Salary.sg Forums - View Single Post - Lawyer Salary
Thread: Lawyer Salary
View Single Post
  #10516 (permalink)  
Old 31-03-2021, 04:30 PM
Unregistered
Guest
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
I'm in law practice for 1-2 years but this is purely my observations:

As a whole, law is not a sunset industry, but several "traditional" areas of law are. Family, real estate and PIMA/NIMA are sunset, with severe undercutting and gradual tightening of how much lawyers can charge their clients.

For corporate (non-litigation), it remains relevant but the pandemic accelerated the embracing of technology. And it is in trouble, because AI can draft simple SPAs, STAs, etc. Companies may dispense with engaging a lawyer for drafting, although they will still hire a lawyer in the event that the deal falls through and litigation is inevitable. I say it is "semi-sunset".

The areas of law that are booming, or poised to in the future, are tech and intellectual property. There aren't enough lawyers in these areas to take advantage of the tech boom in Singapore. Needless to say, it is not easy to be a lawyer in these fields as it requires expert knowledge in tech as well, and not many law undergrads know these.

For criminal law, there is still a future as Singaporeans are mostly middle-class now and willing to pay if it means avoiding custodial sentences. Also, with the government trying to control the internet and its expression, together with Singaporeans becoming more "woke", expect more cases to come up, like the smiley face incident.

Regarding toughness of finding a job or whether too many lawyers fighting for jobs, the answer is an absolute yes. So go pad your CV up when you are still in university. Forget about joining orientation groups or clubs/societies, those don't mean **** when applying for a job as lawyer. Instead, be more "anti-social" and spend more time getting more internships and building connections with senior lawyers. Anyway, you will realize that 99% of your friends are fair-weathered friends and they aren't going to be nice once you all compete for the same slice of the pie.
As a corp lawyer I beg to differ and doubt whether you actually had relevant experience in the field or merely read the FT articles on “how tech is disrupting legal services.”

First of all, the local big firms and even the international firms have yet to adopt the softwares where drafts can be generated by computers. From my experience, most files have their own unique issues that arise along the way and a good lawyer will never just blindly take a precedent or merely do a “fill in the blanks” exercise before sending them to the client. Someone needs to be there to case manage, analyse, review or research. Any good corporate lawyer will know that a lawyer who use the cookie cutter method all the time is one who makes a lot of legal and logical errors.

Whilst I agree that law is getting competitive as has been the case since years ago, areas like tech are also becoming competitive because the field is not protected like law. To all readers here, read everything with a pinch of salt, or they will cost you your career.


Primary School English Grammar and Vocabulary Drills
Primary School English Grammar and Vocabulary Drills


SG Bus Timing App
SG Bus Timing App - the best bus app - available on iOS and Android


Bursa Stocks Android App - check share prices
Bursa Stocks [Android] App - check latest share prices on the go


SGX Stocks Android App - check share prices
SGX Stocks [Android] App - check latest share prices on the go


SGX Stocks for iPad - check latest Singapore share prices
SGX Stocks [iPad] app
| SGX Stocks [iPhone] app
Reply With Quote