Lawyer Salary

Originally Posted by Unregistered

There are rarely any pure “liti” in-house counsel roles. Not in Singapore at least. An in-house counsel needs to be a generalist and corporate skills are a lot more relevant and valued - major disputes are usually rare for most companies. Companies who hire litigators usually put them in an operational role, think running the day to day contractual documentation rather than being involved in higher level work like M&A. IMO this means you’ll burn out a lot quicker because you’re usually dealing with low level contract / procurement managers and there’s a lot of volume work.

Also, the pay cut usually happens only if you stay too long in practice because you won’t have the corporate drafting skills required. A match is usually possible <5PQE.

Agree with this post.

I jumped from liti to in-house at PQE 3 and got a pay raise. Thereafter, i got another pay raise after a year of "proving my worth". ******** lah - all corporate culture nonsense. You will need to be prepared for a lot of middle-management politicking when you go in-house, it's a different skill set altogether. Burnout is also possible from dealing with too many ridiculous people.

This was pre-covid though, so the market may be different now.

The scope of work you do will usually depend on company requirements - you need to ask about this beforehand so you know what you're getting yourself into. Companies are generally quite clear what they want from you and this is necessary for cost allocation purposes ie which entity/department pays what percentage of your salary.

I was with a european mnc and they weren't too interested in corporate work. I would say my work was 10% liti management 40% commercial 25% corporate/housekeeping 25% compliance.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Agree with this post.

I jumped from liti to in-house at PQE 3 and got a pay raise. Thereafter, i got another pay raise after a year of "proving my worth". ******** lah - all corporate culture nonsense. You will need to be prepared for a lot of middle-management politicking when you go in-house, it's a different skill set altogether. Burnout is also possible from dealing with too many ridiculous people.

This was pre-covid though, so the market may be different now.

The scope of work you do will usually depend on company requirements - you need to ask about this beforehand so you know what you're getting yourself into. Companies are generally quite clear what they want from you and this is necessary for cost allocation purposes ie which entity/department pays what percentage of your salary.

I was with a european mnc and they weren't too interested in corporate work. I would say my work was 10% liti management 40% commercial 25% corporate/housekeeping 25% compliance.

I'm a litigator contemplating on going inhouse too. < 5 PQE.

Is the transition difficult? Is it easy to pick up contract review, corp compliance and corp sec work with only pure litigation exp (ie absolutely no corp exp except for reviewing contracts in the context of lawsuits)?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I'm a litigator contemplating on going inhouse too. < 5 PQE.

Is the transition difficult? Is it easy to pick up contract review, corp compliance and corp sec work with only pure litigation exp (ie absolutely no corp exp except for reviewing contracts in the context of lawsuits)?

A lot depends on your ability to finagle your colleagues and external counsel for help. A lot of it is independent learning.

Corp sec is easy. Nothing to worry about.

Compliance is especially difficult if you didn't study competition law in school. I had to independent study a lot of competition law on my own time. It paid off in the end, since it opened up many opportunities for me.

The learning curve was very steep for the first 6 months for so. Once i got over the hill, things became a lot easier.

Poor trainee who got screwed by his SS

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Poor trainee who got screwed by his SS

Who you talking about

Kuoh Hao Teng

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Poor trainee who got screwed by his SS

SS got his just desserts. Turns out he didn't have a PC in force for 5 years out of 7 years, and hence unfit to be a SS in the first place.

What's equally pitiful is that the previous trainees whose RLT/PTC will be facing scrutiny by the authorities

Originally Posted by Unregistered

SS got his just desserts. Turns out he didn't have a PC in force for 5 years out of 7 years, and hence unfit to be a SS in the first place.

What's equally pitiful is that the previous trainees whose RLT/PTC will be facing scrutiny by the authorities

Not likely the previous trainees will get scrutinised.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Kuoh Hao Teng

supremecourt.gov.sg/docs/default-source/module-document/judgement/-2021-sghc-79-pdf.pdf

LOL what a sorry state of affairs. Boss tried to screw his ex-trainee over but now he may be screwed instead. Poor dude. I will be so disillusioned to enter the profession on such a sour note.

Relatedly, I think we should start clamping down hard on these 2-bit Chinatown small firm lawyers with appalling standards. Too long have they been giving the rest of the profession a bad name.

MinLaw needs to implement a mandatory customer review and ranking system for firms of 5 lawyers or less. Lets say all small firms and solo practitioners have to register for a MinLaw portal where their clients must be registered with MinLaw and the Warrant to Acts/LOE must be deposited with this Registry. This allows their client to post a review of their services on the portal - the review scores are publicly displayed although the client identities are redacted on the registry. This will protect both the consumer and the profession. Good idea.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Not likely the previous trainees will get scrutinised.

It will dude. If his SS in fact didn't meet the necessary regulatory requirements to be one, then admissions of all his previous trainees are strictly speaking defective unless the LP(A)R contains some kind of waiver or saving provision. I don't believe there's such thing.

If those defectively-admitted lawyers provided legal advice or services that turns out problematic, it has implications on their professional insurance cover.

There's a whole cascade of s hit down the line which is why CHT is understandably perturbed.