Lawyer Salary

Look all these sourpuss hiding from the cloak of anonymity dissing on the legal fraternity.

Beyond referring to precedence and textbook cases, any self-respecting practitioner in today’s corporate world is also adept in your daily office quant work.

Take a browse on LinkedIn, law undergrads and even SMU’s JDs all work in myriads of field aside from the legal industry. We can do all that spreadsheet stuff while still qualified to be summoned to the bar.

We’re not just a fancy RI/HC ang moh pai with a thesaurus.

update: r&t has informed some of their trainees they won't be retained

Originally Posted by Unregistered

That's because law graduates are by and large cut from the same cloth and think the same way. By-the-book, good at exams but not very bold, creative or imaginative. And always treading the same tried and tested path.

The local law students all mostly come from RI or HC. That's as cookie-cutter as you can get.

Those not smart enough to get into local law, usually from lower ranked JCs, but can pay their way overseas, aren't bright or hardworking enough to cut it.

The true visionaries, dreamers and mavericks have long cut their losses and run after graduating law school, or getting called or at most spending 1-2 years as a junior associate. Tan Min Liang is a prime example.

LOL chill out - there's no one best path in life for everyone. Someone who is a good surgeon/football player/trader/celebrity chef/company director may want to be/may not be good at being a lawyer and that's fine.

A lot of bright young people are drawn to law because (1) peer/parental pressure (2) it doesn't take much capital to start as a lawyer (3) they don't know what they want. Some of these people take to law, and some people discover they have other things they're more interested in. It would be a boring world if we were all alike.

And get off the high horse about local law schools / overseas law schools. Just a selection of star lawyers who didn't get into NUS law:

- Richard Youle (Skadden Co-head of Private Equity) - University of Newcastle
- Gary Born (WilmerHale chair of International Arbitration) - University of Haverford/UPenn
- Nigel Boardman (Slaugher and May "most famous lawyer of his generation) - University of Bristol
- Martin Lipton (Wachtell founding partner) - UPenn/NYU
- Milton Cheng (Baker McKenzie global chair (SINGAPOREAN) - King's College London

All foreigners (except Milton)? Yes exactly right - the world is a big place and competition is global. Why let an arbitrary national idea of "prestige" make you so prejudiced against someone just because of what school they went to?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

LOL chill out - there's no one best path in life for everyone. Someone who is a good surgeon/football player/trader/celebrity chef/company director may want to be/may not be good at being a lawyer and that's fine.

A lot of bright young people are drawn to law because (1) peer/parental pressure (2) it doesn't take much capital to start as a lawyer (3) they don't know what they want. Some of these people take to law, and some people discover they have other things they're more interested in. It would be a boring world if we were all alike.

And get off the high horse about local law schools / overseas law schools. Just a selection of star lawyers who didn't get into NUS law:

- Richard Youle (Skadden Co-head of Private Equity) - University of Newcastle
- Gary Born (WilmerHale chair of International Arbitration) - University of Haverford/UPenn
- Nigel Boardman (Slaugher and May "most famous lawyer of his generation) - University of Bristol
- Martin Lipton (Wachtell founding partner) - UPenn/NYU
- Milton Cheng (Baker McKenzie global chair (SINGAPOREAN) - King's College London

All foreigners (except Milton)? Yes exactly right - the world is a big place and competition is global. Why let an arbitrary national idea of "prestige" make you so prejudiced against someone just because of what school they went to?

I hope you're being sarcastic with your list of "star lawyers", because you sound super retarded otherwise. Might as well say that Obama (Harvard Law) didn't "get" into NUS Law also? smh

BTW Milton Cheng is a hwachong boy

NUS or SMU law should be the bare minimum that an RI or Hwachong student should aspire to. The only other acceptable alternatives on the list of OSUs are Oxbridge (obviously), LSE, and UCL. Anything else constitutes a gross underperformance for an Raffles or Hwachong student.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I hope you're being sarcastic with your list of "star lawyers", because you sound super retarded otherwise. Might as well say that Obama (Harvard Law) didn't "get" into NUS Law also? smh

BTW Milton Cheng is a hwachong boy

NUS or SMU law should be the bare minimum that an RI or Hwachong student should aspire to. The only other acceptable alternatives on the list of OSUs are Oxbridge (obviously), LSE, and UCL. Anything else constitutes a gross underperformance for an Raffles or Hwachong student.

