LEGAL PROFESSION (AMENDMENT) BILL

LEGAL PROFESSION (AMENDMENT) BILL: Order for Second Reading read.

3.19 pm

The Minister for Law (Mr K Shanmugam): Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Sir, this Bill introduces amendments to the Legal Profession Act to implement changes relating to legal education and legal profession training which were announced by the Ministry of Law earlier this year.

The amendments to the Legal Profession Act make two key changes:

(a) First, the introduction of a training contract system to replace the current pupillage system; and

(b) Second, the streamlining of existing overlapping exemption powers currently exercised by the Board of Legal Education and the Minister for Law, in preparation for the establishment of the proposed Institute of Legal Education next year.

Let me elaborate on the rationale for these two key changes:

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Training contract system

The current pupillage system will be changed into a Training Contract system. The rationale for this is to get the law practices to be responsible and to provide some structured training to pupils rather than individual pupil masters. In place of six months of pupillage, all graduates will be required to complete a six-month "practice training" which should take the form of a Training Contract with a Singapore law practice after completing Part B of the new Bar Examinations. Clauses 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 12 of the Bill make the necessary amendments to take into account the new Training Contract requirements.

To give law practices time to adjust to the new changes, the Training Contract system will be phased in incrementally in consultation with key stakeholders, such as the Board of Legal Education, the Law Society and practitioners. Details of the new requirements relating to Training Contracts will be set out in subsidiary legislation to be enacted after the Bill enters into force.

Streamlining of exemption functions

Next year, we will set up the Institute of Legal Education (ILE), which will come under the governance of the Singapore Academy of Law and serve as an umbrella institution to co-ordinate, administer and have oversight of the various initiatives relating to legal education. In addition to broader functions, such as overseeing Continuing Legal Education for lawyers, the ILE will also assume functions and powers currently held by the Board of Legal Education. A separate Bill will be tabled next year to implement this.

In preparation for the ILE to focus on the content of legal education, the present multiple exemption functions exercised by both the Board of Legal Education and the Minister for Law concerning the various

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admission requirements will be streamlined into a single exemption power exercised by the Minister for Law. The relevant amendments are set out in clauses 5 and 9 of the Bill.

This streamlining of exemption functions will simplify the exemption application process for those seeking to be admitted to the Singapore Bar. The amendments in the Bill, together with amendments to the Legal Profession (Qualified Persons) Rules, which are made in tandem with this move to streamline the process, will significantly simplify applications for exemptions and waivers from the requirements for admission to the Singapore Bar.

The streamlining will therefore make it procedurally easier for lawyers to return to practise in Singapore. In particular, the following categories of lawyers will find it easier to come back:

(a) Singaporeans and Permanent Residents who satisfy our Qualified Persons criteria, who are qualified in a common law jurisdiction and have at least two years’ experience as legal practitioners. They will be required to pass only Part A of the Bar Examinations; and

(b) Singaporeans and Permanent Residents who have significant experience as foreign lawyers or who are partners of foreign law practices. They may not need to sit for the Bar Examinations.

Admission of such individuals will, of course, depend on the strength of the application and will be granted, subject to such conditions and requirements as may be appropriate to maintain the quality of entrants to the Singapore legal profession.

Other miscellaneous amendments

Let me now touch briefly on the other miscellaneous amendments. Clauses 13,

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14 and 15 of the Bill also contain various consequential amendments arising from the changes, and amendments of a technical or law revision nature.

Sir, these changes, together with other changes that are being implemented, will put in place a holistic framework for the admission of lawyers to the Singapore Bar and their professional education. The object is to ensure that Singapore continues to attract high calibre legal talent and to grow as a regional hub for legal services and legal education.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question proposed.

Mr Christopher de Souza: Mr Speaker, Sir, thank you for allowing me to join in this debate and lend my support to the Bill. I declare my interest, at the onset, as a partner in a Singapore law practice.

