Lawyer Salary

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Honestly no trainee or junior lawyer should work in a small firm. Most of their standards are to sh itty for a junior to start his or her career and you will pick up many bad habits and poor practices.

There are a few good boutique firms founded by able practitioners, but it is rare. The vast majority are mediocre. The poor brand name of a small firm also "taints" your CV for a long time.

All junior doctors start their HO and MO in large public hospitals and not your small neighbourhood GP clinic where they train with the benefit of institutional expertise. The same reason should be applied to starting your career in law.

We should ban small firms (<20 lawyers) from taking on trainees and junior lawyers.

There is a place for small firms in the market (at the price point for less wealthy clients/corporations), but lawyers should only join them at a mid-to senior experienced stage.

Lol do u even brain ?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Lol do u even brain ?

found the chinatown / HDB hub trainee lmao

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Honestly no trainee or junior lawyer should work in a small firm. Most of their standards are to sh itty for a junior to start his or her career and you will pick up many bad habits and poor practices.

There are a few good boutique firms founded by able practitioners, but it is rare. The vast majority are mediocre. The poor brand name of a small firm also "taints" your CV for a long time.

All junior doctors start their HO and MO in large public hospitals and not your small neighbourhood GP clinic where they train with the benefit of institutional expertise. The same reason should be applied to starting your career in law.

We should ban small firms (<20 lawyers) from taking on trainees and junior lawyers.

There is a place for small firms in the market (at the price point for less wealthy clients/corporations), but lawyers should only join them at a mid-to senior experienced stage.

We should also ban you from posting as you're clearly delisted or delist your school if not.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Is the law soc pres a fatcat?

How come he dunno the reason why young lawyers r leaving har? He act blur feign ignorance ah. So fake leh.

He is defo fat fur sure, eat too much odette.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Honestly no trainee or junior lawyer should work in a small firm. Most of their standards are to sh itty for a junior to start his or her career and you will pick up many bad habits and poor practices.

There are a few good boutique firms founded by able practitioners, but it is rare. The vast majority are mediocre. The poor brand name of a small firm also "taints" your CV for a long time.

All junior doctors start their HO and MO in large public hospitals and not your small neighbourhood GP clinic where they train with the benefit of institutional expertise. The same reason should be applied to starting your career in law.

We should ban small firms (<20 lawyers) from taking on trainees and junior lawyers.

There is a place for small firms in the market (at the price point for less wealthy clients/corporations), but lawyers should only join them at a mid-to senior experienced stage.

I don't think that this is a good method (equating bigger to better), since alot of lawyers in the bigger firms just ignore (or give the most menial **** to) trainees as they have too many. Some smaller firms give far better training than "Warm Body" teams in b4.

But I get your drift. Perhaps a better alternative would be subjecting law firms/lawyers to training audits or actual training requirements before they are allowed to take on trainees, instead of a blanket PQE requirement. PQE is a meaningless concept, a 3 PQE lawyer might be years ahead of a 10 PQE lawyer.

We should propose to overhaul the training system - before a lawyer can take trainees, they have to prove that:

1. They have (or the law firm can provide) sufficient experience in a variety of fields. This means providing a general description of the work they have undertaken, and the work they expect to undertake.
2. Their average caseload and/or case quantum must exceed x/year.
3. They DO NOT have a history of being reprimanded or censured by the Court or Law Soc.
4. They are willing to provide a monthly report on the work provided to the trainee.
5. They can prove that they have adequate resources to take on trainees after the TC (instead of consistently cycling through trainees as a source of cheap labour).

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I don't think that this is a good method (equating bigger to better), since alot of lawyers in the bigger firms just ignore (or give the most menial **** to) trainees as they have too many. Some smaller firms give far better training than "Warm Body" teams in b4.

But I get your drift. Perhaps a better alternative would be subjecting law firms/lawyers to training audits or actual training requirements before they are allowed to take on trainees, instead of a blanket PQE requirement. PQE is a meaningless concept, a 3 PQE lawyer might be years ahead of a 10 PQE lawyer.

We should propose to overhaul the training system - before a lawyer can take trainees, they have to prove that:

1. They have (or the law firm can provide) sufficient experience in a variety of fields. This means providing a general description of the work they have undertaken, and the work they expect to undertake.
2. Their average caseload and/or case quantum must exceed x/year.
3. They DO NOT have a history of being reprimanded or censured by the Court or Law Soc.
4. They are willing to provide a monthly report on the work provided to the trainee.
5. They can prove that they have adequate resources to take on trainees after the TC (instead of consistently cycling through trainees as a source of cheap labour).

Excellent suggestion. Do you think the senior lawyers will agree to more administrative work over trainees, the lowest life form (lower than a secretary)? I doubt it.

I fully agree with 3 and 5 though.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Excellent suggestion. Do you think the senior lawyers will agree to more administrative work over trainees, the lowest life form (lower than a secretary)? I doubt it.

I fully agree with 3 and 5 though.

I'm the OP. I think that practically, a lawyer who's not willing to handle supervisory/admin tasks (such as keeping records or taking note of what his trainee has done) and/or does not have middlemen (such as SAs) to perform said supervisory tasks, is also unlikely to be providing proper training to his trainees anyway. I'm not saying they can't delegate, but if you want to obtain the benefit of a "2000/month sucker" for 6 mths, the least you can do is show that you actually have some sort of training program in mind for the trainee.

So I take my suggestions to be a self-filtering concept. If you're lazy enough not to want to do any tasks related to the trainee, perhaps you shouldn't have any in the first place. At least if you're lazy but in a firm with relatively structured training (and therefore can dump these tasks to someone else), you'll not be totally failing your trainee.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I'm the OP. I think that practically, a lawyer who's not willing to handle supervisory/admin tasks (such as keeping records or taking note of what his trainee has done) and/or does not have middlemen (such as SAs) to perform said supervisory tasks, is also unlikely to be providing proper training to his trainees anyway. I'm not saying they can't delegate, but if you want to obtain the benefit of a "2000/month sucker" for 6 mths, the least you can do is show that you actually have some sort of training program in mind for the trainee.

So I take my suggestions to be a self-filtering concept. If you're lazy enough not to want to do any tasks related to the trainee, perhaps you shouldn't have any in the first place. At least if you're lazy but in a firm with relatively structured training (and therefore can dump these tasks to someone else), you'll not be totally failing your trainee.

3 makes the most sense. If you want to reduce the number of lawyers who become practitioners who have a problem with court/professional ethics, tackle it at the root. Stop allowing them to take on trainees - they should not be allowed to mould the next generation.

So is WP the only B4 firm thats implementing this performance based structure?

Anyone can share how's the bonus at Big 4s like?

Excluding the front-load (i.e. year end bonus only)?