Originally Posted by Unregistered

Yes and no. I think it depends on figuring out what you want in your career. Different pathways are "good" for different things.

If you want to print money, the law is really not for you.

If you want to enter a particular industry or area of law, you need to plan accordingly. Arbitration work is very difficult to get, in part because arbitrating parties do not need to appoint representatives from the Singapore bar. The big 4, international firms/JVs, and/or local arbitration specialists, are probably your best bet. If you want to do community work, Big 4 is probably not for you.

If your goals are autonomy in terms of lifestyle, handling your own clients/files, I think a smaller firm/CT firm is more likely to get you there faster. You progress to handling your own files quicker, and get to do "higher level" work (as in, less drafting research memos, more drafting pleadings, doing hearings solo, etc). Larger firms tend to be more hierarchical, structured, and can sometimes foster a lot of anal attitudes.

If you're the kind of person who thinks, "Don't bother me about the nitty gritty, let me just do what works", probably try a smaller firm.

The downside of this is that sometimes, smaller firms may lack instructional/teaching processes, and/or the partner himself may not be aware of, or has not implemented, proper file management processes, or client management processes, or may have developed some very bad, uncorrected bad habits, etc. If you only ever handle small-value files for clients who can't really afford to turn around and sue you, you may get away with all kinds of questionable habits and not know you're doing anything wrong, until you get a Law Society complaint.

So if you tend to work for someone who's less anal, or who isn't very strict, you should still keep it in the back of your mind that you have professional and ethical obligations, and you have avenues for asking for advice other than your boss. Sometimes it sucks to tell your boss "I won't do that because I think it's wrong", but once you're qualified, you can't shift blame for ethical breaches to your boss.

What works for each individual lawyer is probably going to depend a lot on what they want, and how they learn, and how they work. Some of my friends in Big 4 really hate it because they feel like tearing their hair out everytime someone nags them about formatting errors in their documents. OTOH, I started in smaller firms, and got frustrated at the lack of explicit instructions: you just try your best and nobody will tell you how to get things done, but they'll still tear you a new one if you do it "wrong"; I transitioned to Big 4 and I appreciate that there's always someone around who has an answer (even if it's not always THE answer, or the correct answer).

One thing you might want to consider is also how much support you get. Larger firms tend to have better support for lawyers. A Big 4 assoc can just send 5,000 pages of stuff in soft copy to a different department and everything gets printed, bound, tabbed, and sent off, with no further involvement from him. On the other hand I have literally sprinted to Court with a bundle of documents that I printed, bound, and tabbed myself, so I could tender it in time.

Hours are likely to be bad either way, but I'd rather be spending my late nights doing research or drafting than standing in front of the photocopier.