Earlier this year, in a speech during the debate in COS, I described how Singaporean law students, whom I visited in the UK and were working legal professionals there, were candid about wanting to return to Singapore to practise but found the one-year full time Diploma in Singapore Law course a major deterrent. I had suggested that returning law students be allowed to undergo training more relevant to practice, along the lines of a training contract. By fusing the Diploma in Singapore Law and the current Practical Law course into a training contract, the returning law student will receive his first pay cheque sooner, has greater incentive to return to Singapore and be a resource in our growing legal hub. He also studies areas of law relevant to practice, rather than repeating basic subjects he would have already covered at university, even in his

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first year. This will also assist in meeting the increasing demand for more lawyers who are called to the Singapore Bar.

Therefore, I am pleased to note that the first major proposed amendment is to require a qualified person to serve a practice training period in place of a pupillage, ie, under a practice training contract with a Singapore law practice. I would like to express my appreciation to the Ministry for swiftly accepting feedback from the legal community to include more practical-based training to better prepare our graduates for legal practice. Replacing pupillage will assist to achieve this.

The Minister had mentioned at this year's COS debate that, "The intent of this change is for law firms to devise more meaningful Training Contracts for their trainees. At present, a pupillage system is in place. But some pupils may have little direct contact with their pupil masters. The intention is to try and ensure that trainees have a constructive and structured learning programme and make the law firms take a greater responsibility in this area."

Coming out of this, may I also suggest that the training contracts set out what kind of training and exposure their trainees should receive during the period of the contract, so as to prevent situations where they are made to perform tasks, such as photocopying and receptionist duties, which have no bearing on their legal and professional skills and knowledge, and do not constitute any form of legal training.

With greater involvement of the law firms in the training of our new lawyers, I hope the Ministry will, in consultation with the profession, issue guidelines to ensure the core content of the training contract is kept updated and continues to

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be relevant to the evolving demands and needs of the market, thereby better preparing our new lawyer cohorts to meet them. It is important that a lawyer’s training always be kept up to date by having the Singapore Academy of Law (SLA), the Law Society (LS), and the Government, namely, the Ministry of Law and the Attorney-General's Chambers, actively involved in annual reviews of the syllabi. Ultimately, this will lead to improvement in the service standards of our new lawyers.

Mr Speaker, Sir, clause 9 inserts a new section 15A to empower the Minister to approve certain person as qualified persons and provide for selected ones to be exempted from certain practice training requirements by his or her standing and experience. This will shorten the training period and encourage more graduates to return to Singapore to practise, increasing the number of lawyers needed here. This is a move in the right direction, ie, to let the market forces attract and recognise talent, thereby entrenching our position as a credible regional legal hub. Further liberalisation along these lines should be encouraged.

As these amendments are new, I urge the Ministry to closely monitor the impact on the market and, if necessary, make adjustments for further fine-tuning, especially to set the tone that any lawyer who intends to practise in Singapore should understand and respect Singapore’s legal systems and structures, as well as the jurisprudential principles underlying how our courts decide cases.

Sir, I record my support for the Bill.

Mr Speaker: Order. I suspend the Sitting and will take the Chair again at 3.50 pm.

Sitting accordingly suspended at

3.32 pm until 3.50 pm.

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Sitting resumed at 3.50 pm

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[

Mr Speaker in the Chair: ]

LEGAL PROFESSION (AMENDMENT) BILL: Debate resumed.

Mr Chiam See Tong (Potong Pasir): Sir, thank you for allowing me to join in the debate.

I do not support the Bill as it is based on wrong principles. The appointment of a person to be a qualified person is based on a non-transparency procedure, since the Minister is involved and also on political consideration. Currently, we admit UK Queen's Counsels (QCs) to practise law in Singapore on specific cases through the supervision of the High Court and the Board of Legal Education. I think this process is sound and should not be changed. I am reluctant to support a law that supports non-transparency in its provisions. The relevant clause is clause 15A which allows the Minister to exercise his discretion to allow any person to be a qualified person if, in his opinion, that person possesses such qualification or expertise that will contribute to promoting or enhancing the quality of legal service in Singapore or the economic or technological development of Singapore.

In section 15A(4), it gives a non-transparency clause. An exemption or abridgment granted to a person under subsection (3) may be subject to such conditions as the Minister may think fit to impose by notice in writing to the person; may be notified in writing to the person; and need not be published in the Gazette . This is where the non-transparency lies.

