Best Criminal Lawyers in Singapore

Choosing the best Criminal lawyer shouldn’t be so hard.

Find a lawyer who's sharp, skilled and most of all, sincere.

3 steps to CORRECTLY pick the BEST Criminal lawyer:

Is he SHARP & STREET SMART?

Your Criminal lawyer should be intelligent, resourceful and able to combine technical knowledge of the written law, legal principles as well as case authorities together with quick thinking, adaptability and foresight. Remember, just having good paper qualifications or working in a large or famous law firm won’t necessarily make someone a good lawyer. Instead, look out for a Criminal lawyer with relevant expertise who can not only accurately and adeptly identify your problems, design an action plan and execute the solutions but also adjust the plan to suit different scenarios, unforeseen circumstances and unexpected developments.

Does he have the right SKILLS & STRENGTHS?

Your Criminal lawyer should excel at analysing facts, problem-solving and all forms of written and verbal communication. These are all essential and fundamental skills that every good Criminal lawyer needs to have. He must be able to organise and make sense of available information and know where and how to look for more evidence to strengthen your case. To help you get closer to reaching your desired outcome, he must be able to clearly identify or even create a path and strategy to navigate through the many problems and challenges in your case. He must also be polished and proficient in speaking and writing, so look out especially for someone who is clear, articulate and eloquent when he’s discussing the case with you, and who speaks and writes better than you – after all, he’s going to be talking to the Police and the Court on your behalf!

Is he SINCERE & RESPECTFUL?

Your Criminal lawyer should above all else be genuinely committed to doing his best to helping you. To do this, he needs to be a person of integrity, responsibility, humility and empathy – he must fully appreciate your fears and concerns, empathise with the difficulties you face and have compassion for you. Having a Criminal lawyer who’s fierce and fearless is good, but it’s equally important that he has strong values and principles that you and others respect. Being a lawyer doesn’t give someone the licence (or excuse) to be inconsiderate, insensitive or arrogant or rude. Remember: if he’s being rude, talking down to you or making you feel like your opinion doesn’t matter, then he’s probably not the right fit for you. The best Criminal lawyer for you will respect you and be devoted to fighting for you in spite of, or because of, who you are and what you have done.

ULTIMATE GUIDE to choosing the best Criminal lawyers in Singapore for YOU!

If you’re currently involved in a Criminal case and are looking for the best Criminal lawyer to advise and represent you, you’ve probably spent hours trying to find him on Google.

But the problem is, you’ve already looked through dozens of websites and profiles of lawyers and law firms but you’re still not any closer to identifying just who exactly you should choose. Who exactly is the right lawyer for you? Who can help solve the problems you’re facing? Every website, law firm and lawyer seem to be saying that they’re good, but nobody is really telling you what skills, attributes and criteria you should look for in your Criminal lawyer.

That’s why we’ve prepared this DEFINITIVE LIST of qualities that the BEST CRIMINAL LAWYERS must have, because choosing the best Criminal lawyer simply shouldn’t be so hard.

Whether you’re involved in a Police investigation, falsely accused of committing a crime, charged in Court for general or serious offences, planning to plead guilty to your charge and mitigate for lighter sentence or maybe even thinking about claiming trial to challenge and contest the charge to prove your innocence, you need to get information that you can easily understand and use so you can know your options and plan your next steps.

You have a right to know how strong or weak your case is, how likely your explanation or defence to the Criminal accusations are going to be accepted, and what feasible solutions are worth considering and pursuing. Should you send a letter of appeal or representation to the Police and investigators now or later to explain and clarify that you were not involved in committing the crime. How do you effectively plea bargain with the Prosecution to negotiate for a more lenient treatment? What should you say to the Court in your Mitigation Plea to successfully argue for and justify a lower sentence? Do you stand a realistic chance of proving your innocence if you claim trial to the charge?

Your Criminal lawyer should be able to easily answer these questions and more, and explain them to you in a simple and unfussy way so you can have a clear idea of what your best and worst options are and then make correct and well-informed decisions.

We understand that choosing the BEST Criminal lawyer can take up too much effort if you don’t know where or how to look, so please take a minute to go through our carefully curated list of TOP 10 MUST-HAVE ATTRIBUTES & QUALITIES here to help yourself save time and energy that you can use to focus on other more important decisions and matters.

