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Dr Rachel Leow

Dr Rachel Leow

Associate 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 Leow (pronounced lee-ow) is an Associate Professor of Law. She joined the LSE Law School in Sep 2022. Rachel 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, High Court of Australia, 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.

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.

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

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

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

Cited with approval by the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom in Trustees of the Barry Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses [2023] UKSC 15, where Lord Burrows, giving the unanimous decision of the Supreme Court, said: ‘I have found very helpful on the conceptual basis of vicarious liability, Rachel Leow, Corporate Attribution in Private Law (2022) chapter 4.’

Cited by Goh Yihan J in Axis Megalink Sdn Bhd v Far East Mining Pte Ltd [2023] SGHC 243

Reviews (available on request):

-          Nicholas Felstead (2022) 50 Australian Business Law Review 144-146

-          Sir Ross Cranston (2022) 37 Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law 765

-          John Murphy (2023) 139 Law Quarterly Review 340-343

-          Eva Micheler (2023) 82 Cambridge Law Journal 371-73

-          Hans Tjio (2023) Singapore Journal of Legal Studies 498-506

Publications

 

 

 

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)

Teaching

LL204 Advanced Torts

LL275 Property II

LL302 Restitution for Unjust Enrichment

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