People who enter into the legal profession for money are doing it for the wrong reasons.
Corp law = highly paid scribe. Senior corp associates at top US law firms complain about this point all the time. Only starts to get interesting when you've ascended the ranks to be a 'trusted advisor' who has some weight in business transactions i.e Marty Lipton. However, one wonders if the time and stress spent scaling the greasy biglaw hierarchy could have been better spent in another industry....
Contentious = honestly not too bad if you truly enjoy the adversarial court process, destroying witnesses with leading qns/crafting air-tight legal arguments. However, this requires serious legal acumen and brainpower - if you're not Oxbridge starred first material/
NUS multiple award winner, you aren't going to go very far.
As some posters have alluded to, the commercial practice of law is essentially a derivative of volume and value of transactional work. NY is the epi-center of high-finance and where all the profitable work originates.
0.1% of 100bn M&A deal value = 100m in legal fees. ~200+ multi-billion dollar deals in US yearly.
1% of Jumbo
SGX IPO 100m = ... 1m in deal fees. ~5 high profile deals in SG yearly.
Guys, simple economics - you are not entitled to high salaries in SG legal industry. Sure, deals are more complex in US and more legal issues, but there's simply not enough demand for premium legal advice in SEA region. Work with monkeys, get peanut pay.
Viewed from this lens, our SG 'Big 4's are simply local counsel to US PE drypowder etc, with 0 pricing power because they do not do any high value work - nor are competitive dynamics favourable with a supply glut of lawyers.
So then, why should people go into law? I can think of a few good reasons:
1. Like to argue and win - litigation is a zero sum game, people who have a strong winner mentality and verbiage skills do well.
2. OCD and cares about administrative minutae which majority of populace DGAF - this is genuinely value accretive because the biz folks hate reading dense language
3. Genuinely interested in pushing the boundaries of legal knowledge via academic research - as long as you're genuinely passionate and have a sharp mind, this is valuable
Bad reasons to go into law (which seem reasonable but upon further analysis falls apart)
1. safe and 'low risk' career choice - which is riskier? going into an low-growth industry (less than GDP ~1%) with worsening competitive dynamics (entry of foreign law firms) firmly in the employer's camp with pyramid-like org structures with high attrition rates? VS working in FDLP/MA programs at bluechip corps in FMCG/big tech/industrials etc....
2. intellectual - just because something is hard to understand (legal jargon and reasoning) does not necessarily make it intellectual.
3. money - headline salary numbers look good, but viewed on other metrics (return on time spent, stress levels, admin nature of work make for **** job satisfication), economics only work out for top 0.1% in profession.