1. Communication Skills

Your Criminal lawyer must be polished and proficient in speaking and writing and have exceptional and outstanding written and verbal communication skills. He must be someone who’s clear, articulate and eloquent when he’s discussing the case with you and interacting with others, and not just someone who uses a lot of technical terms and jargon or a fancy vocabulary. Remember, a good communicator can organise, package and deliver an important message to persuade and convince the listener to accept his view or agree to his request regardless of whether he’s doing this while writing letters and legal arguments or presenting his opinions in a conversation or in Court. Your Criminal lawyer must be someone who speaks and writes better than you and can convey what you need to be said – after all, he’s going to be talking to the Police and the Court on your behalf!

2. Legal Knowledge

3. Strategy & Tactics

Your Criminal lawyer must be able to create and execute a well-designed plan. He must be able to command and combine strategy and tactics to craft a customised road map to help you move past or move around legal, procedural and factual obstacles and reach your desired outcomes such as getting a conditional warning from the Police instead of being charged, successfully plea bargaining and negotiating more lenient treatment by the Prosecution or arguing for the Judge in Court to impose a lighter punishment. A clear strategy helps to rank priorities, identify objectives and set the correct destination and how you’re to reach it, and case-specific tactics help to define the specific actions and steps you need to take along the way. What additional evidence do you need to obtain to prove your innocence? Can you find a witness who’ll testify in your defence? How do you bargain hard with the Prosecution without revealing the weaknesses in your own case? It’s easy and obvious for any lawyer to suggest that you want a good outcome or a lighter sentence, but the true test of the best Criminal lawyer is when he’s able to plot a creative and suitable path to avoid the hurdles and obstacles in your path so you can safely reach your destination and goals. If you can’t see any clear road ahead that leads to your objectives, make sure your Criminal lawyer can help to chart and create one!

4. Resourceful & Street Smart

Your Criminal lawyer must have first-rate situational awareness and be able to swiftly and clinically assess the dynamic environment they’re in as it develops and changes in real-time, know how the ongoing situation is shifting and see what the new, immediate dangers and risks are and then troubleshoot a way out by working out what the available angles and options are. The best Criminal lawyer would become experienced and accustomed to making these decisions as a result of being constantly exposed to intense and high-pressure conditions in their cases. If a crucial piece of evidence you were planning to use in Court or a witness you were relying on to testify somehow suddenly became unavailable? What should you say or do next? When precisely should you take the next step to get the best outcome? These are attributes and skills that come from a blend of maturity and life lessons as well as an enlightened understanding and ability to learn and synthesise lessons from past experiences, and you must remember to ensure your Criminal lawyer has them!

5. Responsive & Proactive

Your Criminal lawyer must be responsive and proactive in taking steps to help you solve issues before they occur. He must be able to spot and anticipate your concerns, worries and problems in advance even before they arise and then promptly extend support to address and resolve them. For example, the best Criminal lawyer will anticipate your questions on options, pros and cons, next steps and deadlines. So instead of waiting for you to reach out to ask about when the next Court document is due, he’ll let you know what’s currently already being prepared and when it will be completed and submitted. Your Criminal lawyer must be one step ahead of you when issues do arise – he must identify questions, worries and problems before you do, and reach out proactively with answers, explanations potential solutions. Even though it’s impossible for others to predict the future with absolute certainty, your Criminal lawyer should be able to read your mind and know your thoughts – the best Criminal lawyers will know you better than you know yourself!

6. Innovation & Technology

Your Criminal lawyer must be innovative, forward-thinking and adaptable in choosing the conducive and create methods of executing your case strategy quickly and efficiently and add real value for you. This means being flexible and progressive in not only identifying the fastest, most cost-effective channel to deliver legal advice and solutions to you, but also balancing the need for speed and efficiency with quality of outcome – he must be able to seamlessly communicate and coordinate instructions and information with you throughout the case, removing frictions and potential areas of inefficiencies so that you always maintain and receive a clear line of sight and direction from him. The best Criminal lawyers are not limited to only discussing the case in a face-to-face setting but also able to adapt and find alternative methods for maintaining good rapport and understanding with you such as instant messaging, cloud storage and sharing of your case materials and video-conferencing calls and meetings on your mobile device, making his assistance and support accessible for you at all times. The best Criminal lawyer is the one that continually works hard and finds ways to reduce the time, resources, pain and cost of handling the case in order to benefit you!

7. Sincerity & Integrity

Your Criminal lawyer must be wholeheartedly committed to doing his best to helping you. He must be a sincere person and some with high standards of integrity, responsibility, humility and empathy – he must completely understand your worries and doubts, see your difficulties from your perspective and have genuine care and concern for you. Having a Criminal lawyer who’s strong and aggressive is good, but it’s also important that he has respectable values and principles that you and others can look up to. Just because he’s a lawyer doesn’t mean he’s entitled to behave in a inconsiderate, insensitive or arrogant or rude manner when dealing with you others. Look out for how he treats other people: if he’s arrogant, disrespectful and condescending, then he’s probably not the right person to advise and represent you. The best Criminal lawyer for you will be thoughtful and treat everyone he meets with dignity as he fights in your defence – there should be no compromise when it comes to a person’s character, so you should settle for nothing less than the best!

