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Law schools must produce grads who can meet ‘new demands’

SINGAPORE — The legal profession is not immune to disruption and change, and lawyers would need different skills to add value to their practice, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong speaking at the opening of the SMU School of Law building on Wednesday (March 15). Photo: Alfred Chua/TODAY

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong speaking at the opening of the SMU School of Law building on Wednesday (March 15). Photo: Alfred Chua/TODAY

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SINGAPORE — The legal profession is not immune to disruption and change, and lawyers would need different skills to add value to their practice, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said. 

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the School of Law building in Singapore Management University (SMU) on Wednesday (March 15), PM Lee highlighted that technology is automating many routine legal tasks. 

“Our law schools will have to keep their curricula up-to-date (for) both undergraduate as well as continuing education to produce lawyers who are prepared for the demands of the new working environment,” he said. 

To that end, Mr Lee said the Government would support the legal profession in adapting to these changes. 

Pointing to the new Tech Start for Law scheme initiated by the Ministry of Law, the Law Society of Singapore and enterprise agency Spring Singapore to help Singapore law firms adopt new technologies, PM Lee said that the Government would help smaller firms strengthen their capabilities and raise their productivity. For larger ones, the Government will support them in venturing into new areas of legal practice. 

At the opening of the Legal Year 2017 in January, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon revealed that there would be a new five-year technology blueprint to chart the roll-out of various IT initiatives in the legal sector, and a steering committee would review these recommendations. 

At the opening ceremony on Wednesday, PM Lee told the 800 guests present that the SMU School of Law was Singapore’s second law school and admitted its first students in August 2007. It now has an enrolment of 730 students in both the undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. 

The school building, completed in December last year, is home to the Kwa Geok Choo Law Library, named after the late wife of former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. The late Madam Kwa, who died in 2010, “would have been proud to have a law library named after her”, PM Lee said. 

A conveyancing lawyer for more than 30 years, Madam Kwa accepted many pupils in the law firm she started with her husband and his brother, and was a “good and patient mentor”, he added. She allowed her pupils to follow her to every meeting, listen in on phone calls with clients and, after every client meeting, she would explain to them privately why she advised clients that way.

“Now, quite a few of her former pupils are themselves senior lawyers, and still remember her fondly,” PM Lee said. 

He also said his mother paid special attention to the female lawyers in the firm and encouraged them to “find husbands, get married and then have as many children as possible ... in that order”. She was “ahead of the Government in paying attention to work-life balance”, he noted. In the early 1980s when five-and-a-half-day work weeks were the norm, she declared a five-day week for all married female lawyers in her firm, “because she believed that a happy family was a priority for all working mums”.

Apart from the library, the school building — constructed at a cost of S$165 million excluding land cost — houses a moot court, named after Singapore’s first Chief Minister David Marshall. It features flexible furniture and movable walls, as well as IT and audio-visual infrastructure.

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