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Old 27-05-2022, 04:44 PM
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Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
Sorry to burst your head-in-the-clouds bubble, but the bulk of local litigation is made up of cases *other* than complex multi-million dollar disputes. Even commercial litigation. We are looking at sub-SGD $10M disputes between local corporates and SMEs, or between HNWs. That's the 'middle and working class strata' of the litigation world. If that pie shrinks to unviability, the litigation sector in Singapore is pretty much finished.

The Big4 and DSC teams have their own problems being squeezed from int'l arbi by the foreign firms.

If you can't see a problem with hollowing out of the existing pool of local litigators and inability to replenish the next gen of litigators because there's no market for it, then you need to come down from your ivory tower. Access to justice is very important not only to the common man, but the typical Singapore local corporate.

I have no skin in this as I'm in-house counsel and we regularly instruct a variety of firms on the corporate panel. Cost control is my priority. Most of our disputes are not bet the company type, and even if we instruct B4, we push their rates down to mid-tier levels because we're not paying SC rates to deal with a simple $2M performance bond case.
With the Courts aggressively pushing ADR to litigants, it will affect all levels of litigation regardless of its complexity. Your client may be a good client but they will take up ADR if they can avoid paying more legal costs. It won't be surprising if the judiciary will impose a "hard cap" on legal costs for even complex multi-million dollar disputes like what they did with NIMA/PIMA.

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