Lawyer Salary

#**561** (**permalink**) 03-01-2016, 12:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered

So? Govt's fault for not giving SMU/NUS law grads a monopoly? Every other sector have to face competition and fight tooth and nail, law must be special and must be exempt from competition? Check your sense of entitlement leh.

Nobody is saying that NUS and SMU graduates must be given a monopoly lah. Oxbridge aside, the reputation of the local law schools vis-a-vis the lower ranked UK and Australian universities already speaks for itself in the local market.

I'm saying, if Govt wants competition in the legal talent market, then bring in the foreign law firms as well. Let them practice Singapore law. Do what Hong Kong does, where HK law graduates have a smorgasbord of career options, ranging from top tier international law firms to local law firms.

Right now law grads are confined to hunting for TCs in a handful of local firms, most of which are insular, only chasing domestic work and do not have the capacity to hire many trainees. If the int'l firms were allowed to compete in local market and therefore the hiring market, there will be many more potential places.

Govt so scared of increasing competition for local firms, yet cannot do a good job of regulating the supply side. It is indicative of policy failure more than anything else. The fact that 12 odd UK law schools were belatedly delisted for entirely unconvincing reasons further proves my point. You seriously think the Australian universities have better standards than one of those delisted UK ones?

Not an entitlement issue to say that government screwed up. TC is for the purposes of qualification. Most law students do actually want to qualify as lawyers. Business grads who have to "fight tooth and nail" for their precious Management Associate Programmes can always accept a less prestigious position in the civil service or some stat board or SME. Law grads actually need a TC to qualify.

#**562** (**permalink**) 03-01-2016, 04:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Any tips for how future law students can land a TC? Sad that in a jurisdiction so tightly regulated like singapore, law grads are now having to fight tooth and nail to get qualified like in the US, UK or Australia. And with the third law school opening real soon, I'm sure all the students there are all unreservedly going to practice community law (/sarcasm). Gahmen really dropped the ball on this one.

Firstly if you have connections use it. If you don't have connections, hopefully you're not in the list of universities the government delisted in 2015. But if you are, and you do not have connections (i.e., parents are partners in law firms, etc), then switch fields if you intend to come back to Singapore. If you don't intend to return, practice law in England.

If you happen to be in Oxbridge, it doesn't matter if you get a third class. Oxbridge is at a different level. If the big four doesn't want you, the medium firms will readily accept. That's brand value. Oxbridge's brand value is worth billions.

If you are in local universities, fight very hard to get your second uppers. You are in a good position in general.

If you are from UK/Australian universities still on the list, get your first class. If not use your connections. If you're rich enough to go overseas, somehow and somewhere you can pull strings. Use it.

#**563** (**permalink**) 03-01-2016, 05:41 PM

I think what the government should have done was not to remove universities from the list of scheduled universities. Rather what they should have done is to guarantee NUS/SMU law grads with a training contract, i.e. impose a requirement on firms to accept a 'X' number of NUS/SMU law grads per overseas law graduate.

I think the policy consideration in this culling exercise was to ensure that those from local universities could secure their training contracts in order to get called. I think the government is entitled to do that. It should be a promise given to local graduates over those who go overseas to read law. If people can ignore the difficulty of entering law school in Singapore by going elsewhere, then I think the stringent controls we have in Singapore would not have any relevance.

Having said that, the removal of overseas universities is not the best option. It should be at the discretion of the firm to decide who they want to employ and which universities they want to employ from. The only control should be that they must employ a certain number of local grads per overseas law graduate.

The foreign graduate would then have to show that they are of a certain calibre in order to be offered a TC. Removing law schools is discrimination. Mandatory preference of local grads over overseas grads is also discrimination. But the former is direct while the latter is indirect. With indirect discrimination, the market will adjust itself eventually in a neater manner. And there are ample policy grounds to justify preference of local grads over oseas grads. Whereas saying that this list of universities should be removed based on ranking alone is without merits.

Rankings change constantly. For instance KCL is not as highly ranked as it once was and Birmingham is of comparable standards to Leicester. So it becomes very arbitrary to keep one in the list and not the other. From the 1997 culling exercise, it is quite obvious that once a university has been removed, it is hard to get reinstated.

#**564** (**permalink**) 03-01-2016, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I think what the government should have done was not to remove universities from the list of scheduled universities. Rather what they should have done is to guarantee NUS/SMU law grads with a training contract, i.e. impose a requirement on firms to accept a 'X' number of NUS/SMU law grads per overseas law graduate.

I think the policy consideration in this culling exercise was to ensure that those from local universities could secure their training contracts in order to get called. I think the government is entitled to do that. It should be a promise given to local graduates over those who go overseas to read law. If people can ignore the difficulty of entering law school in Singapore by going elsewhere, then I think the stringent controls we have in Singapore would not have any relevance.

Having said that, the removal of overseas universities is not the best option. It should be at the discretion of the firm to decide who they want to employ and which universities they want to employ from. The only control should be that they must employ a certain number of local grads per overseas law graduate.

The foreign graduate would then have to show that they are of a certain calibre in order to be offered a TC. Removing law schools is discrimination. Mandatory preference of local grads over overseas grads is also discrimination. But the former is direct while the latter is indirect. With indirect discrimination, the market will adjust itself eventually in a neater manner. And there are ample policy grounds to justify preference of local grads over oseas grads. Whereas saying that this list of universities should be removed based on ranking alone is without merits.

Rankings change constantly. For instance KCL is not as highly ranked as it once was and Birmingham is of comparable standards to Leicester. So it becomes very arbitrary to keep one in the list and not the other. From the 1997 culling exercise, it is quite obvious that once a university has been removed, it is hard to get reinstated.

Agree that the UK universities should not have been delisted, but disagree that we should impose a quota on law firms to employ a certain number of local law grads vis a vis their overseas counterparts. If you are correct in saying that people are "avoiding the stringent requirements in Singapore" by going to an overseas law school, wouldn't an employer recognize this and factor it into their recruitment decisions? All things being equal, employers want to hire the best students, and surely they recognize that certain schools are more difficult to gain entry to than others.

Also, how are you going to fix the ratio? What if a firm receives 20 overseas students that they like ahead of 20 SMU/ NUS students for 20 positions? Should they be forced to give up on some of these students simply because they didn't study locally? How is that fair in any sense to these people who have clearly worked hard to demonstrate their worth to the firm?

To say that firms should be forced to "guarantee" jobs reeks of entitlement to me. If you want a TC, prove that you're deserving of one.