Lawyer glut: Practicing certificates to increase by 30% in the next 3 years

Far beyond Singapore’s 3% economy growth.

In March 2013, there were 4,432 lawyers with practicing certificates, up 25% from 2009. Add to that the increasing number of law students and what do you get? An oversupply.

That’s according to Law Minister K Shanmugan in a speech during the NUS-SMU Criminal Justice Conference a few days ago.

According to Shanmugan, the oversupply is due to a disproportion in the number of students reading law overseas to the relatively small legal market in Singapore.

The minister cautions law students that they should be aware of the numbers and be realistic as to what they can do if they are thinking of practice.

Here’s more from the speech:

If you look at the UK universities, the number has more than doubled. Between 2010 and 2013, just in those three years, the number has doubled from 510 to 1,142. The number has increased very significantly and very quickly. This has implications for students in the context of a relatively small legal market in Singapore.

Number of students in Australian universities has also increased by more than 25% just between 2011 and 2013, so there’s been an explosion. If you take 2010 to 2013 there has been a very significant explosion from 303 to 386.

From 2009 we’ve been studying these figures and it hasn’t been easy to get the figures in the first place because people can go overseas and they don’t need to tell us that they are studying law, there is no rule or law which says you got to register with the government of Singapore, and often people could start in one course and switch, so we really don’t have a clear fix on what students are doing, but these are the numbers we are able to get, and they may understate rather than overstate.

If you've been wondering whether SBR could work for your company — yes, probably.

A lot of the companies we partner with started as readers. They'd been following our coverage for a while, saw their own customers and competitors in it, and eventually asked the obvious question: could we do something with you? The answer is usually yes. The shape of it depends on what you're trying to do.

The options are broader than most people assume — thought leadership articles, sponsored content, industry summits across Southeast Asia, regional awards programmes, podcasts, and media placements in print and digital. Some partners use one channel; most use a mix. We figure out the right combination by starting with your brief, not with our rate card.

So if the question has been on your mind, here's the easy way to ask it.

We'll tell you honestly whether we can help, and how. It's a better use of everyone's time.

Book a meeting

| Or download the media kit (PDF)

240,000 senior readers quarterly in print Top 1,700 Singapore companies reached

7 markets across Southeast Asia