Why Dylan built his own firm
Dylan grew up in Sandakan, Sabah. The road from there to a law degree at the University of Malaya was not an obvious one — and it ran, for one unlikely year, through Michigan, USA, where a UGRAD scholarship established under President Barack Obama sent him to study at Grand Valley State University. He went as a small-town boy on a borrowed opportunity, and came back knowing what one opened door can do for a person.
The lesson repeated itself in practice. When the MCO lockdowns hit, Dylan was a young lawyer at his previous firm — and the work he helped bring in during those months, between RM500,000 and RM1 million in fees, was what kept every salary in the office paid. It taught him what a law firm actually is when you strip the title off the door: the people it feeds, and the clients it answers to.
He could have stayed on that road. Instead, after proving himself again in a partnership, he started Dylan Chong & Co — not to put his own name on a door, but because he believed the work could be done differently: technology handling the paperwork and the chasing, so lawyers have time to explain; every step of a matter told to the client in plain language; and young lawyers trained the way he wished someone had trained him — toward partnership, not just employment.
In short, the future is technology. Nokia failed by not adapting. The same goes for the traditional law firm.
The Chinese have a name for the thing worth protecting through all of it: 初心 — the heart you started with. This firm is Dylan's way of keeping his.
