Lawyer Salary

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I have been offerred law and business at smu with the lee kong chian scholarship. What are my chances of getting a training contract with magic circle firms? I understand from earlier posters that CC does not take in smu grads. Should i apply to the uk instead?

The earlier poster who said that CC does not take in smu grads is most definitely wrong. I personally know SMU grads currently at CC (and I'm from NUS). This can be verified by getting a Linkedin account and doing a simple search. The thing is CC currently pays the highest TC allowance so successful applicants tend to be those with first class honours (or summa cum laude at SMU). There aren't that many of these from either NUS or SMU.

As for getting a training contract with magic circle firms, like the other posters I think you're putting the cart before the horse. Until you've proven yourself, speculating on whether you're likely to get the highest paying jobs is about as productive as daydreaming about what you would do if you won the lottery.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I have been offerred law and business at smu with the lee kong chian scholarship. What are my chances of getting a training contract with magic circle firms? I understand from earlier posters that CC does not take in smu grads. Should i apply to the uk instead?

Child, its best to do something else. The legal industry in Singapore is shrinking and the number of law students far outnumbers the training contracts being offered.

It is unlikely that the magic circle will offer training contracts to local law students. The traditional route to an associate role in those firms is by training with A&G and then jumping.

I'm from the graduating batch, SMU law. Just to give you some examples of how wrong some posters here have been: (1) bmwl has taken in more smu trainees than every other school combined for my batch (close to 10); (2) cc has taken in 1 trainee from smu (out of 4 I believe); (3) a good number of smu grads (something like 20-30) got into the big 4 with barely a cum laude (I personally know of at least one that didn't even have that, and didn't have connections either). I know of others who have obtained TCs at other JLVs (e.g. M pillay, atmd, selvam) but cannot comment on the competitiveness of the spots.

That said, it is true that some firms seem to have a bias against smu. One good example is A&G, which seems to require far better grades from smu applications relative to the other big 4 firms. I know of 4 people that got into A&G (there might be more but I don't know) in my batch and 3 of them are dean's listers/summas.

My advice is RUN RUN FROM LAW

It is true that CC and some other foreign firms pay the highest starting salaries / TC allowance.

But that is not necessarily a good thing. This usually means the firm is highly leveraged ie high associate to partner ratio, which may not be good for training, and easier to get lost in the crowd. You also do not know the pay of more senior associates and partners - in fact CC is far from the highest payer further up the ranks, and its PEP is the worst of magic circle. At that stage the extra you got in 1st year pay will be peanuts.

You may think at that point you can jump ship - true, but when u r more senior its ur actual experience that counts, not ur previous firm. IMHO better to sacrifice at the start, get a good training and experience, instead of rushing to magic circle firms simply because of pay.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I'm from the graduating batch, SMU law. Just to give you some examples of how wrong some posters here have been: (1) bmwl has taken in more smu trainees than every other school combined for my batch (close to 10); (2) cc has taken in 1 trainee from smu (out of 4 I believe); (3) a good number of smu grads (something like 20-30) got into the big 4 with barely a cum laude (I personally know of at least one that didn't even have that, and didn't have connections either). I know of others who have obtained TCs at other JLVs (e.g. M pillay, atmd, selvam) but cannot comment on the competitiveness of the spots.

That said, it is true that some firms seem to have a bias against smu. One good example is A&G, which seems to require far better grades from smu applications relative to the other big 4 firms. I know of 4 people that got into A&G (there might be more but I don't know) in my batch and 3 of them are dean's listers/summas.

My advice is RUN RUN FROM LAW

I am pretty sure you're wrong on 3. Would you mind sharing some examples?

A&G is more elitist, that's true. But too bad not all of the people they take in from smu law are elite..

Originally Posted by Unregistered

It is true that CC and some other foreign firms pay the highest starting salaries / TC allowance.

But that is not necessarily a good thing. This usually means the firm is highly leveraged ie high associate to partner ratio, which may not be good for training, and easier to get lost in the crowd. You also do not know the pay of more senior associates and partners - in fact CC is far from the highest payer further up the ranks, and its PEP is the worst of magic circle. At that stage the extra you got in 1st year pay will be peanuts.

You may think at that point you can jump ship - true, but when u r more senior its ur actual experience that counts, not ur previous firm. IMHO better to sacrifice at the start, get a good training and experience, instead of rushing to magic circle firms simply because of pay.

No such thing as 'sacrifice from the start' bro. It is usually an excuse for people who can't get into the best firms.

Same in the banking industry - losers go to the big 4 accountancy firms and say that they are 'sacrificing' with peanuts pay of ~2.8k and long working hours. The actual reason is that they cannot get into the investment banking jobs that pay 10k, or the management associate jobs in banks that pay 5k. They say that they get good training yada yada, but the fact is that they simply aren't good enough to get the higher paying jobs. Same thing for the legal industry - big 4 lawyers deceive themselves by thinking that they are 'sacrificing', when the fact is that they simply do not have the ability (e.g. first class honours) to get into the magic circle firms.

Also, your post contains a lot of erroneous assumptions. Magic circle firms in Singapore do not have high associate to partner ratio, in fact they are very lean on manpower so assocs get the best experience. In the big 4 law firms, you can see a crazy number of senior assocs and assocs and trainees working on a single file, so the assocs end up doing menial work (e.g. spending the whole day checking a doc for punctuation errors). As to the pay, it is well known that MANY lawyers in local firms wish to jump to international firms whether after 5 or 10 years - the reason is simply that the pay is almost double.

Everyone is entitled to his or her own views on training with an international firms or big4. I reckon that it is better to focus on your own abilities, experience and learning whichever firm you are with. A First Class Honours or equivalent puts you at high pedestal from the start but it does not guarantee you successful legal career , forever in demand and a happy life. But dont be mistaken, people who got firsts tends to be those sharp and self driven ones . I believe thats the real reason for their sucessful career.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I am pretty sure you're wrong on 3. Would you mind sharing some examples?

A&G is more elitist, that's true. But too bad not all of the people they take in from smu law are elite..

Unfortunately I can't give you examples without naming names - at least not until the people in question have updated their LinkedIn profiles to reflect their TCs. I'm not saying that a cum laude by itself is enough to get admission - these people normally have other achievements (e.g. moots).

I'm not sure what you are getting at WRT A&G and how the SMU people they take in aren't elite. They seem to require more from SMU grads as compared to NUS grads. It is possible that they believe that an SMU grad of a higher percentile is equivalent to an NUS grad of a lower percentile. That said the SMU trainees they've taken in are objectively elite... the 3 trainees I was talking about are all easily at the summa level, and were part of the team that was runner up for Vis last year.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

^^ I wrote my answer pretty hastily and I realized it wasn't clear.. How it works in D&N is that for most teams, you will get $500. In DS's team, you get $1k.

So most probably, you will earn somewhere from $7- 8.5k after 3 years.

Consider that fresh private banking analysts start off at about $7k.

Not true. Some of us in Big Four started at S$6800. The salary after 2 years is S$9000. Go figure.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

SMU grads can get most jobs just like NUS grads don't worry. Only a select few prestigious firms like Clifford chance don't take in SMU grads

Really? Do not make idiotic comments like this. Go to linkedin to find: Zhern Leing Thai and Nathanael Lim amongst others who are from SMU.