SINGAPORE - An aspiring lawyer who submitted a research paper in 2016 that was found to have been plagiarised failed to convince Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon on Tuesday that he was ready to be called to the Bar.

Mr Suria Shaik Aziz agreed to withdraw his Bar application and not to submit another for four months, after the Chief Justice suggested that he take more time to reflect and take courses on ethics, adding that he lacked insight into the ethical implications of what he did.

While studying at an Australian university, Mr Suria submitted a paper that he knew had been given a high similarity score of 42 per cent by plagiarism detection service Turnitin.

The score represents the percentage of a student’s work that is similar to something found on the Internet, in Turnitin’s databases, or in someone else’s paper. 

His paper was found to contain chunks of material lifted from elsewhere, but references to the sources were not cited.

His university took the view that it was a case of academic misconduct. He resubmitted the same paper with proper references and was given a bare minimum pass.

Mr Suria disclosed the incident to the Singapore law firm where he did his practice training stint, as well as in his Bar admission application.

A question arose over whether he had intended to pass the work off as his own, or whether he was simply pressed for time and failed to cite the references in his rush to meet the deadline.

His admission application was originally scheduled to be heard last October, but was adjourned after the Attorney-General objected.

On Tuesday, the Attorney-General withdrew the objection.

The Law Society and the Singapore Institute of Legal Education, the other stakeholders involved in the admission of lawyers, also did not object, and said they were willing to give Mr Suria the benefit of the doubt.

Mr Suria told the court that back in 2016, he did not have time to finish the paper.

“It was a grave lapse of judgment... Looking back on it now, I wish I had asked for more time,” he said.

Chief Justice Menon asked why he did not include the references when copying the material, and why he submitted the paper despite the high similarity score.

Mr Suria said he decided to submit whatever he had, and it did not dawn on him at the time that he was effectively passing the work off as his own.

The Chief Justice said he was unable to accept this, as Mr Suria had specifically been warned about plagiarism when he submitted an outline of his paper, which was returned with comments from his tutor that there was “massive copying”.

He added that Mr Suria lacked insight into what he had done wrong, as he continued to characterise his conduct as a failure to cite sources.

In separate cases in March, two were called to the Bar as lawyers after they voluntarily owned up to their past misdeeds – one had plagiarised several paragraphs for a paper and the other was caught shoplifting an eyeshadow palette – and showed that they had learnt from their mistakes.

In 2022, 11 aspiring lawyers who were caught cheating in the 2020 Bar exam were allowed to withdraw their applications to be admitted to the Bar.

Five of them undertook not to bring fresh applications for periods ranging from nine months to five years.