Lawyer Salary

Originally Posted by Unregistered

would like to ask, what are the main differences between litigation and corp work? uni student looking to apply for TC soon. Thanks

There are many legal practice areas and reducing it to a corp vs liti dichotomy will not stand you in good stead when looking to apply, especially to big firms where you express interest in specific practice groups. The competition will probably be able to articulate better why they should be hired instead of you by demonstrating a deeper interest in a particular practice area apart from simply "I want to do corp work".

That said, it is not too late to start researching. Lots of resources out there. Chambers student is a good resource even though it is UK-centric, so glean the general points that are not jurisdiction specific:
://chambersstudent.co.uk/practice-areas

I often see people transfer from litigation to corp, but not the other way round.

Any reason?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I often see people transfer from litigation to corp, but not the other way round.

Any reason?

Corp got less time pressure, and it is less law and more "document review" - i.e. not really legal-based. Half the time you copy past precedents and past forms to suit to your current needs. It's also easier to bill corp clients for money, so you generally can report full-hours spent.

Litigation has more time pressures due to court deadlines, and more direct "results" such as whether you win/lose, which means you get shouted at more, whereas for Corp you can coast by since the document will be reviewed 10s of times before everything is done, and can be slowly amended (most of the time). Even if you screw up, the Company hiring you might not know till 10s of years down the road, by that time you're pretty safe lol. The clients that hire you are usually arguing over money, meaning that they will not be keen to spend too much money unless you're super good. You also need to think on your feet alot more than corp (while copy-pasting skeletal structures exist, you still need to think up the relevant arguments for each individual case).

Therefore, if you're burned out, or if you're not that good a lawyer, you can go to Corp and chill out, akin to people moving in-house. Most corporate lawyers don't go to liti, because if you're burned out from Corp you definitely can't handle Liti, and you have more exit opportunities in-house anyway.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Corp got less time pressure, and it is less law and more "document review" - i.e. not really legal-based. Half the time you copy past precedents and past forms to suit to your current needs. It's also easier to bill corp clients for money, so you generally can report full-hours spent.

Litigation has more time pressures due to court deadlines, and more direct "results" such as whether you win/lose, which means you get shouted at more, whereas for Corp you can coast by since the document will be reviewed 10s of times before everything is done, and can be slowly amended (most of the time). Even if you screw up, the Company hiring you might not know till 10s of years down the road, by that time you're pretty safe lol. The clients that hire you are usually arguing over money, meaning that they will not be keen to spend too much money unless you're super good. You also need to think on your feet alot more than corp (while copy-pasting skeletal structures exist, you still need to think up the relevant arguments for each individual case).

Therefore, if you're burned out, or if you're not that good a lawyer, you can go to Corp and chill out, akin to people moving in-house. Most corporate lawyers don't go to liti, because if you're burned out from Corp you definitely can't handle Liti, and you have more exit opportunities in-house anyway.

I truly marvel at how someone who clearly has no big firm experience in either corp or liti can be so delusional as to come to this forum and spout nonsense like that

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Corp got less time pressure, and it is less law and more "document review" - i.e. not really legal-based. Half the time you copy past precedents and past forms to suit to your current needs. It's also easier to bill corp clients for money, so you generally can report full-hours spent.

Litigation has more time pressures due to court deadlines, and more direct "results" such as whether you win/lose, which means you get shouted at more, whereas for Corp you can coast by since the document will be reviewed 10s of times before everything is done, and can be slowly amended (most of the time). Even if you screw up, the Company hiring you might not know till 10s of years down the road, by that time you're pretty safe lol. The clients that hire you are usually arguing over money, meaning that they will not be keen to spend too much money unless you're super good. You also need to think on your feet alot more than corp (while copy-pasting skeletal structures exist, you still need to think up the relevant arguments for each individual case).

Therefore, if you're burned out, or if you're not that good a lawyer, you can go to Corp and chill out, akin to people moving in-house. Most corporate lawyers don't go to liti, because if you're burned out from Corp you definitely can't handle Liti, and you have more exit opportunities in-house anyway.

Astonishingly bad take.

Is your corporate law experience from drafting wills in Chinatown firms?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Astonishingly bad take.

Is your corporate law experience from drafting wills in Chinatown firms?

Lol all the Corp Lawyers with chip on their shoulders trying to pretend their job can't be done more efficiently by bots or paralegals.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I often see people transfer from litigation to corp, but not the other way round.

Any reason?

Plain and simple reality is that Corp is easier than Liti. Corp is easier to pick up and has less time pressure so people who cannot tahan Liti can still go to Corp. Of course, this is for bigger firms, for smaller firms both corp and liti are easy.

Additionally, if you're good at Corp, you have more chance to join int firms which are generally barred from conducting SG-based litigation through licensing issues in SG unless they have local partners (not that they want to do local liti anyway since the value is usually smaller than their int markets like UK US).

I see lawsociety careers listing site, almost daily there are litigation openings, but seldom on corp.

If it is true that litigation is tougher, for the same salary should I apply to do corp instead?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I see lawsociety careers listing site, almost daily there are litigation openings, but seldom on corp.

If it is true that litigation is tougher, for the same salary should I apply to do corp instead?

Most of these firms advertising on LawSoc portal are small shops doing sh*tlaw work. Most s hitlaw work is litigation. You can imagine what they pay is like and why they have trouble attracting hires...

Think about it:

the lowest end of the corp law market is simple contract drafting/review. You can charge your SME boomer client $5K for reviewing a simple SPA or franchise agreement that your associate can review in < 5 hours and you take 0.5 hrs to cursorily check. BAM, close file and bill. EzPz. Rinse n repeat.

The lowest end of liti market is doing car accident claims for taxi drivers or some stupid slip and fall claim by some boomer auntie. After 5 months of ping-pong with the defendant or insurer lawyers, countless adjournments in court, getting scolded by the judge, chased by the client for being so slow, maybe even going all the way to trial n slogging it out with trial prep, your party-and-party costs are what? $5K plus disbursements. Total joke.

My advise to junior lawyers is: if u arent good enough to join a big firm doing sophisticated corp or liti work, the only other tolerable option is to join a boutique firm doing corp/real estate. Basically some cushy transactional area.

Doing liti in sh*tlaw chinatown firm is just asking to be underpaid n miserable. Best to stay away or go in-house entirely.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Most of these firms advertising on LawSoc portal are small shops doing sh*tlaw work. Most s hitlaw work is litigation. You can imagine what they pay is like and why they have trouble attracting hires...

Think about it:

the lowest end of the corp law market is simple contract drafting/review. You can charge your SME boomer client $5K for reviewing a simple SPA or franchise agreement that your associate can review in < 5 hours and you take 0.5 hrs to cursorily check. BAM, close file and bill. EzPz. Rinse n repeat.

The lowest end of liti market is doing car accident claims for taxi drivers or some stupid slip and fall claim by some boomer auntie. After 5 months of ping-pong with the defendant or insurer lawyers, countless adjournments in court, getting scolded by the judge, chased by the client for being so slow, maybe even going all the way to trial n slogging it out with trial prep, your party-and-party costs are what? $5K plus disbursements. Total joke.

My advise to junior lawyers is: if u arent good enough to join a big firm doing sophisticated corp or liti work, the only other tolerable option is to join a boutique firm doing corp/real estate. Basically some cushy transactional area.

Doing liti in sh*tlaw chinatown firm is just asking to be underpaid n miserable. Best to stay away or go in-house entirely.

Ok underpaid like how much? Can share?