8. Transparent Price & Flexible Payment

Your Criminal lawyer must be open, fair and reasonable when it comes to charging for his professional fees and services provided. He must make his prices and scope of work clear and transparent, so you know exactly what you’re paying for, and you understand the value that you’ll be receiving in return – this gives you knowledge and full control and confidence during the process of comparing prices and service offerings from other lawyers who don’t make any effort to explain how they’ve arbitrarily arrived at their quotation. Price transparency eliminates the uncertainty, anxiety and guesswork when it comes to choosing which lawyer to engage so you can make better comparisons and get a clearer understanding of the relative market values between different lawyers before you make a final decision. When prices become clearer to you, you’ll know and see the value that your Criminal lawyer is bringing to you, giving you a solid foundation for defining and quantifying what makes him an attractive, trusted, valuable legal adviser and what differentiates his services from other Criminal lawyers. The best Criminal lawyer also provides a range of flexible payment options that are based around meeting the individual needs of clients by making his competitive prices accessible to you such as interest-free monthly instalment payments via credit card, PayNow or PayPal – this allows him to offer his services and help to you and the wider community that may otherwise be unable to afford only rigid, non-negotiable and full payment will know your financial and resource constraints and find a way to help you access and afford the help only via cash and cheques. The best Criminal lawyer that you need and deserve!

9. Team & Capacity

Your Criminal lawyer will be able to harness a robust, well-organised and highly motivated team comprising strong individual members and team players to support him in delivering advice and executing the plan of action designed for your case. He’ll use the right resources and teammates, at the correct level, and to carry out the appropriate work to optimise productivity and value delivery to you. He’ll be able to assess the manpower resource that’s available to him concurrently as he prioritises the work that needs to be done and adjust the deployment of resources according to the level of importance, significance and urgency. He knows in advance what the demand for each task will be and schedule and deploy the manpower and talent accordingly and on time so you don’t’ face any delays and backlog. The best Criminal lawyer never works alone and is always supported by a capable and committed team – there is always strength in numbers!

10. Solid Track Record

Your Criminal lawyer must have a solid and established good reputation in both name and substance, and the only way you can objectively and accurately measure and confirm that is to look at what actual, identifiable and legitimately satisfied clients have openly said about him. How many satisfied customers and former clients have been so delighted and happy with his service that they have taken the trouble to personally write and share their compliments and positive feedback via Google Reviews? 10, 20 or 100? Google’s online reviews are now a commonly used and accepted form of measurement and index that you and thousands of other customers use to check, confirm and compare the track record and standing of a business or service-provider that you’re thinking of engaging. Google Reviews are trusted, reliable and credible so much that more than 90% of people aged between 18 and 34 depend on online reviews as much as recommendations from family and friend – as long as the reviews are authentic, relate to the correct business, service and industry as well as comprise multiple reviews on the same site for the same business. It’s also because you and all consumers already know Google as the most used and trusted search engines, so you’re willing to give that same level of trust and credibility to Google Reviews that they give to recommendations from trusted peers in real life. Google Reviews must guide, refine and influence your decision to choose the right Criminal lawyer and online testimonials; positive online reviews are precisely the validation consumers are looking for and need when making a choice so they you must make them an integral part of your research for the best Criminal lawyer – they objectively and impartially signify the lawyer’s visibility as well as his trust and credibility with satisfied clients. Remember, if a Criminal lawyer you’re researching has a low star rating or only has very few positive Google Reviews or none at all, you should recognise the warning signs and consider choosing someone else with a high star rating and many other legitimate, authentic and genuine positive reviews instead – read, use and trust Google Reviews and, most importantly, the decision made and positive feedback already given by hundreds of your fellow clients, customers and consumers to validate and confirm that you’re making the right decision!

Free Legal Info & Resources

Police Investigation & Interview

Court Proceedings & Plea Negotiation

Pleading Guilty, Mitigation Plea & Sentencing

Claiming Trial

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Here’s everything you need to know about…

Police Investigation & Interview

When can the Police arrest you? Do they need a Warrant of Arrest?
Is it true the Police can detain you for 48 hours after arrest?
What other bail conditions are imposed?
What will the Police do during investigations?
Can you get a copy of your Statements recorded by the Police?