3.51 pm

Ms Ellen Lee: Mr Speaker, Sir, with the passing of this Bill, the Law Minister appears to be vested with more powers in relation to the admission of lawyers. Most of these powers are now vested in

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the Board of Legal Education, which comprises the Attorney-General, the Law Society President, the National University of Singapore law dean and a number of lawyers or members nominated by the Singapore Academy of Law.

When this Bill is passed, the Law Minister will now be the one with the power to approve a person as legally qualified when he is actually one "who is not otherwise entitled to be a qualified person" within the meaning of the Act. The Minister would have the discretion to administratively exempt such persons from the usual courses of instructions or examinations if the Minister is of the opinion that these would be persons whose expertise would contribute to "the quality of legal services in Singapore or the economic or technological development of Singapore". Why should the Minister be the only authority to so decide without consulting the other relevant bodies? What KPIs are in place to measure the quality of the applicant's contributions? Can the Minister provide examples of what sort of persons he had in mind that would fall within this category of "privileged persons"?

Besides the transfer of such powers, one of the other main purposes of the Bill will be to implement changes to the requirements for lawyers to practise Singapore law. Instead of a pupillage in law firms, prospective lawyers must serve a practice training period of six months, which will be enhanced with a training contract with the firms. Would the Ministry be drafting the terms of this training contract so as to ensure uniformity and consistency in the quality of the training to be provided by the law firms involved?

I urge that such powers should be exercised cautiously and judiciously with checks and balances by the Ministry as

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well as the legal profession as a whole. For a start, the Law Ministry should outline in lucid terms the specific grounds for the exemption or approval. This serves the object of transparency and public accountability and should be published in the Government Gazette or explicitly communicated to the members of the legal profession. Previously, there were suitably qualified persons to adjudge whether a person should be exempted or approved. I am concerned about the extent which the Law Ministry by itself would be sufficiently equipped to ensure the applicant's records (both academic and practical) can substantiate his or her exemption or approval.

By the same token, the provision of such powers is to fulfil one of the aims of admitting more lawyers into practice so as to redress the perennial problem of shortage of practising lawyers. It is therefore imperative in the admission of new lawyers under this new provision that persons who are exempted or approved should serve as practising lawyers for a requisite period of time so that this amended provision will not be used as a "back-door" provision for any person to be admitted as an advocate and solicitor in Singapore and then immediately leave practice to work as in-house counsels or embark on other professions shortly after upon being called to the Singapore Bar.

I would also like to ask the Minister if he would provide an update on whether the recognition of graduates from additional foreign law firms or law schools for admission as advocates and solicitors in Singapore has resulted in more practising lawyers for the legal profession.

Sir, with that, I support the Bill.

3.55 pm

Ms Sylvia Lim (Non-Constituency Member): Sir, I would like to seek

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clarification on the parts of the Bill relating to the practice training period and the Minister's enhanced powers.

First, the practice training period. The intention behind abolishing pupillage and replacing it with a practice training period is a good rationale. For many generations, a pupil's experience varied greatly and there was no common baseline with which to assure the public or profession on what the pupil had learned during the six months with his master. The change proposed is to require a firm or possibly an individual partner to undertake specific responsibilities to ensure that the trainee is exposed to relevant skills. In the Report of the Committee to develop the Singapore Legal Sector, it is mentioned that the training contract will ensure that the trainee is given certain basic skills, for example, advocacy skills and rotated among different departments. According to the Ministry of Law, the training contract may be served out with any Singapore law practice.

Sir, our law firms are diverse, both in size and type of work done. Given this situation, it is foreseeable that the trainee's experiences in the different firms will continue to vary greatly. Will firms with limited scope of work be less likely to be able to manage training contracts? Sir, there will be concerns about how onerous the new regime will be on the law firms or lawyers. Does it envisage the checklist to be filled out to ensure that trainees have done a list of different tasks? While employers may agree in principle to expose trainees to certain types of work, this may not be carried out due to a variety of reasons, for example, the law firm's priorities during the period and economic cycles as well. At the same time, failure of the firm to carry out a training contract does not seem a fair reason to delay a trainee's call to the Bar. Will there be measures to ensure that training contracts do not become just a formality?

