Lawyer Salary

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I'm still in law school but I've spoken to a few senior lawyers in B4 (over networking sessions) and they have all said that learning to code is not actually necessary for being a tech lawyer. Can someone give concrete examples of how learning programming would help in giving legal advice ?

I've attended a webinar, in which a well-regarded lawyer uttered these wise words, "Lawyers should not just know the law, but also the subject matter which they are representing."

The senior lawyers you have talked to aren't wrong, you just need to know the law. But in this competitive landscape, you need to know more than just the law to gain the edge over other lawyers.

If I am a tech startup founder and seeking legal advice, he will prefer to follow a lawyer who knows about Python and the law, rather than a lawyer who simply knows the law. That's because it inspires confidence. Clients want to see lawyers who know much, or at least pretend to know much. They don't want to see unconfident lawyers who only know the law but know nuts about the subject matter. Obviously, you don't have to learn coding till you are hardcore, but intermediate knowledge will help.

It is no coincidence that the better construction litigation lawyers are those with some engineering background.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I've attended a webinar, in which a well-regarded lawyer uttered these wise words, "Lawyers should not just know the law, but also the subject matter which they are representing."

The senior lawyers you have talked to aren't wrong, you just need to know the law. But in this competitive landscape, you need to know more than just the law to gain the edge over other lawyers.

If I am a tech startup founder and seeking legal advice, he will prefer to follow a lawyer who knows about Python and the law, rather than a lawyer who simply knows the law. That's because it inspires confidence. Clients want to see lawyers who know much, or at least pretend to know much. They don't want to see unconfident lawyers who only know the law but know nuts about the subject matter. Obviously, you don't have to learn coding till you are hardcore, but intermediate knowledge will help.

It is no coincidence that the better construction litigation lawyers are those with some engineering background.

ahh i see, so it's more along the lines of knowing the basic concepts of programming/understanding how a tech startup functions & serve its customers' needs (and tailoring advice accordingly) rather than having to know how to debug code correctly/pick up new programming languages quickly.

makes sense, thank you

Originally Posted by Unregistered

great hours, yet juniors work very hard?

means what sia?

Work very hard from 10am to 6pm la. Unlike you slack from 8am to 12am.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Sexual misconduct

really meh...

Originally Posted by Unregistered

anyone knows what happened to the supposed to be incoming nus law dean, why changed back to the previous one?

doubt anyone knows unless they are working in the faculty themselves/close to top brass.

probably just health or family reasons but who can say for sure

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I'm in law practice for 1-2 years but this is purely my observations:

As a whole, law is not a sunset industry, but several "traditional" areas of law are. Family, real estate and PIMA/NIMA are sunset, with severe undercutting and gradual tightening of how much lawyers can charge their clients.

For corporate (non-litigation), it remains relevant but the pandemic accelerated the embracing of technology. And it is in trouble, because AI can draft simple SPAs, STAs, etc. Companies may dispense with engaging a lawyer for drafting, although they will still hire a lawyer in the event that the deal falls through and litigation is inevitable. I say it is "semi-sunset".

The areas of law that are booming, or poised to in the future, are tech and intellectual property. There aren't enough lawyers in these areas to take advantage of the tech boom in Singapore. Needless to say, it is not easy to be a lawyer in these fields as it requires expert knowledge in tech as well, and not many law undergrads know these.

For criminal law, there is still a future as Singaporeans are mostly middle-class now and willing to pay if it means avoiding custodial sentences. Also, with the government trying to control the internet and its expression, together with Singaporeans becoming more "woke", expect more cases to come up, like the smiley face incident.

Regarding toughness of finding a job or whether too many lawyers fighting for jobs, the answer is an absolute yes. So go pad your CV up when you are still in university. Forget about joining orientation groups or clubs/societies, those don't mean **** when applying for a job as lawyer. Instead, be more "anti-social" and spend more time getting more internships and building connections with senior lawyers. Anyway, you will realize that 99% of your friends are fair-weathered friends and they aren't going to be nice once you all compete for the same slice of the pie.

As a corp lawyer I beg to differ and doubt whether you actually had relevant experience in the field or merely read the FT articles on “how tech is disrupting legal services.”

First of all, the local big firms and even the international firms have yet to adopt the softwares where drafts can be generated by computers. From my experience, most files have their own unique issues that arise along the way and a good lawyer will never just blindly take a precedent or merely do a “fill in the blanks” exercise before sending them to the client. Someone needs to be there to case manage, analyse, review or research. Any good corporate lawyer will know that a lawyer who use the cookie cutter method all the time is one who makes a lot of legal and logical errors.

Whilst I agree that law is getting competitive as has been the case since years ago, areas like tech are also becoming competitive because the field is not protected like law. To all readers here, read everything with a pinch of salt, or they will cost you your career.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

As a corp lawyer I beg to differ and doubt whether you actually had relevant experience in the field or merely read the FT articles on “how tech is disrupting legal services.”

First of all, the local big firms and even the international firms have yet to adopt the softwares where drafts can be generated by computers. From my experience, most files have their own unique issues that arise along the way and a good lawyer will never just blindly take a precedent or merely do a “fill in the blanks” exercise before sending them to the client. Someone needs to be there to case manage, analyse, review or research. Any good corporate lawyer will know that a lawyer who use the cookie cutter method all the time is one who makes a lot of legal and logical errors.

Whilst I agree that law is getting competitive as has been the case since years ago, areas like tech are also becoming competitive because the field is not protected like law. To all readers here, read everything with a pinch of salt, or they will cost you your career.

Agree with this post.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

As a corp lawyer I beg to differ and doubt whether you actually had relevant experience in the field or merely read the FT articles on “how tech is disrupting legal services.”

First of all, the local big firms and even the international firms have yet to adopt the softwares where drafts can be generated by computers. From my experience, most files have their own unique issues that arise along the way and a good lawyer will never just blindly take a precedent or merely do a “fill in the blanks” exercise before sending them to the client. Someone needs to be there to case manage, analyse, review or research. Any good corporate lawyer will know that a lawyer who use the cookie cutter method all the time is one who makes a lot of legal and logical errors.

Whilst I agree that law is getting competitive as has been the case since years ago, areas like tech are also becoming competitive because the field is not protected like law. To all readers here, read everything with a pinch of salt, or they will cost you your career.

Great post

As a practitioner in community law (namely criminal and family), I would encourage those who have the interest to try out being a criminal lawyer. Good criminal lawyers are harder to find nowadays as the excellent criminal litigators have retired/passed on and only a few young lawyers are willing to do criminal litigation. But when there's scarcity, there's opportunity. And if you establish yourself as an excellent criminal litigator, "bigshot" clients will look for you and willing to pay a lot.

For family law, it is getting more difficult to eke out a decent income with specialist family law firms undercutting their fees. And generally, I feel the fees earned are not worth the huge amount of time spent. A contentious divorce can be very taxing, especially if the other side is a LIP and uncooperative. Furthermore, family courts are reluctant to grant costs order against any party so there's that.

Do not agree with this at all