The Youth Factor
Meet a group of young students who rose to the occasion to meet the unprecedented challenge of COVID-19
“One of the main problems that arose at the onset of COVID-19 and throughout circuit breaker was the inability for individuals and businesses to fulfil their contractual obligations, arising from the halt in normal business and/or social activities,” says Anders Seah, founder of COV-AID, a team of dedicated law students from the National University of Singapore, which seeks to provide layman-accessible legal information on a single platform (www.nus-covaid.com).
“For example, in the events and tourism industry, many activities had to be cancelled due to the restriction on social gatherings. In response to these problems, the Singapore Government introduced the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act 2020. This legislation is particularly important because it grants temporary relief measures to parties of certain contracts who are unable to fulfil their contractual obligations due to COVID-19,” adds co-founder Mark Tang.
In addition, many SME tenants also faced huge difficulty in meeting their rental obligations due to COVID-19and the social distancing laws, they point out. Under normal circumstances, a failure to pay rent could lead to negative consequences such as late payment fees and even eviction. To address this problem, the government introduced the Rental Relief Framework which seeks to co-share rental obligations between the government, landlords and SME tenants.
“Although not strictly legal, another struggle that arose was the difficulty in comprehending the various C OVID laws that were being passed. This can be attributed to the extensive use of legal jargon, which is an inevitable consequence or by-product of legislation,” Seah continues. “This problem became particularly pronounced given the significant number of COVID-19 laws that were being passed in a short span of time. It goes without saying that individuals and businesses would struggle and have struggled in understanding and keeping tabs with the new laws.”
What other channels were accessible to those in need of legal help at the time that COV-AID was formed? What were the limitations of these channels?
The first source of aid that comes to mind would be the Ministry of Law’s website, which contains detailed elaborations on the many intricacies of the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act 2020. The Ministry of Law also came up with many useful and helpful infographics.
Another source of aid would be the Legal Clinics conducted by Community Centres and the Law Society Pro Bono Services. We know for a fact that the legal clinics have been confronted with many questions regarding the new COVID-19 laws, the grants and reliefs available for parties, and issues pertaining to contractual liabilities arising from COVID-19.
To that end, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that these channels have inherent limitations because they do fill in gaps that COV_AID’s cannot fill. This includes our lack of governmental legitimacy and that as law students, we are unable to provide legal advice.
With that being said, we recognized that even in our limited capacities as students, more could be done for the community. We felt that the information available pertaining to the new laws could be more reader-friendly and concise. In addition, we also thought it beneficial to host all the these different information on one single platform. This reduces the need to scour through different websites to find the information that one needs. Moreover, with all the COVID-related legal information is on a single platform, this allows the legal clinics to sieve out truly important matters which requires a lawyer’s aid. Thus, CO V-AID was incepted with these motivations in mind.
In what particular areas did your group initially find unique or tremendous opportunities to provide voluntary legal action?
Given our capacity as students, we are unable to prove legal advice. Nevertheless, pro-bono aid comes in various forms and is not limited to the provision of legal advice. To that end, we decided that we can best
“We felt that the information available pertaining to these could be more reader-friendly and concise. We also thought it beneficial to host all the these different information on one single platform.”
aid the community in these precarious times by operating as a one-stop shop for all COVID-related information pertaining to the laws that are being passed.
Moreover, we realized the educative function that COVAID can have in elucidating on how COVID-19 has affected the different areas of law. To that end, COV-AID has two interesting sections: (1) Academic son Pandemics— offering thought pieces by our Law Professors and the Singapore Judiciary; and (2) Conversations with Lawyers — offering legal insights by leading lawyers on COVID19’s impact on their areas of expertise. These areas include tax law, employment law, family law, private equity and importantly, mental health. Hence, this was another avenue that we thought could be beneficial, especially for those with an interest in the law.
What did you want to accomplish with the formation of the group? How did these objectives evolve (provide a couple of examples, if any.)?
Our objective, which has not changed since Day 1, is to ‘give-back’ to society, by helping as many people as we can. Our raison d’être has been further cemented over the past few months as we realized that COV-AID could not sufficiently reach out to the grassroots. To that end, we started approaching Community Centres and the People’s Association, in hopes that our resource would be shared for the benefit of those who need it.
When all is said and done, I hope we can then say with great humility, that indeed we have given and not counted the cost.
How did you proceed to develop a range of legal services as well as the system for dispensing them?
We mainly categorized our content into four broad sections, which we believe to be most beneficial for readers. Our first section is titled ‘Government Grants’, which contains information regarding the different government grants that individuals and businesses can apply for.
Our second section, and arguably the most important, is ‘Navigating COVID-19 Laws’. This section is categorized into different areas which we believe to be most relevant (i.e. social distancing regulations, how to seek contractual relief under the COVID-19 laws, residential and commercial properties).
Our third section is ‘Academics on Pandemics’, which features unique thought pieces from our very own professors from N US Law and professors from other universities abroad, on howCOVID-19 has affected different areas of law. It’s not every day that you get to delve into the mind of law professors.
Our last section is ‘Conversations with Lawyers’, where students interview leading lawyers on how COVID-19 has affected their area of practice. This includes salient areas such as Family
“We can best aid the community in these precarious times by operating as a one-stop shop for all COVID-related information pertaining to the laws that are being passed.”
