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Dr Rachel Leow

Dr Rachel Leow

Assistant Professor of Law

LSE Law School

Email
r.leow@lse.ac.uk
Room No
Cheng Kin Ku Building 6.06
Languages
English, Mandarin
Key Expertise
Private Law

About me

Rachel joined the LSE Law School as Assistant Professor of Law in Sep 2022. From Aug 2024, she will be Associate Professor of Law. She is a private lawyer whose main research expertise and interests span three broad areas: agency law, the law of unjust enrichment and restitution, and trusts and commercial equity. She also has a special interest in corporate attribution in private law, the subject-matter of her doctorate and first monograph, Corporate Attribution in Private Law (Hart Publishing 2022). Her work has been cited with approval by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and the Singapore Court of Appeal.

Much of her work thus far has centred around one core question: why, how, and when do people act for or on behalf of another in private law? Currently, she is working on projects on mental incapacity and minority in private law, apparent authority, the liability of principals for torts of their agents, and the Partnership Act 1890.

At the LSE, Rachel is currently Chair of the LLM Exam Sub-Board.

Before coming to the LSE, Rachel was Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore, where she also read law as an undergraduate (LLB). She then moved to the University of Cambridge, where she completed her LLM and PhD at Downing College. At Cambridge, she won the Gareth Jones Prize for the Law of Restitution with the then-highest mark on record. She also won the Chancellor’s Medal for English Law, which is awarded to a candidate of exceptional merit in English law. At NUS, she won the university-wide University Annual Teaching Excellence Award once and the Faculty of Law Annual Teaching Excellence Award twice.

Books
Corporate Attribution in Private Law (Hart Publishing 2022).

Looking at key questions of how companies are held accountable under private law, this book presents a succinct and accessible framework for analysing and answering corporate attribution problems in private law.

Corporate attribution is the process by which the acts and states of mind of human individuals are treated as those of a company to establish the company's rights, duties, and liabilities. But when and why are acts and states of mind attributed in private law?

Drawing on a wide range of material from across the disparate areas of company law, agency law, and the laws of contract, tort, unjust enrichment, and equitable obligations, this book's central argument is that attribution turns on the allocation and delegation of the company's own powers to act. This approach allows for a much greater and clearer understanding of attribution. A further benefit is that it shows attribution to be much more united and coherent than it is commonly thought to be. Looking at corporate attribution across the broad expanse of the common law, this book will be of interest to lawyers across the common law world, including the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Singapore.

click here for publisher's site

Publications

Research interests
  • Private law
  • Unjust enrichment and restitution
  • Trusts
  • Commercial Equity
  • Agency law
  • Corporate attribution

Teaching

LL204 Advanced Torts

LL275 Property II

LL302 Restitution for Unjust Enrichment

Awards
  • National University of Singapore, University Annual Teaching Excellence Award 2021 (University wide-teaching award; only two winners from the Faculty of Law in 2020/21, awarded to recognise contributions by an individual to the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of high-quality teaching and assessment at the module or programme level)
  • National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law Annual Teaching Excellence Award 2022 (Faculty-wide teaching award)
  • National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law, Annual Teaching Excellence Award 2021 (Faculty-wide teaching award)

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