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Sir, I next move on to the enhanced powers of the Minister regarding admission of lawyers. The proposed section 15A gives the Minister powers relating to the admission of lawyers to the Bar and take these powers away from the Board of Legal Education. These powers are whether to exempt potential lawyers from requirements such as undergoing the six-month training contract, attending any course of instruction or sitting for prescribed examination. Under the current Legal Profession Act, these powers are vested in the Board of Legal Education, which Ms Ellen Lee before me had already touched on, comprises 11 persons standing, the Attorney-General, President of the Law Society, Deans of the Law Faculty and Law School, lawyers and the Singapore Academy of Law. On such an important matter as to whether to exempt persons from mandatory professional requirements, the collective wisdom of the Board would be most instructive. Under the Bill, the Board's decision-making power is reduced. As far as admissions go, it will only have the power to exempt a person from dining requirements which is the least onerous of all the requirements to be called to the Bar. Sir, would it not be prudent to continue to let the Board handle exemptions from admission requirements rather than to give this power to the Minister acting alone? While the Bill says that the Minister can consult the Board before he makes a rule about such matters, it also makes clear that the Minister can retain absolute discretion to decide on exemption cases.

3.59 pm

Assoc. Prof. Paulin Tay Straughan (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, Sir, thank you for this opportunity to share my thoughts on the Bill.

I appreciate the rationale underlying the proposed amendment, which follows the extended debate on the need to

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urgently increase the number of lawyers in Singapore.

In addition to the proposal for foreign trained lawyers to serve a practice training period in place of a pupillage (tabled in this Bill), we have also gradually increased the pool of locally trained lawyers and enabled Singapore law firms to recruit outstanding foreign lawyers.

All these, to grow a sufficient pool of high calibre legal professionals, so as to facilitate the positioning of Singapore as a legal services hub for the region.

As I speak in support of this Bill, I would like to seek your indulgence to reflect on how these developments may impact our youth – specifically, those who had aspired to enter the local law schools but failed to secure a place.

In earlier debates on changes made to the legal profession in 2007 and 2008, much of the emphasis was focused on the implications of the changes to the practice of law and on the practitioners.

Very little had been raised on how these liberalisations to the practice of law in Singapore may have been received by students who aspired to be lawyers, but failed to secure a place in our local law schools.

From the perspective of our youths who, after struggling through 16 years of hard work, find out that they did not earn a coveted place in the NUS or SMU law schools, it must be very frustrating to read of this severe shortage of lawyers in Singapore.

Mr Speaker, as an educator, I am very concerned with how we manage youth aspirations. For these are our future leaders, and the next generation that will

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continue the good work achieved by this Government.

This time of the year is particularly tough on many of our youth and their families. As we manage the massive admissions exercise at the universities, we also have to manage missed aspirations. How do you tell an 18-year-old who has faithfully slogged away at his books, only to find that his close to perfect scores are not good enough?

While intake into NUS Law and SMU Law has increased over the past few years, it is nonetheless a very small quota compared to the volume of qualified applicants.

Coming from the Faulty of Arts and Social Sciences, I for one am truly appreciative that not every top scorer lands a place in Medicine or Law – it is critical and important for Singapore to have capable scholars in all disciplines.

But we are, at the end of the day, talking about missed aspirations of our talented young.

While we can appreciate the benefits and rationale for the arguments laid out in this and preceding Bills on the Legal Profession, we must also be aware of the indirect effects. There are four broad concerns that we should take note of as we expand the parameters on who can practise law in Singapore.

First, we must be cognisant that there will be a social class divide. Among those who fail to secure a place in our local law schools, there will be the lucky group who can still achieve their aspirations by enrolling in a law school overseas. And who will now be able to return home to practise law here with less structural constraints.

