Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon: Speech at Mass Admission Ceremony 2025

Mass Admission Ceremony 2025

“The Centrality of Trust in the Legal Profession”

Wednesday, 21 April 2025

The Honourable the Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon

Supreme Court of Singapore

I.     Introduction

1. Good morning. Let me first offer my heartiest congratulations to each of you on your admission as a lawyer (non-practitioner), or “LNP” for short. Let me also acknowledge the presence of the families and guests of our newly admitted LNPs, for taking the time to join us this morning as we celebrate this significant milestone in their lives. As you heard from Ms Sam, today’s ceremony is also a milestone for our legal system, this being the inaugural Mass Admission Ceremony for LNPs under our new admission framework.

2. With that in mind, I will cover two broad areas in my address today:

(a)          I will first explain the thinking behind the new admission regime, both in terms of how and why we got to this point.

(b)          I will then turn to the principal theme of my address this morning, which relates to the centrality of trust in the legal profession. My key message is that all lawyers – whether practising or non-practising – are officers of the court who carry with them significant duties and responsibilities, and the fundamental obligations traditionally associated with advocates and solicitors continue to apply to all LNPs in many significant ways.

II.     New Admission Framework

3. The genesis of the new admission framework can be traced to the report of the Committee for the Professional Training of Lawyers (or “CPTL”).¹ The CPTL was established in 2016 to undertake a root-and-branch review of the professional training regime for young lawyers, with a particular focus on enhancing both the quality and the consistency of training standards across the profession. Led by my former colleague on the Bench, Justice Quentin Loh, the CPTL brought together representatives from Singapore law practices, the Law Society, the Singapore Corporate Counsel Association, the Ministry of Law, the Attorney-General’s Chambers and the Judiciary.² It was in that sense truly a collective effort on the part of the profession as a whole. 

4. In 2018, the CPTL produced a report containing three key structural recommendations, along with other specific proposals to address discrete issues within our professional training regime. These comprehensive and wide-ranging recommendations were accepted in principle by the Ministry of Law later that year.³

5. I will return in just a moment to the recommendations of the CPTL. But if we were to take a step back, we might see that the need to raise the quality and consistency of training standards – and more broadly, to relook and reimagine the way we train young lawyers – has been brought into even sharper focus today, especially in the light of two trends that have emerged in recent years.

A. Flexible Work Arrangements 

6. The first of these is the growing trend towards the adoption of flexible work arrangements, such as telecommuting and staggered working hours.⁴ This trend accelerated dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has since become a permanent feature in many workplaces, including law firms, albeit to varying degrees. Flexible work arrangements contribute to more family-friendly workplaces, and they should therefore be promoted within our profession, in line with the broader national effort.⁵ But the reality is that these arrangements will have implications for the traditional model of training and mentorship in the legal profession, which relies significantly on learning through observation and osmosis. 

B. Generative Artificial Intelligence 

7. The second trend is the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (or “AI”) and its transformative impact on virtually every aspect of life. This is a topic that I have spoken about in previous Mass Call addresses,⁶ following the unveiling of ChatGPT in November 2022. The capabilities of AI tools have developed at an exponential rate since then, and in certain areas, they already have the potential to outperform lawyers. Indeed, Vals AI, a US-based company that evaluates AI tools, recently published the results of a study that evaluated the performance of four legal AI tools across seven discrete legal tasks.⁷ These AI tools were not only compared with one another; they were also compared with lawyers performing the same tasks.  

8. Let me highlight just two noteworthy findings: 

(a) First, all four AI tools outperformed the lawyers in two areas – the summarisation of documents and the analysis of court transcripts. 

(b) And second, Harvey Assistant, the platform developed by the eponymous legal technology start-up, was ranked as the best performing AI tool.⁸ Apart from the two areas that I have mentioned, it outperformed the lawyers in three additional areas – data extraction; the generation of chronologies of key facts and events; and document review and analysis. 

9. These findings illustrate the potentially transformative impact that generative AI will have on the practice of law. And this, in turn, will have implications for the training of young lawyers. To begin with, there is a pressing need to ensure that our young lawyers are aware not only of the capabilities but also of the limitations of the current state of generative AI, and that they are equipped with the skills and tools to enable them to harness it in their daily work. This in fact applies across the board to lawyers of all seniorities. This is why the Singapore Academy of Law (or “SAL”) published a guide on prompt engineering last September, that teaches all lawyers the basics of crafting prompts and which also provides sample prompts for common legal tasks, such as to draw up a table of inconsistencies between affidavits and pleadings, or to generate a comparison table of similar clauses in multiple contracts when conducting due diligence exercises.⁹

10. But quite apart from the need to ensure that our lawyers are able to harness AI effectively, some of the basic legal tasks that I have mentioned, such as document review and analysis, once formed the bulk of the work done by our younger colleagues, and they were an important means by which technical competencies and basic lawyering skills were acquired.¹⁰ However, given that it is likely to be more efficient and effective to use AI tools to perform these tasks, this will require us to rethink the ways in which we train our young lawyers. 

