Originally Posted by Unregistered

Its not lah. Speaking as a practising lawyer of >5pqe, as much as I've seen much more cmi foreign than local grads in the course of my short career, the low pay here is simply a function of the Singapore economy.

Law is a quaternary industry. We (lawyers) service the service providers (e.g. banks/FIs). Ultimately, the legal industry will only be as profitable as the underlying client base.

Singapore is nowhere near as big a financial hub as we think we are, compared to the alpha world cities. We are by no means a major equities capital market. Our private wealth sector is just starting to take off, and this isn't a big money spinner for law in absolute terms. We're only constantly led to believe we're a major financial hub because the southeast asian competition (KL, Jakarta, Manila, BKK) is so cui, relatively speaking.

The low pay in the industry is simply cos SG law firms are simply not profitable. And they're not profitable because the economy can't support it.

If you need an analogous reference, go find out how much an average Malaysian lawyer is paid. Then compare the size of the M'sian financial sector to that of Singapore's.