Court Proceedings & Plea Negotiation

When will you need to attend Court?
What happens at your first Court hearing?
Can you ask for more time at your first Court hearing to decide what to do next?
How do you plea bargain?
What if you need more time to plea bargain and plea negotiate?

Pleading Guilty, Mitigation Plea & Sentencing

What happens when you plead guilty to a Charge?
Can you ask for a lighter sentence when you plead guilty?
What exactly does a Mitigation Plea do?
What must your Mitigation Plea contain?
How does the Court decide what punishment to impose?
What key principles do the Court follow during the process of sentencing?

Claiming Trial

What happens if you claim trial to a charge?
What happens before your criminal trial starts?
What happens during your criminal trial?
What happens at the end of your criminal trial?

Frequently asked questions

Police Investigations & Interview

Top 10 facts you must know if you’re involved in a Police investigation

If you’re a suspected being investigated for a criminal offence, you must know the following facts about your legal rights during the investigation process:

You’ll be interviewed by a Police officer who’ll record a statement in English from you.
You can speak in English or any language or dialect you’re comfortable with.
You can request for an interpreter or translator to be arranged if you don’t understand the interviewer.
You are allowed to and must read to make sure it’s completely accurate before you sign it.
You are also allowed to and must check and amend the statement if you need.
You are not allowed to keep a copy of the statement.
You are not allowed to consult your lawyer about your criminal case before the interview and your lawyer is not allowed to accompany you during the interview.
You must tell the truth during the interview, otherwise, you may be charged for giving false information or lying to the investigators.
If you’re accused of committing a criminal offence, you must give your full explanation early, otherwise, the Court can view this as less believable if you only mention it much later.
But you must remember, regardless of what you’re told by the interviewer, you are allowed to remain silent and not admit that you’ve carried out the offence. This is your legal right.

Do you have a right to remain silent when you’re being Charged?

Yes, you have the right to remain silent when you’re being charged and asked to sign the Cautioned Statement.

However, you must remember to state the facts which you plan to use in your defence at the trial and write this in the Cautioned Statement, otherwise, the Court may doubt your defence if you don’t mention it in the Cautioned Statement and only mention it later at a trial because the Court thinks that your defence was only recently created and isn’t true.

Court Proceedings & Plea Negotiation

What happens at your first Court hearing?

When you first attend Court to answer to the Charge, the charge (i.e. details of the type of offence, how it was committed and the prescribed punishment) will be read and explained to you in Court in the language which you understand and by an interpreter if you need.

You must also check that your Criminal lawyer explains the following:

The Charge contains the key details of the offence g. date, time, location, offending criminal act or conduct in question, the value of the property involved and identity of the victim.
If you’re accused of committing more than one offence, each offence will usually be stated in a separate Charge.
If other people are accused of committing the offence together with you, they’ll be charged together with you for the same offence and separate charges will be preferred against them.

After the Charge is read to you, you must tell the Court of the course of action you want to you to take i.e. either:

You choose to Plead Guilty (i.e. you are prepared to accept the punishment for the offence, and you wish to admit to the charge and request for a lighter punishment)
You choose to Claim Trial (i.e. you deny that you committed the offence, and you wish to prove your innocence at a trial in Court)

Please remember that is not compulsory to immediately plead guilty to the charge at your first appearance in Court because you’re allowed to ask to adjourn or postpone the case to choose your next course of action.

How do you plea bargain?

You can plea bargain or plea negotiate by conveying your clarification, explanation and request regarding the Charge or offence in a written letter of appeal (i.e. Letter of Representation) to the Public Prosecutor (i.e. Attorney-General’s Chambers) containing your reasons and arguments to persuade them to take a more lenient course of action against you.

Although you can choose to prepare and send this appeal by yourself, you should consult a good Criminal lawyer to better understand what facts, explanations and evidence will be important for the Prosecution’s consideration of your appeal.

After you’ve communicated your Representations, the Public Prosecutor will review your reasons for the appeal and decide if they justify granting your request.

If you are advised and represented by a good Criminal lawyer, your appeal will have the benefit of containing the correct material to highlight the facts and circumstances that are important for the Public Prosecutor’s consideration and include appropriate issues of law and government policy that you won’t be familiar with.

