38. —(1) The purposes of the Society shall be...(c) to assist the Government and the courts in all matters affecting legislation submitted to it, and the administration and practice of the law in Singapore;(d) to represent, protect and assist members of the legal profession in Singapore and to promote in any manner the Society thinks fit the interests of the legal profession in Singapore...(f) to protect and assist the public in Singapore in all matters touching or ancillary or incidental to the lawSingapore Legal Profession Act 22 years ago, Section 38(1)(c) of the Legal Profession Act was modified to read the above. The justification for this was to prevent the Singapore Law Society from being a 'political pressure group'. But I will demonstrate that this modification was simply a measure to reign in the power of the Law Society to influence politics in Singapore.The law is political. Politics describes how a group of people make decisions. The decision-making process itself depends on the nature of the group. For example, a group headed by a single man wielding absolute power will take action based on that man's decisions, while a group founded on democratic principles will decide on various matters after accounting for everybody's input, or at least their appointed representatives. But the framework of power, namely how power is acquired, surrendered, and applied within the group, is instituted and regulated by pre-existing laws.Consider Singapore. The government has three branches: the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. This is because the law has long ago spelled out the structure of government. It is the law, as upheld by the judiciary, that governs what the executive and the legislature, in this case, may or may not do. In effect, the law tells the country's leaders when and how they may or may not act in any given situation. In fact, everything involving some kind of decision that would influence other people, from justice to taxes to elections to business to the use of mobile phones, is governed by one law or other.Singapore's Law Society is composed of lawyers. The job of lawyers is to interpret the law, and represent their clients' interests in a court of law. To do their job properly, they must have a great awareness of the law, and its effects on the common man, not necessarily their clients. The nature of their work is effectively political, because they are influencing the judge's decision in court by drawing upon the foundations that gave the judge his power to decide a case, and the infrastructure that gave the courts their authority to try people for any reason.It goes without saying that humans are imperfect, and this imperfection extends to their creations. So it is with the law. Every now and then, lawyers may come across segments of the law that they disagree with, and they may realise that many, if not all, in the Law Society share the same view. The nature of this discomfort may well be that certain segments of society are unfairly discriminated against, such as the homosexual community's liability for prosecution under Section 377(A), for instance. Under section 1(f) of the Legal Profession Act, the Law Society is charged with protecting and assisting the public "in all matters touching or ancillary or incidental to the law". The Law Society therefore has a duty to take action when it determines that a law does not protect the public, or when the public needs assistance with regards to a legal issue.It is disingenuous to label the Law Society as a 'political pressure group'. The work of its members is akin to designing, maintaining, and changing the pillars that uphold the application of political power in Singapore. Should the Law Society discover a legal matter that pricks its collective conscience, and if that matter were to affect the average citizen, among other effects, then it is its duty under Setion 38(1)(f) to speak up. By doing so, it will become a 'political pressure group'. The Law Society is therefore a 'political pressure group'; all the government has done is to call it as it can be. The only negative connotations of that label are those seen by the State, vis-a-vis its grip on political power. That, perhaps, is why the law was changed 22 years ago.The modification of Section 38(1)(c) of the Legal Profession Act occured in August of 1986. Three months prior, the Law Society, under then-president Francis Seow, issued a press statement criticising the government's amendment to the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act. The amendment allowed the Government to curb the circulation of foreign publications deemed to be interfering in Singapore's domestic politics. The Law Society said that existing laws were sufficient to deal with such publications. The government then accused Seow of using the Law Society as a political vehicle. Three months later, the Legal Profession Act was modified, particularly Section 38(1)(c).But, as explained above, the work of the Law Society is political. It is not a cold, unliving institution, but a body of living men and women of character and knowledge, whose work takes them to the infrastructure of politics. The job of these lawyers is to properly determine and regulate the flows and application of political power in Singapore. In the course of their work, should they encounter anything that falls under the category of Section 38(1)(f), it is their duty, moral and legal, to act. Restraining the Law Society from doing its duty, on grounds that it will become a 'political pressure group', is disingenuous, because it obsfucates the true nature of the law, and its relation to politics.It can be inferred from this incident that the true purpose of this modication was to curtail the Law Society. Section 38(1)(c) is often interpreted as forcing the Law Society to take a reactive stance to government policies, by speaking only when spoken to on matters of the law. This interpretation effectively renders the Law Society impotent, by preventing it from exposing, criticising, and effecting changes to laws that it disagrees with. After all, changing the law is akin to changing the course of a river: it redirects and refocuses the flow of political power, for whatever purpose, be it to run a hydroelectric dam or to irrigate a collective farm. It is not outside the nature of Singapore's government to suppress the power of any body that has even the slightest potential to challenge its power, as seen in its treatment of the Opposition. Neutralising the power of a hostile Law Society is a crucial goal for a government intent on retaining its hold on power, because lawyers tend to have more credibility with people on political matters due to their knowledge and experience with the law. With the most powerful potential legal adversary removed, the system that gave the government its power is retained. The government's power then remains unchallenged.What can the Law Society do now? In the interim, it should do its duty. It has a duty, under Section 38(1)(f) of the Legal Profession Act, to protect and assist the general public in legal matters. So when discussions on the law, or matters relating to the law, come into play, it must speak. Its role would be to clarify the issue for the general public, and to examine the legality and righteousness of the actions of the actors involved. This means explaining the laws in question in detail and with lucidity, examining different perspectives, and if necessary arguing for what it believes is the optimal solution. Its job is still to protect the public, which can be read as protecting them from anything from discrimination to red tape. Not one word in the Legal Profession Act bars the Law Society from being proactive, from engaging the State, or from acting freely. Section 38(1)(c) merely outlines one of, and not the paramount, duty of the Law Society. This, I believe, is the interpretation the Law Society ought to adopt.The government can continue to slam the Law Society for becoming a political pressure group for all it wants. But the Law Society is, by its very nature, a group whose work is political. The Law Society should not acquiesce its power to the State, rather to do its duty, to ensure the proper interpretation and application of the law -- and the correction of the law, to better serve the people. To do otherwise is to break the law it has helped to defend and apply.