In relation to this, my second concern is with communication. We must explain

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to our youths why the local law schools cannot grow their intake beyond a certain critical level, and why we cannot just rely on expanding quota each year to meet industry demand. And we should lay out the expansion plans for NUS Law and SMU Law. For example, now that NUS Law has arrived at an intake of 250, the quota projected as optimum in the Report by The Third Committee on the Supply of Lawyers, does it mean that the quota will not increase anymore?

Third, we must have a viable second route for acquiring legal training in Singapore. This allows the truly passionate an opportunity to live their dreams. In this regard, SMU's Juris Doctor (J.D.) programme is an excellent development.

My fourth and final concern is with the significant attrition in the local bar. Why are our law graduates not progressing as expected? Idiographic accounts suggest that work conditions in the legal profession are challenging, with long hours cited as a big deterrent. The Law fraternity may want to look at these and other triggers for attrition in greater detail.

It is difficult to change normative expectations in the profession. This is especially so if senior partners and supervisors went through similar rigour when they were young legal officers – and they survived the challenges. It may be hard for them to understand why their younger mentees should not make similar sacrifices and put in extended hours at the office. But if attrition remains high, something must be done. For the cost of each attrition is too high to bear, given the opportunity cost that someone else could have taken that place instead.

We teach our children to dream and to nurture aspirations. It is equally important to ensure that they can actualise these ideals in a reasonable manner. Otherwise, we lose them. To encourage the brightest

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of our future generation to be active stakeholders in Singapore, we need to take time to explain to them the rationale for these macro shifts, and understand how these may impact them at the individual level. And we need to assure them that we know it is hard, and that we will continue to place their interest at heart.

With these comments, I support the Bill.

4.05 pm

Mr Shanmugam: Sir, I thank the hon. Members who have spoken. First, let me respond to Prof. Tay's concerns about the aspirations of our young people. She wants to know the extent to which the intake of our law schools can be expanded. We have, as she notes, increased the law intake for NUS from less than 200 previously, to 250 now and SMU now takes in another 120 students. As I had mentioned in response to a similar question posed by Dr Teo Ho Pin during the Committee of Supply debates earlier this year, the NUS Law Faculty is of the view that it is already near its optimal size at around 250 students per cohort. Can we expand it? It depends on a variety of factors. The number of good quality law lecturers available for a start and there are other limiting conditions. Their own view was that 250 or thereabouts is about the right size. SMU would also like to keep the law school relatively small. As Prof. Tay acknowledges, there is a level beyond which it would not be sensible for either NUS or SMU to expand their intakes. These are constraints that top quality law schools all over the world face. We cannot increase the size at will, without compromising on quality.

And there is yet another factor which we have to bear in mind when we discuss this subject. When the SMU law students come onstream about two to three years' time, we will see an almost 70% jump in

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the number of law students graduating from the two law schools. That is a very significant increase, and that is before we take into account the increase in intake as a result of the liberalisation that has been put in place this year. So we are seeing a considerable increase in the pipeline of lawyers coming onstream. We have to monitor and review that before deciding whether we need to further increase the number of law students.

Second, Prof. Tay has expressed her concerns about a class divide between those who are able to pursue their ambitions in law by going abroad and those who are not able to do so. There will always be those who can afford to go overseas on their own. What can the Government do about it? What we can do is to ensure that there are good law schools in Singapore; and that we have a fair system of admission, which does not depend on class or background, into the law schools in Singapore. The same applies to other Faculties which are highly sought after. Some who cannot get into the Singapore law schools, or prefer to go overseas, will be able to do so, if they can afford it. The largest cohort of lawyers however will come from our own two law schools and, as I said, entry to those is based on merit.

For those who are clear that they do want to be lawyers, but cannot get in the first place into the law schools, there are, again as Prof. Tay has noted, alternative routes. Graduates from other disciplines can take up law through obtaining a J.D. degree from SMU, subject of course to meeting SMU's admission criteria. This year, SMU has taken a pioneer batch of 30 J.D. students, from a pool of 135 applicants. Their selected students have a broad range of varying experience and undergraduate degrees. There are also J.D. programmes overseas. Graduates from other disciplines can enrol into these

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when they are able to do so after they get another degree and work for a period. If they are really passionate, they can still become lawyers. So there are many routes available and money is not really a limiting factor. It may be a limiting factor for the first entry overseas.