The Public Prosecutor has final and absolute authority to decide what type of prosecutorial action to take against you such as:

Whether to charge you with committing a criminal offence or only issuing you with a warning instead
Whether to charge you for a more serious or less serious type of criminal offence
Whether to charge you for many separate offences or only fewer offences
Whether to request for the Court to sentence you to a heavier or lighter punishment

You can consider appealing to the Public Prosecutor to take more lenient action against you in the following ways:

Only issuing you with a warning instead of charging you in Court
Charging you with a less serious type of criminal offence instead of a more serious type of offence
Charging you for fewer offences instead of many more separate offences
Requesting for the Court to impose a lighter sentence instead of heavier punishment against you

After the Public Prosecutor decides on the type of prosecutorial action taken against you, you must eventually decide if you want to plead guilty or claim trial to the Charge.

Pleading Guilty, Mitigation Plea & Sentencing

Can you ask for a lighter sentence when you plead guilty?

Yes. After you plead guilty to the Charge and admit to the Statement of Facts (SOF) and your previous convictions, you’ll have the opportunity to tell the Court of the mitigating factors in your case for its consideration before it decides the sentence to impose against you.

Mitigating factors are the facts, circumstances, and reasons which justify a more lenient or lighter sentence being imposed against you (i.e. information and facts regarding your own personal circumstances and those regarding the circumstances surrounding how the offence had been carried out).

Mitigating factors can be presented orally (spoken) or in a written document.

The mitigation plea (or plea in mitigation) is the written or oral presentation of your mitigation factors to the Court.

What must your Mitigation Plea contain?

Your Mitigation Plea is meant to persuade the Court to impose a more lenient sentence and lighter punishment for the offence bearing in mind the unique facts and circumstances of your case.

Your Mitigation Plea must contain these types of information for the Court’s attention:

Information and facts regarding your personal circumstances (e.g. your family background, education and employment track record, medical conditions, evidence that illustrates your character and attitude, your prospect of being rehabilitated or reformed).
Information and facts regarding how you became involved in the offence and how it was committed (e.g. your specific role, the value of the property involved, the extent of any injury caused to the victim and other facts which illustrate the context in which the offence took place such as instigation by other offenders or provocation by the victim).

However, your Mitigation Plea cannot introduce or information that contradicts the Statement of Facts (SOF) which you admitted to or that challenge the facts and conclusions arrived at by the Judge after a trial.

Claiming Trial

What happens if you claim trial to a charge?

When you’re charged in Court for a criminal offence, you must choose the course of action to take:

You can choose to Plead Guilty (i.e. admit that you committed the offence and accept the punishment for the offence)
You can choose to Claim Trial (i.e. deny that you committed the offence and prove your innocence at a trial in Court)

If you decide to claim trial, a separate Court hearing (known as a trial) will take place where the Judge will take into account the evidence presented and arrive at a decision as to whether the Public Prosecutor has succeeded in showing your guilt.

If the Public Prosecutor can successfully prove its case against you (i.e. it can prove that you carried out the offence), the Judge will convict you of the charge and impose a sentence against you.
If the Public Prosecutor fails in proving its case against you (i.e. it cannot prove that you carried out the offence), the Judge will acquit you of the charge.

During the trial, the Public Prosecutor will present the evidence to try to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you carried out the offence and you’ll present your evidence to prove that there is still reasonable doubt whether you carried out the offence.

If you claim trial, you can engage a Criminal lawyer to represent you at a trial or you can conduct the trial on your own if you don’t have a lawyer.

What happens during your criminal trial?

During your criminal trial, the Prosecuting Officer will present the evidence to try to prove beyond reasonable doubt that you carried out the offence and you’ll present your evidence to prove that there is still reasonable doubt whether you carried out the offence.

The Prosecuting Officer will present his evidence first and the Defence (i.e. you or your Criminal lawyer) will present your evidence after the Prosecuting Officer has finished presenting all his evidence.

The following procedure is used when each side present its evidence:

One party (e.g. Prosecution) will call his witnesses to testify and give evidence.
That party’s lawyer (e.g. Prosecuting Officer) will conduct the examination-in-chief (EIC) of each witness to introduce his own individual evidence.
After the EIC of each witness is complete, the opposing party’s lawyer (e.g. your Criminal lawyer and Defence Counsel) will conduct the cross-examination of the witness by asking questions.
The purpose of cross-examination is to challenge or contradict the witness’s testimony given e.g. by using the contents of documents to contradict his earlier testimony.
After the cross-examination, the first party (e.g. Prosecuting Officer) will conduct the re-examination of the witness by asking the witness to explain the answers given during cross-examination.

After all the Prosecution’s witnesses have testified, the Defence’s witnesses give evidence using the same procedure i.e. examination-in-chief followed by cross-examination and then re-examination.

Meet our lawyers

Our specialist criminal defence lawyers carefully use expertise, experience and sensitivity to understand and handle the unique circumstances and needs of your situation and to propose customised solutions to solve your problems.