Lol so Milton Cheng didn't get into "Oxbridge (obviously), LSE, and UCL" - gross underperformance?

Bristol and Newcastle on your list of good schools?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I hope you're being sarcastic with your list of "star lawyers", because you sound super retarded otherwise. Might as well say that Obama (Harvard Law) didn't "get" into NUS Law also? smh

BTW Milton Cheng is a hwachong boy

NUS or SMU law should be the bare minimum that an RI or Hwachong student should aspire to. The only other acceptable alternatives on the list of OSUs are Oxbridge (obviously), LSE, and UCL. Anything else constitutes a gross underperformance for an Raffles or Hwachong student.

Just grow up lah schools open doors but if you spend your life judging people by what school they got into you'll just be bitter and miserable and wondering why no adult with an actual job cares about your A level results.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

update: r&t has informed some of their trainees they won't be retained

Corp or liti?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I hope you're being sarcastic with your list of "star lawyers", because you sound super retarded otherwise. Might as well say that Obama (Harvard Law) didn't "get" into NUS Law also? smh

BTW Milton Cheng is a hwachong boy

NUS or SMU law should be the bare minimum that an RI or Hwachong student should aspire to. The only other acceptable alternatives on the list of OSUs are Oxbridge (obviously), LSE, and UCL. Anything else constitutes a gross underperformance for an Raffles or Hwachong student.

Not OP but I'm from those schools. Grow up m9 stop overcompensating

these unsubtle attempts to discourage newbies from joining or staying long

i hope they open more law schools here and allow 3rd class honours to take the bar exams. no reason why lawyer starting pay should be head and shoulders above the rest of the general population. i look forward to the day big 4 nq pay is 3.2k before cpf

more people should get law degrees and qualify as lawyers. improve access to justice and remove this elitist taint, like as though the only lawyers worth consulting are from the elite schools.

pro tip: your lawmentors.sg dude was an ri boy.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

these unsubtle attempts to discourage newbies from joining or staying long

i hope they open more law schools here and allow 3rd class honours to take the bar exams. no reason why lawyer starting pay should be head and shoulders above the rest of the general population. i look forward to the day big 4 nq pay is 3.2k before cpf

more people should get law degrees and qualify as lawyers. improve access to justice and remove this elitist taint, like as though the only lawyers worth consulting are from the elite schools.

pro tip: your lawmentors.sg dude was an ri boy.

Opening more law schools and having more law grads will NOT drive down the costs for legal services! People who don't understand how the legal industry works keep saying that.

The experience with over-lawyered countries like US, the UK and Australia (mostly Anglo-American countries) show that that legal costs will keep rising, unless there is a structural change in how legal services are delivered. That push comes mainly from technology, unbundling and commoditizing of legal services, and from clients pressuring their counsel to control costs.

All that your proposal is going to do is to convert law into something like an arts degree, with low barriers to entry, akin to the situation in Australia where they have 30+ law schools that accept any tom-dick-and-harry. Most people won't get a chance to practice.

If there is a downward pressure on NQ salaries, fewer people will opt for law. The brightest kids will do something else altogether. Firms will then raise salaries for associates to attract talent, and the costs is passed to clients again.

The market always corrects itself.

Strangely speaking, its only Anglo-American systems that harbour this outsized prestige for lawyers. Civil law countries in continental Europe think of lawyers more like bureaucrats and functionaries.

If you're still a law student however, I won't expect you to fully grasp how the industry works.