Law, Employment Law and Mental Health. We are very grateful that the lawyers have been so obliging in taking time off their busy schedules to contribute to our little initiative. As you can see, CO V-AID is an amalgamation of the efforts of students, professors and lawyers — this is our attempt at giving back to society in these precarious times.
We have received many questions from the public to date. Where it involves the provision of legal advice, we have been fortunate to receive the pro-bono aid of the Law Society Pro Bono Services and our own lawyers who have contributed to COV-AID.
Regarding the system for dispensing these range of ‘legal services’, everything is hosted on one single online platform, incepted, designed, managed and maintained by our very own Cheyenne Lim. Without her talents, COV-AID would never have been able to take off.
How did the members get selected?
In COV-AID’s days of yore, our friends all chipped in to help us with the preliminary research. Subsequently, the members who joined the EX CO were people that we (Seah and Tang) felt that we could work well with and cared deeply about the project’s central mission. We believe that teamwork makes the dream work and CO VAID’s success is testament to that. We are deeply blessed to have great synergy within our team.
Crucially, we were fortunate to receive the aid of students, who contributed to COV-AID’s many arms and limbs. This extends to writing the various articles, conducting interviews with lawyers and managing our publicity efforts. The signing up process was facilitated by NUS Law’s very handy probono portal which manages the enrolment of the many pro-bono activities that NUS Law has to offer. To that end, there is no specific selection criteria that we have employed in selecting students for COV-AID. As long as a particular student has a willing heart to serve, COV-AID’s doors are always open.
How did you launch the group, secure permits, get the word out?
Every pro-bono project has to be approved by first NUS Law, and then the Singapore Institute of Legal Education. After gaining the requisite approval, we got cracking.
After much toiling, we launched COV-AID on Singapore’s National Day, and announced the launch through social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram. Subsequently, we were very fortunate to have been featured by The Straits Times and The Ministry of Law. All these features have been pivotal in spreading the word about COV-AID. Importantly, N US Law and NU Sat large has been very supportive of COV-AID, and have provided us with good coverage within the Institution as well.
“As long as a particular student has a willing heart to serve, COV-AID’s doors are always open.”
We also have a very passionate Publicity Team, headed by Bryan Foo, that manages all our social media accounts. Every week the publicity team is hard at work posting various infographics and short video clips of the articles ontheCOV-AID website or the interviews under our ‘Conversations with Lawyers’ series.
Fundamentally, we are keenly aware that as an online platform, COV-AID’s efficacy is entirely contingent on outreach and publicity. Simply put, COV-AID lives and dies on publicity alone. Recently, we have been doubling down on our grassroots efforts and have reached out to many Community Centres and the People’s Association. Hopefully with features from entities like Portfolio, more and more people will be able to benefit from COV-AID as a legal resource.
Looking back, how would you assess the efficacy of the group? How many cases or distinct aid have been dispensed by the group?
The primary objective of COVAID has always been to provide greater understanding and awareness of the C OVID -19 laws and the various legal repercussions arising from COVID-19. In other words, there is no tangible way to measure how much better the public understands the COVID-19 laws as it relates to them personally.
However, we believe that our website has certainly fulfilled this objective. With over 14,000 visits to the website, and a daily traffic peaking at 1046 visitors a day, we know that so many Singaporeans have not only heard of the website, but also used it as a platform to assist them in navigating the many COVID-19 laws. In addition to that, we have made reaching out to as many people as possible one of our main priorities. We are quite happy with the way things turned out, as creating a website from scratch and getting it off the ground requires a lot of strategic publicity. The product of our hard work in getting the useful content to as many people as possible paid off immensely, as now CO VA ID has been recognized with reputable news coverage by Rice Media and the Straits Times.
Many people have also contacted us personally, seeking help with their legal problems. These were largely contractual issues that have arisen in light of COVID-19, rising up to 10 different questions a day during the peak of the pandemic. Although we were not allowed to give legal advice, there was still a lot we could do to help these people by explaining the various relevant laws and directed them to where they may seek further clarification their legal issues. With Singaporeans concerned over how the government could assist their businesses in the pandemic, COV-AID hence decided to tackle this problem by attempting to ‘plug’ this informational gap more proactively in setting up a dedicated team to answer questions related to this area.
Interestingly, on our website, we also noticed that most people visited our site for its ‘Conversations with Lawyers’ interviews and videos. It became apparent to us that Singaporeans were also interested in how the legal fraternity saw the pandemic along with the legal repercussions for the future in different sectors. As such, our website has dedicated a whole page to collating and presenting cutting edge journal entries and interviews with Singapore’s foremost authorities in their respective legal fields, along with building an extensive library of three-minute snippets of those interviews that the everyday man can easily digest.
Looking back, building a project like this from the ground up, there is no better end result for what we have achieved. Although we try not to reduce the amount of help we provide for the community to mere numbers, we can see through the flow of web traffic that there is still a steady stream of people who need help navigating COVID-19 laws in Singapore. That is also why, looking forward, our site will always be up and running to help those who need it tomorrow, next week and for the many months to come.