Practice Training Requirement for Trainee Lawyers

Assoc Prof Tan Kheng Boon Eugene asked the Minister for Law whether trainee lawyers may serve their practice training requirement at Qualifying Foreign Law Practice (QFLP) firms for admission to the Singapore Bar, notwithstanding that QFLP firms practise in limited areas of Singapore law.

Madam, law graduates who meet the criteria of being a "qualified person" under the Legal Profession Act are required to serve a practice training period before being admitted to the Singapore Bar. The trainee can fulfil the practice training requirements by having a practice training contract with a Singapore Law Practice (SLP) or in the context of public service, by serving as a Legal Service Officer or a legal officer in one of five prescribed

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public bodies.

Trainee lawyers cannot serve their practice training requirement at Qualifying Foreign Law Practice (QFLP) firms for the purposes of being called to the Singapore Bar. QFLP firms are foreign law practices (FLPs) with a licence which allows them to practise Singapore law only in "permitted areas of legal practice".

The "permitted areas of legal practice" are mainly commercial areas of law. Areas of domestic legal practice, such as constitutional and administrative law, criminal law and family law, and the conduct of litigation are excluded, or ring-fenced.

Mdm Speaker, I would like to ask the Senior Minister of State, notwithstanding that the QLFPs practise in limited areas of Singapore law, whether there could be schemes or arrangements by which trainee lawyers could fulfil the requirements in the non-commercial areas. The QFLPs are some top law firms in the world, and with the goal of trying to build a legal hub here, the expertise these firms can offer to our trainee lawyers would be a significant benefit to the Singapore legal profession.

That is not something that is presently being considered. Under the criteria for admission to the Bar, one of the things that is taken into account is whether a trainee lawyer receives instruction or has gained experience in every type of work normally undertaken by an advocate and solicitor. The ring-fenced areas, such as criminal law, family law, constitutional and administrative law, are all excluded. A QFLP would not therefore be able to give a trainee lawyer exposure to these areas of the law.

It is open, of course, when a lawyer gets called to the Bar, to work with QFLPs and other foreign law firms and they will then be able to get the other type of exposure that they may not be able to get at the local law firms.

Having said that, though, I feel impelled to say that local law firms do also have good regional practices and are able to provide very good training in the area of corporate and commercial practice.

Mdm Speaker, I want to say that I support the Ministry's point on the importance of ensuring that trainee lawyers are exposed to domestic areas of legal practice, especially in areas like criminal law, family law and litigation. I also want to commend the Government's efforts

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to set up the third law school at UniSIM to address the domestic legal needs because, really, it is not easy to be able to attract young lawyers to these areas of practice.

May I ask the Senior Minister of State if the Government can consider providing more funding, say for criminal legal aid, just to encourage lawyers to take up work in this area so as to better serve the domestic needs of the community?

Mdm Speaker, I thank Mr Lim Biow Chuan for his support. The Member's query on criminal legal aid was also raised earlier this year by Mr Hri Kumar at the Committee of Supply debates. At that time, I had replied to Mr Kumar to say that we will consider the position and I believe I had also mentioned this when we were discussing the amendments to the Legal Aid and Advice Act. And I said at that time that we were considering how to expand our funding to the Law Society's Criminal Aid Scheme to enable them to support more cases that are deserving.

Members will know that for capital cases, legal assistance is already funded by the State, and we have been reviewing the position for non-capital cases for some time. We have decided that the Government should do more in the provision of criminal legal aid compared with the position hitherto and the details are still being worked out with the stakeholders, such as the Singapore Academy of Law and the Law Society.

While we make this move, though, we need to be careful about how we do this as the monies come from a finite pool of taxpayer money. The experience of other countries is salutary. Countries have found the cost to be prohibitive and the outcomes not entirely satisfactory. For example, in the United Kingdom, the government spent some £2 billion on legal aid every year with criminal defence making up for more than half of the bill and there have been scandals involving wealthy criminals who receive legal aid from the State because their assets were frozen. The United Kingdom has now been forced to cut back on criminal legal aid funding.

We want to learn from the experience from these other countries and to develop a system that is sustainable. There cannot be an approach of unlimited funding nor funding for unmeritorious cases. We have to structure some acceptable way of identifying cases where assistance needs to be given. We will announce more details when we are ready.

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