Ms Ellen Lee has also asked for an update on whether the recognition of graduates from additional foreign law schools has resulted in more practising lawyers for the legal profession. Let me clarify.

The Schedules to our Legal Profession (Qualified Persons) Rules list the universities whose law degrees are recognised (and I will refer to them as the "Listed Universities"). We have not expanded that list. We have, however, refined our admission and training requirements.

Some of these refinements are dealt with by means of subsidiary legislation. Let me summarise the framework of that legislation, for the benefit of the Members present:

(i) Fresh law graduates from the Listed Universities will no longer have to do the one-year Diploma in Singapore Law course (DipSing). I think a move that was generally welcomed by the profession as well as the Members here. Instead they are required to pass Part A of the Bar Examinations. There will be an optional three-month course which will help them prepare for Part A. A very significant impact of this is that if you have gone overseas, you have studied, you want to come back and you feel that you can take Part A Examination even without any tuition, you are entitled to do so. So it makes the entry process very easy but at the same time, it allows us to regulate quality by making sure that they have to pass an examination to our satisfaction. And that is win-win on both sides.

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(ii) From 2010, the Practical Law Course (PLC) will be revamped and culminate in Part B of the Bar Examinations. The five-month Part B course will comprise more practical-based modules that will prepare our graduates for legal practice.

(iii) Pupillage will be replaced with Training Contracts, which will emphasise the firm's role in training young lawyers.

Now, I will come back to the comments made by Members on this point.

(iv) Previously, foreign graduates from the Listed Universities with Lower Second Class Honours could not qualify for admission to the Bar without at least two years' experience. In light of the stricter Bar Examination framework we have put in place, these graduates may now be admitted if they pass the new Bar Examinations and complete 12 months of training.

I will now deal with the queries on these various training contracts here. I think Mr de Souza took, probably, full credit for the fact that we are changing to a training contract module and we would not begrudge him that. But it may be good to add that a number of others have suggested that as well. Ms Lee and Ms Lim have asked whether we would be drafting the terms of the training contract so as to ensure uniformity and consistency in the quality of the training provided by the law firms involved. I think Ms Lim put it slightly differently. I will deal with the specific points she raised later.

With regard to the training contracts, the proposed amendments provide for the basic framework that law firms must adhere to. The Board of Legal Education will follow up with Rules governing the training contracts and administrative guidelines as necessary, before fresh

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training contracts commence this year. I think it will neither be practical nor desirable nor feasible for us by way of legislation to try and impose very precise and specific criteria on law firms and what they should do. We will provide the framework, certain basic minimum that should be complied with.

Specifically on Ms Lim's questions as to whether smaller law firms will have difficulties because of either economic cycles or because they are not sufficiently resourced not to be able to provide the training, let us take a step back. Why are we doing this? We have looked at the way pupillage worked. The obligation is imposed on the individual pupil master to train pupils. It is a no-brainer. We all agree that pupils need to be trained otherwise there is no need for a pupillage. The next question is, do we accept that they need to be trained adequately? The answer must be, "yes". Then the third issue, which experience has given the answer to, is that the current system does not train pupils adequately and you need to impose that obligation on the law firms. Is it a response to say that law firms may not be adequately resourced to train their pupils? If they are not resourced to train their pupils, we will try and find a way in which they can arrange with other law firms to go and get their pupils trained. But the pupils' interest and the profession's interest as a whole must not suffer. People should take on pupils with the clear idea that the pupillage period, the entire raison d'etre for the pupillage period is to train the pupils, not to use them as additional labour. It is no answer really to say that the law firms may not be in a position to train the pupils. It is not fair to the pupils which is why we now say, "We have provided the framework; please ensure that they are able to do so." While we understand very small firms may have some resource constraints, we will find a way in which they can arrange with other law firms for the pupillage period to have training. The

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precise rules will be set out by the Board of Legal Education subsequently.

Let me move on to Exemption Powers on which Ms Lim, Ms Lee and Mr Chiam have spoken. All three Members have expressed some concerns about the exemption powers proposed to be given to the Minister.

