Background
Vijayalakshmi Somaskanthan was born in 1959. That year fell within the period when the Federation of Malaya had been independent for two years and was moving toward the formation of Malaysia in 1963.
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Vijayalakshmi Somaskanthan
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Somaskanthan works as a partner of Shook Lin & Bok, a firm with a Kuala Lumpur base in Malaysia.
The firm began in 1918 in Kuala Lumpur as Messrs Yong Shook Lin. That year, the lawyer whose name it carried became the first Chinese admitted to the Malayan bar after studying at Cambridge University.
In 1938 the practice added a second partner, Tan Teow Bok, and took the name Messrs Shook Lin & Bok. Yong Shook Lin's son, Pung How, joined in 1952 after a law degree from his father's university. Under his leadership as senior partner, the firm grew into one of the largest in Malaya.
The firm opened a Singapore office in 1964, and by the 1980s it was regarded as one of the four leading local law firms in Singapore. Today it operates offices in both Singapore and Malaysia, and Somaskanthan's documented role is as a partner in its Malaysian practice.
