Originally Posted by Unregistered

The pie is not quite as you describe. You can think of the market for transactional work in Singapore as split into three flavours: (1) a multi-jurisdictional transaction whose main governing law or jurisdictional nexus is not SG but may have a small SG nexus, (2) a multi-jurisdictional transaction whose main governing law or jurisdictional nexus is SG and (3) a purely SG transaction, big or small. In turn:

(1) - The main limiting factor for SG firms here is that they only do SG law work. As such, their only role in such transactions is to be SG local counsel, and the fees for such work are quite small. The international firms are obviously equipped to be lead transaction counsel on such matters (and these files are where the crazy fees come from - think 10 mil+ in fees), and they are basically just competing among themselves for these mandates.

And even on the local SG counsel point, in the past 15-20 years or so, many international firms have come into the local market, have hired many of (and imo the most capable) locally trained SG associates and they are now more than able to handle SG local counsel work. And I think you would be surprised to know that B4 and international firm quotes for local SG counsel work are actually very close, and the international firms are getting a bigger and bigger share of this pie as time goes on. Hence there is quite a bit of squeeze on the local firms for SG local counsel work under (1).

That being said, local counsel work is a steady but comparatively minor revenue stream for B4 or international. What these firms want and need are major multi-jurisdictional files (think billables in excess of a million SGD minimum) where they are leading transaction counsel, which brings us to (2).

(2) - Some of the corporate teams in the local firms are equipped to handle this type of work, and there is a delicate balance between WP and AG and the international firms in this category. It's probably about 50-50 where it's an international or local firm running the show, but the thing about this category of work is that there really isn't very much of it, mainly because SG law is still not favored on the international stage for major transactions. I am optimistic this might change in the future, but this is the current reality.

(3) - The big deals in this category go to WP or AG and the rest of the corp firms pretty much just get the bottom feeder stuff, with an occasional bone being thrown to R&T or SLB. There really isn't any way for the international firms to get in here because this is the true bread and butter of local firms and their quotes are waaaay too low. The international firms simply cant compete with the sweat shops for this work because they actually want to pay their associates fairly.

So from the above, you can see that the local firms and international setups are really not in direct competition most of the time, except for SG counsel work under (1) and (2), which are not really big pies to begin with. The pie is getting significantly bigger in general for (1) in recent years, but the local firms really have no way of vying for the increased work because they are limited to SG law.