I think what is being missed are two points: One, this power relates only primarily to foreign graduates who are seeking to return. Graduates from our local universities go through as per the criteria that are set out in the legislation, and those are the bulk of the graduates. So, for foreign graduates, the second point that perhaps may have been overlooked is that this is not a novel development. At present, under Rule 16 of the Legal Profession (Qualified Persons) Rules – the Minister has very substantial powers to exempt any or all of the requirements in order for a person to become a "Qualified Person". And each of these are individual decisions and not gazetted.

And overlapping with that, the current structure is somewhat byzantine in nature. Overlapping with that, is the power of the Board of Legal Education (BLE) to grant exemptions from a variety of criteria to qualify. And a common refrain has been that, can we not rationalise it a little bit? And the way we have looked at it is, let us have a logical division of areas.

We are going to set up the Institute of Legal Education next year and it makes sense to look at the entry into the profession as governed by two distinct aspects: One, the rules governing the entry; and, two, the rules that would give substance to the content of training. And content of training is ideally taken care of by the Institute of Legal Education. They

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will prescribe the methods, the training contracts, after they take over from the Board of Legal Education (BLE). BLE will set it out this year and also the continuing legal education requirements. So, everything to do with training, it is sensible to put it under the Institute of Legal Education which will come, in turn, under the Academy of Law.

On the other hand, the entry criteria: who should be given exemptions if they do not qualify with some of the published rules? That is a policy decision. Ideally, it is something that, taking off from the current structure, the Minister should exercise. It is Government policy. What sort of criteria can we waive? How many lawyers do we need? Should we expand the criteria? These are issues that the Minister should decide and be answerable in Parliament here for those decisions.

Now, the criteria, by and large as we have announced, are not all that intricate. We have indicated that the whole purpose of rationalising is to make it easier for our students – Singaporeans and permanent residents – to come back and not put a whole series of hurdles in their path.

I was asked just now by Ms Lee, what sort of people will qualify. Let me give an example. Let us say we have a top quality student who has practised for two years overseas, after having qualified from one of the listed universities. He wants to come back. Look at what he has got to do now. He has got to spend a year in DipSing and then he has got to do PLC, and then he has got to do pupillage, and sometimes, very often, it is understandable as Mr de Souza reflected in this House earlier, and others have reflected, that puts off many good Singaporeans. So, we rationalise it and we can say to them, "You just do this exam, Part A Exam. If you show us that you qualify, we waive/exempt the other requirements, because you have already worked for two years". Likewise, if a person has worked

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as a partner in New York in a major American law firm for seven years, do we really want him to be put through all these hoops? So, that is the reason why we are rationalising it, and we are looking at it from the perspective of education which should be under the ILE and the procedural requirements which are really policy issues. And, bearing in mind currently, the Minister has and does exercise substantive powers of exemption. It is not a new development. To that extent, I think Mr Chiam may also not have appreciated that point because he sought to contrast the current situation with that going forward. As I said, in the current situation, the Minister already has the power. Maybe Mr Chiam never had to seek it.

Let me finally deal with the impact of the measures taken. Many of our lawyers work abroad. They are highly sought after by international law firms. They are well-educated and have a reputation for hard work. Often, their Mandarin skills are also in demand. Young lawyers have been attracted to the prospects of working in Shanghai, New York or London. Given these factors, and our supply constraints, law firms in Singapore have been quite desperately short of lawyers.

We have to keep these factors in mind when we refine our admission criteria. We have to ensure that Singaporeans who have qualified overseas are able to come back and practise in Singapore without too many hurdles. They are a valuable resource.

At the same time, I think a question was asked: what is the impact of these measures this year? We have about 230 young lawyers who have applied to take Part A Bar Exams this year, compared to an average of about 80-90 in the past who have applied to sit for DipSing courses. Of course, this reflects a part of the pent-up demand.

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While the world economy is not in the best situation, the law firms in Singapore – at least six law firms have been given licences – have continued to hire and increase their headcount by about 20%, and our local law firms also tell us that when the economy recovers, they expect a shortage.

