When Patrick Ang started his career 30 years ago, the Singaporean lawyer’s clients were almost entirely local. Now a managing partner at Rajah & Tann, one of Singapore’s biggest law firms, Mr Ang has witnessed a global transformation for both the industry and his business.

“After 2000, more work involved Singapore parties going outside and some foreign parties coming in. That is when I first started to detect the Singapore legal scene changing,” he says. As the global financial crisis struck a decade ago, global business interest in Asia and Singapore increased, resulting in more business for the city state’s corporate lawyers.

“The big four Singapore law firms never thought they would break through 200 lawyers, and then in the late-2000s all four did,” he says.