C. Recommendations of the CPTL 

11. Having outlined how the original concerns that drove the CPTL have developed in the intervening period, let me return to the CPTL’s recommendations. Notably, some of these recommendations remain very relevant in our effort to ensure that we are training and developing our younger colleagues effectively in this new operating environment. These include the CPTL’s recommendations to ensure that supervising solicitors themselves are properly trained,¹¹ to mandate periodic review sessions between supervising solicitors and their practice trainees,¹² and to promulgate materials for law firms on the training and mentorship of young lawyers.¹³

12. Beyond these specific recommendations, the CPTL also made three key structural or systemic recommendations. 

13. The first was to raise the standard and stringency of the Part B examinations, so as to ensure that the quality of the local Bar remains consistently high.¹⁴

14. The second structural recommendation, which is of some relevance to today’s ceremony, was to decouple admission to the Bar from the completion of a practice training contract.¹⁵ This means that only those who wish to be advocates and solicitors following the completion of the Part B examinations are now required to complete a practice training contract, and this provides law graduates with greater flexibility over their career paths. This recommendation arose from a recognition that a legal education can and does lead to different career pathways. It is also consistent with the national shift towards a society that embraces broader definitions of success.¹⁶

15. That being said, we remain committed to developing and nurturing a strong core of practising lawyers in Singapore. In this regard, the CPTL’s third structural recommendation was to lengthen the practice training period for aspiring advocates and solicitors, which most of you are undergoing now, from six months to one year. The rationale for this was to provide trainees with greater and more meaningful exposure to a range of practice areas, and to allow trainees to benefit from a longer period of direct and structured mentorship.¹⁷

16. The recommendations of the CPTL have since been supplemented by further initiatives arising out of the recommendations made by two subsequent committees – first the Working Group on the Reform of Legal Education¹⁸ and then the Ethics and Professional Standards Committee.¹⁹ Arising from this, both the Law Society and the SAL have been working on various initiatives to help our young lawyers build successful, sustainable and fulfilling careers in the law. I would like to take this opportunity to say something about some of the initiatives that the SAL has been working on: 

(a) To promote lifelong learning, the SAL has been working with the Law Society and the Singapore Corporate Counsel Association to develop a competency framework known as the Legal Industry Framework for Training and Education (or “LIFTED”). LIFTED will help lawyers plan their learning targets and acquire the skills and knowledge that are envisaged to be required at different stages of their career. To that end, the SAL will launch the Junior Lawyers Professional Certification Programme next month, a specially designed programme that will equip young legal professionals – whether in private practice or in-house – with the practical skills required for modern legal practice. And for mid-level in-house counsel, the SAL will be introducing targeted training programmes, and these lawyers will also be able to take part in the SAL’s expanded specialist accreditation schemes.   

(b) Beyond skills and knowledge, the SAL will be introducing a career coaching programme to help lawyers manage their professional growth and development. A notable feature of this programme is the suite of initiatives that will provide personalised career coaching and planning, known as Lexplorer: The SAL Career Navigator. These initiatives will be made available through a pilot run later this year. In brief terms, lawyers will be able to make use of a generative AI career navigator tool to prepare them for in-person career coaching workshops. For lawyers who are keen, they may sign up for one-to-one coaching from a professional career coach or a senior legal practitioner who has completed a customised career coaching programme offered jointly by Workforce Singapore and the SAL.  

(c) And finally, later in July, the SAL will organise the second Legal Profession Symposium, and this will present an opportunity for all of us to reflect on the future of the profession, with a particular focus on our younger colleagues and the challenges they face. The Symposium is organised in collaboration with the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession, and it will include a series of activities both before and after the Symposium – such as focus groups and workshops – to co-create and implement solutions with the support of the wider profession. I strongly encourage all of you to register and to participate actively in the Symposium, and I look forward to our discussions at that forum. 

III.     Upholding Trust in the Legal Profession

17. Taken together, the work of the CPTL, along with that of the other committees and stakeholders, represents a much more intentional and structured approach to the way we train our young lawyers today.

A. LNPs as Officers of the Court

18. But while the new professional training regime unquestionably represents a fundamental systemic change, it bears emphasis that LNPs, like advocates and solicitors, remain officers of the court who have a special duty to play in the administration of justice.²⁰ And in discharging this special role, they owe a paramount or “overriding duty to the court, to the standards of [the] profession and to the public”.²¹

19. This is statutorily recognised in the Legal Profession Act,²² and it is also reflected in the new declaration that you have just made, which is broadly similar to the declaration made by advocates and solicitors.²³ The very first line of the declaration reads “I am an officer of the Court”, and it then goes on to flesh out what this entails in concrete terms – to act honestly; to honour your duties and responsibilities as a member of the legal profession; to uphold the values and best traditions of the profession; and to respect and uphold the rule of law, promote the ends of justice and serve the public good. On the last-mentioned point, it is worth noting that under our legislation, LNPs are permitted to participate in pro bono activities, so long as this does not involve appearing before a court or tribunal.²⁴ I would therefore like to emphasise once again the vital importance of pro bono work. The legal profession’s commitment to the pro bono spirit is one of its finest traditions, and you will no doubt find these experiences to be as enriching and as meaningful as your seniors have.