While on this topic, let me deal with Prof. Tay’s last point about the pace of work in our law firms. The fast pace, and the attendant high attrition rate, in top law firms in particular, is not peculiar to Singapore. To remain competitive, our law firms have to keep pace with market demands and provide legal services to their clients that match those in other major financial centres, such as New York and London, where the pace is often even more gruelling. I for one am not particularly apologetic about the demands of the profession. Those are demands of the economy, of the clients, and we have to have lawyers who can meet those demands. There will be many who will not want to be in that environment and they have other choices. The issue of attrition of lawyers, as I said, is not peculiar to us. It is a global phenomenon, and arises not just from the hard driving nature of the profession, but also the attractiveness of the law degree which leads lawyers to landing good jobs elsewhere. A law degree is often seen as a strong qualification to move into business, into banking, into finance. And many have done very well. So I do not regard it as a negative at all, unless it reaches systemic proportions which it has not. It is not at a rate where we need to be alarmed about.

Finally, Ms Lee asked if these returning graduates – Singaporeans who come back, permanent residents and some others who can add value to our system – would use these new rules as a back-door entry and get their qualifications as a badge and then move on; and should we impose a period when

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they are compulsorily forced to be lawyers. Some might consider it a sentence. I do not see a need to put in these rigidities into the market. If they want to qualify as lawyers, and they have the background qualifications, we should allow them to qualify. Whether they choose to remain as lawyers or whether they choose to go out into the market and do something else is a matter of flexibility. There is no reason to build in these rigidities and punish them because they have gone abroad and are seeking to come back. I think the idea is to make it more liberal and more open, subject always to ensuring quality.

Ms Sylvia Lim: Sir, I would like to seek some clarifications from the Minister on his response.

First of all, in relation to what the Minister attributed to my comments about smaller firms, what I actually said was that firms with limited scope of work would be somehow disadvantaged in getting training contracts. I did not mean that they were inadequately resourced. What I meant was, for example, firms specialising in, say, divorce law, since the report mentioned that there should be scope for transfer of trainees to different kinds of work, would such specialist firms, for example, be somehow disadvantaged in getting trainees under the Training Contract scheme?

Secondly, Sir, I would like the Minister to clarify whether he agrees with me that under the new regime, the Board of Legal Education is, in fact, significantly weakened in its decision-making power?

Mr Shanmugam: Ms Lim mentioned specialist law firms, say, specialising in divorce law. As I said, the rules governing the Training Contracts will come out later this year. Before the Training Contracts start, we expect that this would be taken

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into account, that there are some law firms which are either under-resourced or so focused in one area that they may not be able to give their pupils a complete training. However, what is our objective? It is to ensure that the pupils are adequately trained, and that cannot be dictated by where the law firm is strong in or weak in but, at the same time, bearing in mind that some firms may have very narrow fields of specialisation. It can be accommodated by allowing the firms to get their pupils to get the additional expertise from somebody else. They can make arrangements. So the rules can provide for that degree of flexibility, so that a very specialised law firm does not have to lose its pupil but, at the same time, the pupil learns both from that law firm and at least in one or two other areas from another law firm which the first law firm can make some arrangements with.

Her second point is that the Board of Legal Education will be significantly weakened or its powers will be significantly diluted. Sir, in fact, I have indicated that the Board of Legal Education's powers will be taken over by the Institute of Legal Education by next year – that is the intention. And the real question is, does it make sense the dichotomy that I put forward, – which is, first, what are the rules that should govern exemptions?; and, second, what should be the content of legal training that is given to someone before he qualifies for the Bar, and post-qualification?

We believe that the Institute of Legal Education is best placed to deal with the second aspect and do both continuing legal education as well as pre-qualification training and set out the criteria – set out the examinations, supervise the examinations, identify who would provide the examinations, what should be the course content.

As regards the qualifying criteria, as I indicated under Rule 16 now, the Minister

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has broad power of exemption to decide whether someone should be given exemptions before he or she can be considered a "Qualified Person". So it is not a novel idea but it makes much more sense to rationalise it.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

The House immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. – (Mr Shanmugam).

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read a Third time and passed.