Lawyer Salary

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Are all these posts made by the same person, maybe a trainee who wasn't retained?

I'm poster number #795.my first post in this thread in a long time.believe what you want.

I'm a 2 pqe associate in a mid tier firm. Life is pretty ok and salary is average of market. During my time, retention and TCs were not that problematic to secure. Doesn't change the fact that law is a overrated and generally unspectacular career

Get it into your head. We aren't that great. The exceptional people go to blackrock, Goldman Sachs and temasek. Law is for your typical rjc or vjc kid with no special talent or hunger

I don't know what's up with the negative vibe in this thread. Law isn't a prestigious career anymore, but lawyers are still much better off than the average grad starting off with $3-3.5k a month doing admin job. They are dogs compared to investment bankers and doctors, but they are still easily top 10% of the cohort.

I am not sure if you're working in the legal industry but the negative vibe stems from the nature of work involved and the fact that hours/salary, you're getting peanuts.

So what does the work entails? Why is it so bad? You can ask your friends in law but they include things like carrying boxes to courtroom as trainees, comparing word for word if two documents are different and counting the number of pages in a document manually.

There is no glam factor. As one poster has said, the banker completes the deal at 8pm then calls you in to handle the paper work before popping champagne with the client at after party. You are at their whim and fancy, and are expected to work round the clock to make sure the piece of work gets done. You don't get involved in any strategic or execution work unlike consultants and the corporate staff who implement them, you just make sure their memos are fine. You aren't a player, you are that kid who carries the ball for the golfers (entrepreneurs, corporate bosses) to play ball while at the same time having to take orders from their managers (bankers) and staff (corporate executives).

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I am not sure if you're working in the legal industry but the negative vibe stems from the nature of work involved and the fact that hours/salary, you're getting peanuts.

So what does the work entails? Why is it so bad? You can ask your friends in law but they include things like carrying boxes to courtroom as trainees, comparing word for word if two documents are different and counting the number of pages in a document manually.

There is no glam factor. As one poster has said, the banker completes the deal at 8pm then calls you in to handle the paper work before popping champagne with the client at after party. You are at their whim and fancy, and are expected to work round the clock to make sure the piece of work gets done. You don't get involved in any strategic or execution work unlike consultants and the corporate staff who implement them, you just make sure their memos are fine. You aren't a player, you are that kid who carries the ball for the golfers (entrepreneurs, corporate bosses) to play ball while at the same time having to take orders from their managers (bankers) and staff (corporate executives).

That sounds like a very easy task to do for 4-6k a month.

Yes it is very easy work. Generally not tough but super mundane.

The kind of work a primary school kid can do-- do you get a sense of accomplishment from completing it? No. Do you learn anything? Not really.

Lawyers are just highly paid secretaries with LLbs

Will the sim uol law degree be recognised to be called to the bar in the near future?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Will the sim uol law degree be recognised to be called to the bar in the near future?

NO. i believe MinLaw is pretty clear on that. Tbh i think if you cannot get into NUS/SMU and now the latest SIM , then perhaps law degree is not for you.

UOL is itself already not a highly rated university. The fact of distance learning gives people even less confidence

Is it true that retention rates are about 50% at the big 4s?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Yes it is very easy work. Generally not tough but super mundane.

The kind of work a primary school kid can do-- do you get a sense of accomplishment from completing it? No. Do you learn anything? Not really.

The practice of law is mundane at the junior level but it can get intellectually challenging at the higher levels.

The pyramidal structure of law, like other professional services, require a large number of people to drop out along the way. Attrition culls the people who don't last and those who do eventually become partners.

Note that those people who drop out along the way aren't any less intelligent or hardworking than those who remain, since we've already established that law as a junior associate is generally mind numbingly boring.

But do you seriously think all those highly paid junior management consultants and investment bankers are doing cutting edge stuff too? No. They are doing the same boring number crunching, plugging figures into excel sheets or changing the fonts in the powerpoint decks.

All professional services entail you starting off as an office monkey. So quit the whining. If you wanted to do something that creates value, be an entrepreneur, engineer, or a carpenter.