A firm built around the argument.
Cheah Menon was founded in 2009 on a simple idea: a disputes practice small enough that the partner who argues your case is the partner who runs it — and specialised enough that arguing cases is all we do.
Founded to do one thing properly.
Su-Lin Cheah and Aravind Menon started the firm after years in the disputes departments of larger practices, where contentious work too often shared a roof — and a partner’s attention — with everything else. They wanted a firm that did contentious work only, and did it end to end: the injunction on day one, the trial or the arbitration, the appeal, and the enforcement.
Seventeen years later the idea has held. We remain a single office in Kuala Lumpur of around 21 lawyers, deliberately small, taking on the number of matters we can run properly rather than the number we could bill. Our work spans commercial litigation, arbitration and adjudication, insolvency, shareholder and employment disputes, and public law — but the method behind all of it is the same.
Four habits that decide most cases.
Narrow early
Most disputes turn on two or three issues. We find them before the pleadings close and build the whole case around them, rather than fighting on every front and running out of road.
Master the documents
Commercial disputes are won on the paper — the contract, the certificate, the contemporaneous note. We do the close reading first, because that is where the cross-examination and the submissions come from.
Advise on the risk, honestly
You are entitled to know the weak points of your own case. We give you the realistic range of outcome and cost at the outset, and again as the matter moves — even when it is not what you hoped to hear.
Plan the enforcement
A judgment or award is only as good as its recovery. We think about how you will actually be paid — or protected — from the first meeting, not the last.
The rules we practise under.
Every lawyer at Cheah Menon is an Advocate & Solicitor of the High Court of Malaya and a member of the Malaysian Bar, practising under the Legal Profession Act 1976 and its rules of conduct and etiquette. The firm carries the compulsory professional indemnity insurance required of Malaysian legal practices.
The Legal Profession (Publicity) Rules 2001 govern what a firm may say about itself. They are the reason you will find no client testimonials on this website, no claims that we are “leading” or “the best”, and no success rates. What you will find instead is a plain description of the work we do, our experience described within the permitted bounds, and what the independent directories have written about us. We think that is the more useful information in any event.