Lawyer Salary

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hey!

I think this would be sector dependent and would also depend on the area of competency one is in. I think in general there are still a lack of legal talents in Singapore, lawyers with a few years PQE are still in demand. A lot of fear at the moment is driven by grads not having enough places at the law firm, but this does not apply to the whole legal sector as a whole, as the bottleneck would weed out supply of newly-minted lawyers.

Regards,
Zach

Would definitely agree with Zach. I am a recruiter (not legal), but from my understanding, there are still a lot of queries and demands from law firms for mid-level candidates with specialist experience.

Daniel

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Would definitely agree with Zach. I am a recruiter (not legal), but from my understanding, there are still a lot of queries and demands from law firms for mid-level candidates with specialist experience.

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

What sort of specialist experience?

Ben

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hi Daniel,

What sort of specialist experience?

Ben

Hey Ben

I am not really doing legal recruiting so I'm not sure. But if I'm not wrong, there have been quite a few queries for us to look for mid-level candidates with capital markets experience. Most of the queries are from international law firms.

Daniel

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hey Ben

I am not really doing legal recruiting so I'm not sure. But if I'm not wrong, there have been quite a few queries for us to look for mid-level candidates with capital markets experience. Most of the queries are from international law firms.

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

I understand that you don't do legal recruiting, but are you aware of a typical profile of such a candidate?

Since you're a recruiter, is it easy for a lawyer to transition into another industry?

Regards,
Ben

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hi Daniel,

I understand that you don't do legal recruiting, but are you aware of a typical profile of such a candidate?

Since you're a recruiter, is it easy for a lawyer to transition into another industry?

Regards,
Ben

There aren't many law firms doing capital markets work in the first place (there aren't so many big local firms in Singapore). So that sort of narrow down the search for us. So to be honest, if you have that sort of experience, you would probably be getting calls from a ton of recruiters.

As to whether it is easy to transition. It would depend on where you want to go to next. When I was working in New York a few back, in good years, I've seen candidates moving into investing banking, PE and etc. But that is obviously the exception not the norm, a lot of opportunities are driven by market conditions. At the moment, it is quite slow moving for the other industries (finance etc.)

Daniel

Originally Posted by Unregistered

There aren't many law firms doing capital markets work in the first place (there aren't so many big local firms in Singapore). So that sort of narrow down the search for us. So to be honest, if you have that sort of experience, you would probably be getting calls from a ton of recruiters.

As to whether it is easy to transition. It would depend on where you want to go to next. When I was working in New York a few back, in good years, I've seen candidates moving into investing banking, PE and etc. But that is obviously the exception not the norm, a lot of opportunities are driven by market conditions. At the moment, it is quite slow moving for the other industries (finance etc.)

Daniel

Hi Daniel,

It is interesting to hear from a headhunters perspective. What about non-finance areas like Shipping, IP etc. ?

Regards,
Patrick

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hi Daniel,

It is interesting to hear from a headhunters perspective. What about non-finance areas like Shipping, IP etc. ?

Regards,
Patrick

I'm not sure about shipping, but there seem to always be an ongoing interest (slight-in comparison to finance) for IP lawyers.

Dan

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I'm not sure about shipping, but there seem to always be an ongoing interest (slight-in comparison to finance) for IP lawyers.

Dan

Hey Dan,

This is off-topic. How has the job-market being recently from a recruiting stand-point?

I've heard rumours that it is quite a tough market at the moment in the financial sector.

Louis

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hey Dan,

This is off-topic. How has the job-market being recently from a recruiting stand-point?

I've heard rumours that it is quite a tough market at the moment in the financial sector.

Louis

It has been slowing down lately. Tbh I don't think we have felt the full force of it yet. There have been a lot of job cuts in banks that traditionally hired a lot of Singaporeans, and now many who were playing musical chairs a few years back are now fearing that the music has stopped and they would be left without a chair.

We have seen an increase in number of people contacting us to keep a lookout for opportunities, but it is quite difficult at the moment as many are unwilling to take a paycut and many were previously hired on packages that might not be reflective of their experience at that point in time.

There is still a lot of uncertainty at the moment, but hopefully we will have more clarity going forward. I think whether a person would feel the brunt of the tough market would be dependent on what is his position/grade at a company. Fresh grad/mid-levels/junior/senior would probably see this slowdown differently.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

It has been slowing down lately. Tbh I don't think we have felt the full force of it yet. There have been a lot of job cuts in banks that traditionally hired a lot of Singaporeans, and now many who were playing musical chairs a few years back are now fearing that the music has stopped and they would be left without a chair.

We have seen an increase in number of people contacting us to keep a lookout for opportunities, but it is quite difficult at the moment as many are unwilling to take a paycut and many were previously hired on packages that might not be reflective of their experience at that point in time.

There is still a lot of uncertainty at the moment, but hopefully we will have more clarity going forward. I think whether a person would feel the brunt of the tough market would be dependent on what is his position/grade at a company. Fresh grad/mid-levels/junior/senior would probably see this slowdown differently.

Do you see fresh graduate hire numbers going down?

Ryan