Lim Biow Chuan on Legal Profession (Amendment) Bill

Doubling the practice training period for law graduates from six months to a year will make it a total of five and a half years before aspiring lawyers can start their careers. This could cause financial hardship for law students and even deter people from joining the legal profession, said MP Lim Biow Chuan. In Parliament on Tuesday (Nov 7), he also raised concerns about the proposed creation of a new category of lawyer (non-practitioner) or lawyer (NP). Right now, non-practising lawyers are generally known as legal counsel. Mr Lim asked if the public will be able to distinguish between practising lawyers and lawyers (NP) and whether all existing legal counsel will be able to apply to be admitted to the Bar as lawyers (NP). As for making Part B of the legal course more stringent, he said he had received a lot of feedback from existing students that the academic workload for Part B is worse than the law school exams. Looking at the course content himself, he said he was “surprised” at the large number of subjects covered and that it was like “trying to squeeze in a few years of legal content into a five- or six-month Part B course”. Mr Lim cautioned against adding to the stress of being a lawyer when the legal profession is already facing a shortage of talent.