Yap Yin Soon

Partner

Yin Soon is Co-Head of the Maritime & Aviation Practice and Co-Head of the Shipping (Contentious) Team.

His expertise is in disputes in the maritime, offshore, aviation and international trade and trade finance sectors. He is often called upon by clients to handle high value, complex and cross-border cases relating to collisions, casualties, salvage and oil pollution, charterparties, bills of lading, bunker trades, mortgages, lease agreements, sale and purchase agreements, construction, conversion and repair projects, oil and gas projects, ownership and possessory rights over ships, aircraft and cargo and loss, damage and detention to the same, international trade and trade finance and restructuring and insolvency.

Yin Soon regularly acts as lead counsel in many maritime and trade related disputes in the courts and in arbitrations (including LMAA, SIAC, SCMA, ICC and ad hoc). His clients include the Regulator, port operators, lenders and financiers in the shipping and commodities sectors, shipowners, P&I Clubs and other marine insurers, underwriters (liability claims) and shipyards.

He has argued many leading and notable cases. In The Legal 500 Asia Pacific, Yin Soon has been described as an “excellent advocate” who is “technically sound, [and] commercial minded to provide practical solutions” and possessing “in-depth enforcement expertise” with clients appreciating his “‘hands-on’ approach”. In Chambers Asia Pacific, his strengths have been described as: "very client-friendly, hands-on and responsible. [He] knows that if I need help on anything, it will be followed up on. He is very hard-working" and "Yin Soon is our go-to counsel for complex disputes which require in-depth industry knowledge and commercial sensitivity."

He is ranked in all the main global legal directories as a leading or recommended lawyer for shipping such as The Legal 500 Asia Pacific, Chambers Asia Pacific and Lexology Index. In Benchmark Litigation, he is ranked as a “Litigation Star”.

Yin Soon joined Allen & Gledhill in 1994 and was made a Partner in 2000. He is also on the Maritime Panel of Associate Mediators, Singapore Mediation Centre.

Work Highlights

  • "VOX MAXIMA" interests and the Master in civil and criminal proceedings (Public Prosecutor v Richard Ouwehand and others [2025] SGDC 140) in connection with the high-profile oil pollution incident in Singapore in 2024
  • Acting for two leading banks in many proceedings in court and arbitration resulting from the collapse of Hin Leong Trading
  • The sinking of the "STAR CENTURION" in 2019

Publications