On The Report of the Committee for the Professional Training of Lawyers

As the title suggests, today's post may be a bit technical and long. I advise all interested in the topic to read up on relevant news articles to get a better understanding while reading my post.

You may do so at https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singapore-bar-exams-practice-training-extended-lawyers-10666774. 

In summary, the committee was formed to tackle several problems faced by law graduates - namely the lack of available training contracts, lack of support during their training periods, and venturing into non-practice legal careers.

The committee made many recommendations and submitted its report to the Ministry of Law in March 2018, and was accepted in principle. The contents of the report were made public about less than 2 weeks ago. 

Before I provide my views on the report, it is interesting to note that the committee made no concrete recommendations to solve the issue of lack of available Training Contracts (TCs). The small number of TCs is often attributed to too many lawyers (a glut), hence firms do not require that many fresh lawyers. Furthermore, an increasing number of students are going overseas (to UK, Australia) to study law. With the number of local students remaining steady, the total number of graduates looking for a TCs increases, resulting in more competition and more people being unable to secure one.

The committee mentioned it was out of their scope to address this matter, despite their predecessors having made action to correct either the oversupply or undersupply of lawyers in Singapore. They further dismissed the issue as an issue with market economics.

I feel that while their explanation is sound, it gives a false sense of hopelessness to graduates affected by the lack of TCs. Studying law is a very costly decision, and while one does not need to go into law school solely focused on practicing law, those who wish to practice ought to be given a chance to practice. The committee seems to be sweeping the issue under the rug. 

One solution I may propose is of the following. In the previous committee of the supply of lawyers, the government stopped recognizing law degrees from a few overseas law schools. While I am not proposing that we immediately strike off a few more law schools, we can analyze the performance of overseas law schools and decide whether to continue recognizing their law degrees through a few performance indicators, such as
  1. The number of Singapore students pursuing their law degrees there
  2. The number of Singapore students that complete their law degrees
  3. The number of returning students from the law school who secure a TC
  4. Other indicators (quantifiable or otherwise) of the law school (e.g. Rankings, research, alumni, faculty staff, student life, etc.)

However, the committee does indirectly touch on this matter, which I will explain later.

The committee proposed many solutions on the matter, of which I will touch on 3 main solutions as follows:
  1. Increasing the rigour of Part B of the Singapore Bar Examinations
  2. Uncoupling the training period from the requirements to be called to the bar
  3. Extending the training period from 6 months to 1 year
The motivation behind (1) is to ensure lawyers have more sufficient legal knowledge before being called to the bar, in reference to the high pass rates of Part B in the past few years. I welcome this change if it means that future law graduates will have increased legal knowledge and we'll be able to learn more during our Part B. If the number of people who pass Part B decreases, that also means less competition for TCs. However, we must be very wary here. We shouldn't fail people just for the sake of lowering our pass rates. What if the cohorts of law students are very strong? We will just be devoiding high calibre graduates from serving the legal industry. It is all right to make the standards more difficult, but if the pass rates remain high, that is a sign that we are doing things right, rather than wrong.

For (2), this means that after passing Part B, a graduate can be called to the bar directly without needing to serve his/her training period. The training period will kick in after the graduate has been called to the bar. I certainly welcome this change, as it means that those who do not wish to practice still can be called to the bar. This way, the competition for getting TCs also decrease, since those who do not wish to practice do not need to obtain TCs "just for the sake of qualifying for the bar". My sole small concern is that whether this method will be truly effective, since kiasu Singaporean graduates may decide to undergo the training period just to have an "insurance" in case they one day wish to practice. Though, this is something the committee probably cant solve.

On (3), the change gives trainees more time to learn from and interact with their experienced superiors, and intake more knowledge as compared to a 6 month training period. More time is also provided for inter-disciplinary rotations, and more time for trainees to decide if a career as a practicing lawyer is really for them. However, there is a financial and resource strain on both the legal practice (law firm) and the trainee with a longer training period. The trainee is paid a small allowance during their training period (market rate is around $1000 or so), and the legal practice is often unable to charge for work done by the trainee. While the committee did bring up these issues and made encouragements to pay trainees fairly, the committee is only limited to recommending how law firms remunerate their trainees; they cannot strictly enforce the allowance amount (if any). This, I acknowledge, is not the fault of the committee, as they cannot tell businesses how to run.

The committee also addressed other issues, such as delaying job offers from employers until at least the third year of university education. This post is getting a bit long, so I will not touch on them. However, do feel free to engage me in a discussion with any of the issues, whether brought up in this post or not.

The changes kick in during 2023, which means I will be the first or second batch to be affected by the change. I hope it still all goes well for me and my peers.

Thank you for reading this very long post. If you made it to here, maybe you should join me in Law School too.

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