, she appreciates the practicality of litigation and dispute resolution. “I have recently learnt about alternative methods of dispute resolution such as negotiation and mediation that get to the root of the issue without hostile exchanges. This is an area in law that I hope to explore further down the road,” she shares.
Parallel tracks
Besides being a law student, Marsha is also a competitive windsurfer who has won various medals and received recognition at national and international levels. At 19, she has already competed in four world championships, three Asian championships and the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games.
Marsha (second from right) with Team Singapore at the Asian Sailing Championships 2022 in Abu Dhabi.
When asked whether she finds similarities between her two passions of windsurfing and law, her peacemaker personality shines through once more. “In sailing, we also have our set of racing rules that are meant to regulate the field of play, or settle disputes between two boats in the race course. I would try to utilise my legal skills even as an athlete and negotiate in an emphatic manner. For example, how can I settle this dispute more amicably, in a way that does not result in the disqualification of one party?” she elaborates.
Interestingly, windsurfing is not the only thing that Marsha sees as parallel to law. When she first went for the Law Faculty admissions interview, she was asked why she wanted to study law. Thrown off by the unexpectedly simple question, Marsha told the professors that she saw a similarity to mathematics.
Getting into the groove
Yet when Marsha first started her first year in Law, it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. Her grouse? The ornate language of law texts. The poetic phrasing did not intuitively resonate with the maths-lover who found it a struggle to engage with the readings. After years of exposure to such texts, she has learnt a few tricks to help her engage with the material: “I scan the keywords first before zooming in to specific things in my reading and have now become a more efficient reader and speaker as well,” she beams with satisfaction.
Marsha urges aspiring Law applicants to be clear about what drives their interest in the field:
When two worlds collide
Marsha (first row, first from right) with her Year 1 NUS Law Orientation group.
Aside from being the place for Marsha to push her intellectual boundaries, the NUS Law campus at Bukit Timah is also where Marsha holds many fond memories of student life with her friends: enjoying a healthy but satisfying bowl of fish noodle soup at The Summit, the campus canteen, working out at the Law gym in between classes, and taking up dance and pottery thanks to the welfare initiatives organised by the NUS Law club for students during the exam season.
Eager to contribute to NUS Law’s robust student life and share her love of windsurfing, Marsha started NUS Windsurfing after organising the first windsurfing taster in June 2022. “I noticed that a lot of the students just wanted to try something new and they had a great time trying windsurfing for the first time,” she recalls, saying, “I think it's more important that students have fun rather than focus on winning or competing. Competing is great, but it's more important to have fun and have an outlet for students to take a break and explore their interests instead.”
Marsha (bottom) sharing her love of windsurfing with fellow NUS students during the NUS Windsurfing taster session at the Aloha Sea Sports Centre in Singapore, where the students tried the sport for the first time.
As an NUS Sports Scholarship recipient, Marsha not only enjoys generous living and accommodation allowances but is also given robust support in all aspects of her development as an athlete.
Often overseas competing on the international circuit, Marsha credits the support of the faculty members — such as Associate Professor Yeo Hwee Ying and Associate Dean (Student Affairs) and Senior Lecturer Justin Jerzy Tan — for her ability to manage her workload amidst a demanding schedule. “All professors are very approachable and proactive in offering help to me whenever I am overseas. Some of them even recorded the seminars for me to rewatch later on, which was extremely helpful in my first two years in NUS Law.”
Her peers also readily share what they learnt from the professors and one another during the seminars that she missed. “The cohort is both generous and collaborative — always ready to exchange information with one another,” she notes with gratitude.
With privilege comes responsibility and one of the ways the sports scholar leverages the platform and access it has given her is to actively share her own story with prospective students who fret about juggling their studies and sports.
“I have had seniors, like the national sailor Kimberly Lim, who role-modelled for me that reality of doing well in both. If we can just ingrain this mentality of acquiring skills through passions early enough, we will have a formidable next generation,” she says with conviction.
Giving back, paying forward
True to her empathetic nature, Marsha appreciates a culture of collaboration. During her internships with the litigation and dispute resolution department of a leading law firm in Year 1 and 2, she was heartened to see how collaborative the lawyers were.
Besides honing her softer skills of collaboration, her second internship also imparted to Marsha hard skills like drafting statements of claims in her personal voice and style without blindly following a template. With the skilful guidance and feedback from her mentor, Marsha learnt to become more confident about the kind of lawyer she wants to be, and the direction she is moving in.
Marsha (first row, second from left) pictured with her fellow interns.
The mentorship initiative in the Law Faculty has similarly inspired Marsha to pay it forward, having first benefited from her seniors’ mentorship as a freshman. A mentor for three years now, she has been a pillar of support for her Year 1 juniors who are still adapting to life at law school, as well as with their essays or courses, under the NUS Law’s Mentor-Mentee Initiative.
Marsha has also worked extensively with the NUS Law Centre for Pro Bono and Clinical Legal Education (CPBCLE) since entering NUS Law, including working with a youth society that conducts mediation with troubled youths as well as being a part of Foreign Domestic Worker Association for Social Support and Training (FAST) which educated domestic helpers about their employment rights and entitlements.
As an advocate for pro bono work, Marsha shares some tips for aspiring law students who may be daunted by the possibility of overcommitting to activities outside of school:
Down the road
With research interests as diverse as political science and sociology, Marsha has an inclination for theory-based, interdisciplinary subjects and is fascinated by topics such as how laws evolve and adapt in tandem with human psychology, how domestic laws are impacted by international relations, and how modes of governance affect the laws of society, amongst others.
When asked about what she hopes for in the future, Marsha says:
