Originally Posted by Unregistered

I have serious doubts lengthening the TC period will improve the quality of practising lawyers as is hoped.

This is one of those initiatives that look good on committee papers, and you can spend hours writing pages of policy recommendations based on "extensive" overseas datapoints etc etc, but anybody who's spent even a week in a real law firm working environment will know that it will be ineffectual and totally divorced from reality.

All that will happen is that it gives law firm 6 additional months to exploit their trainees at low pay. And shift financial burden and imposes barriers to financially disadvantaged lawyers.

We do not have a quality problem of NQs.

What we have is a quality problem of old senior lawyers working in 1 to 5 man outfits that are unable to provide good mentorship and experiences to their trainees/juniors, because either their book of business have been declining over the years, or they've picked up numerous poor habits and work ethics, or both. A perusal of recent disciplinary cases largely dealing with senior lawyers in such solo/small practices, will attest to that. This is the quality problem that LawSoc / MinLaw should be addressing.

One of the advantages of this jurisdiction that makes it marginally tolerable to practice law is the relatively short period (0.5 years of bar + 0.5 years of TC) for professional qualification compared to say the UK or HK. The current status is OK considering how low the market payscales are.

Lengthening the TC period to 1 year will make law an even less attractive prospects to even semi-bright young people who have a plethora of other good and well-paying career options to consider.