Peter Iruthayaraj was born in 1948, a period when Malaya was moving toward independence, which was achieved in 1957. The country later joined with Singapore, Sabah and Sarawak to form Malaysia in 1963, and his professional life has been based in the Malaysian capital.
Iruthayaraj is a partner of Shook Lin & Bok. The firm's origins lie in a Kuala Lumpur practice founded in 1918 under the name Messrs Yong Shook Lin. Its founder became the first ethnic Chinese admitted to the Malayan bar that same year after training at Cambridge University.
The practice was renamed Messrs Shook Lin & Bok in 1938, after the recruitment of Tan Teow Bok as a partner. In 1964 the firm opened an office in Singapore, and by the 1980s it was regarded as one of the leading local firms in that city. The firm now has offices in Singapore and Malaysia.
Iruthayaraj's professional base is Kuala Lumpur. The firm's Kuala Lumpur office covers arbitration, banking and finance, construction, family and probate, insurance, and labour disputes, and its litigation team has been rated as first tier in dispute resolution.
