n 1890 Singhalese lawyer William Alfred Goone Tilleke chose Siam, then Southeast Asia’s only surviving independent state, as the place where he could best utilize his considerable talents and secure a distinguished career. His success and achievements were to have a lasting legacy, not least in the founding of a sole practitioner’s law office in 1890 which, when joined by Englishman Ralph Gibbins in 1902, became Tilleke & Gibbins.
Today Tilleke & Gibbins is the oldest and one of the largest independent law firms in Thailand. Successive owners and partners over the decades have been figures as remarkable as the firm’s founder, each contributing to the practice’s development and enviable reputation. The firm’s original name has always been retained, however, and Tilleke & Gibbins has achieved that rare feat of staying true to its core values and traditions while driving forward its practice in a way scarcely matched by any other law firm.
Wise Counsel tells the story of Tilleke & Gibbins from the day when William Tilleke first stepped ashore at the port of Bangkok, through the formative years of the early twentieth century, the dark years of World War II, and up to the present consolidation of unprecedented growth and international standing.
Much of Wise Counsel focuses on the fascinating personalities of the firm’s different partners, but there are also the many headline cases, from murder and drug smuggling to counterfeiting, legal anecdote and, not least, the ever-changing face of Bangkok and the exotic social and cultural setting in which the history of Tilleke & Gibbins unfolds.