Interview with the Straits Times: On law graduates choosing a path outside of law

Arti­cle Pub­lished On: 19 Sep­tem­ber 2018

The new pro­fes­sion­al train­ing regime would take effect from 2023. It would offer two routes to law grad­u­ates to get called to the Bar. The two routes are as fol­lows:

• Pass the Bar exam and com­plete a train­ing con­tract with a law firm
• Pass the Bar exam

Law grad­u­ates who take the first route would be able to prac­tise law at a law firm. Those who take the sec­ond route would not be able to do so. Both are still con­sid­ered lawyers but what is the dif­fer­ence? 

A lawyer who does not have a license to prac­tise law can go on to be in-house coun­sels at com­pa­nies, banks and pri­vate funds etc. That lawyer would only not be able to prac­tise law in a law firm. This move was meant to pro­vide alter­na­tive routes for law grad­u­ates who nev­er intend­ed to prac­tise law in the first place.

In 2018, the Straits Times inter­viewed a num­ber of law grad­u­ates who had tak­en “the road less trav­elled”. Co-founder Algene Tan was one of these law grad­u­ates who was inter­viewed. Although he did prac­tise law for a num­ber of years, he end­ed up mov­ing to an indus­try com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed to law.

When asked for his opin­ion about the new pro­fes­sion­al train­ing regime, Algene had this to say:

Per­son­al­ly, if I was affect­ed by this decou­pling regime, I doubt I would have tak­en the short cut. I had hopes of being a big time lawyer but I was dis­il­lu­sioned along the way. It helped of course that I always enjoyed teach­ing. If I didn’t get into law school, I would have like­ly applied to be a teacher.  

And so, I think the most press­ing prob­lem plagu­ing the legal indus­try is the high attri­tion rate. This prob­lem was iden­ti­fied long ago but has not been solved. This decou­pling tar­gets a rel­a­tive­ly more insignif­i­cant prob­lem. If the move is to pre­vent grad­u­ates from tak­ing up pre­cious prac­tice train­ing con­tract places then a sim­ple way would be to low­er the law school intake, or to lim­it the recog­nised over­seas uni­ver­si­ties (which I recog­nise has been done). 

I don’t agree to giv­ing law grad­u­ates a backdoor/shortcut to get­ting called to the bar. Why is it nec­es­sary to allow grad­u­ates who have no inten­tion to prac­tice law get admit­ted? To me, there is a cer­tain nobil­i­ty to the pro­fes­sion and this move, in my opin­ion, cheap­ens it. The issue here is to shift people’s mind­set — that get­ting called to the bar, should not mark the end of your legal jour­ney but a gate­way into the prac­tice of law. This was some­thing the Chief Jus­tice had point­ed out yet this move iron­i­cal­ly feeds into that mind­set, and in the process will erode the sanc­ti­ty of being an advo­cate and solic­i­tor of the Supreme Court of Sin­ga­pore.”

Do you agree with Algene’s views? Let us know your thoughts!