Early Life and Education
Woon, a Peranakan, was born on 12 September 1956 in Singapore to schoolteachers. He was a head prefect at Pasir Panjang Primary School (which his father became principal of years later) and a prefect while at Raffles Institution. Following his A-levels he was considering business administration, but ended up accepting a scholarship from DBS Bank to study law instead. According to Woon in an April 2008 interview, "When I went for the scholarship interview, the interviewer said, 'We looked at your results and you look like you might be a lawyer; would you like to do law?' I said, 'Fine, if you want to give me the scholarship to do law, I'll do law'. I didn't plan to do law."
He earned his Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) from the National University of Singapore (NUS), graduating in 1981 with first class honours. He joined the teaching staff of the NUS Faculty of Law that year, focusing his teaching and research on company law and securities regulation. In 1983 he graduated with a Master of Laws (LL.M.) degree with first class honours from St. John's College, Cambridge, which he completed on a Commonwealth Academic Staff scholarship.
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