B. The Centrality of Trust

20. I mentioned earlier that LNPs are officers of the court who have a special role to play in the administration of justice. But there may be some who question why this ought to be the case, and in the same vein, there is often a misconception that the term “officer of the court” is, or ought to be, of relevance only to practising lawyers who appear before courts and tribunals. 

21. I respectfully suggest that this fails to consider the crucial role that all legal professionals play in the administration of justice and the healthy functioning of the rule of law, even if they do not appear in court. Missteps or errors of judgment on the part of any of these individuals can affect public trust and confidence in legal professionals and in the legal system as a whole. 

22. I can demonstrate this in the context of the in-house counsel community, which comprises a sizeable group numbering about 4,800 in total as of April last year, a sharp increase from around 3,600 just a decade ago.²⁵ Notably, this figure is not far removed from the number of practitioners in private practice, which stood at 6,348 last year.²⁶

23. In-house counsel can have a very direct impact on the day-to-day operations of the entities that they work in, by virtue of their proximity to business decision-making. The advice they give and the decisions they make (or indeed, fail to make) have the real potential to impact not only the companies they work for but also society at large. And the possibility of errors and missteps is not insignificant given the seeming tension between the commercial pressures that in-house counsel are exposed to, and the obligations that they are subject to as members of an honourable profession.

24. Two prominent examples from other jurisdictions will illustrate the point. 

25. The first is what has been referred to as the Post Office Horizon IT Scandal in the UK,²⁷ described as “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in [the UK’s] history”.²⁸ In brief terms, the Post Office had, from 1999, introduced the Horizon computer system into branches across the UK. The system, used for stocktaking, accounting and recording financial transactions, inaccurately recorded that there were losses and money missing in branches. It later transpired that between 1999 and 2015, 700 sub-postmasters – the people who actually ran the post offices – were convicted of offences such as theft, fraud and false accounting in cases where suspect evidence may have featured.²⁹ In an unprecedented move, the UK Government passed legislation last year to quash the convictions of those who had been wrongly convicted.³⁰ And while there is an ongoing statutory inquiry into the scandal, questions have been raised about the role of lawyers – particularly the Post Office’s in-house team – and whether they ought to have intervened when it became clear that the monetary shortfalls could be accounted for by errors in the IT system.³¹

26. Yet another example is the Robodebt scandal in Australia. The Robodebt scheme concerned an automated system which was designed to recover purported overpayments to social welfare recipients. It was later learnt that the system not only produced inaccurate results, but it was also not programmed in compliance with the relevant statutory provisions. A Royal Commission was tasked to inquire into the scheme. Of particular note are its findings that the “professional independence” of the in-house legal teams at the relevant government agencies was “compromised”, and that they “did not uniformly display a professional ethos” when providing advice in relation to the scheme.³²

27. Incidents like these can clearly potentially damage and destabilise trust in the legal profession and indeed in the rule of law, and they therefore underscore the need for all legal professionals to understand and to act consistently with their professional values and duties. In this regard, the rule of law is brought to life by public commitment to and belief in its values – its existence necessarily depends on there being a substratum of public trust and confidence in the legal system, including in its professionals.³³ It is this culture of trust in the legal system and its legal actors that enables and sustains the rule of law.³⁴ All of us who have been admitted to the Bar therefore share the tremendous responsibility to build that culture of trust, in each of our distinct and varied roles. 

IV. Conclusion

28. In today’s address, I have provided an overview of the changes to our professional training regime, and shared some reflections on the need for each of us to uphold trust in the legal profession. The latter point bears particular emphasis, given that the concept of the rule of law has come under notable strain in recent times. We see this in a number of ways, including the decline of the rules-based international legal order, the proliferation of disinformation and misinformation in societies, and the rise of personal attacks against the judiciary and the legal profession in other parts of the world. More than ever, there is a need for all of us – lawyers and judges alike – to work towards securing the trust and confidence of the communities we serve, so as to ensure the continued relevance and vitality of the rule of law.    

29. Before I close, let me express my sincere gratitude to the families and in particular, the parents, of our newly called lawyers. Their milestone achievement today would not have been possible without your countless sacrifices and your unwavering support and guidance. We in the legal profession are deeply indebted for all that you have done, and for the support that you will no doubt continue to extend to these young women and men as they embark on their careers.

30. Finally, to each of you, the newest members of the profession, let me, on behalf of the Judiciary, extend my heartiest congratulations and best wishes to all of you. I wish you a career full of success and purpose, and like Ms Sam, I look forward to all that you will achieve in the years to come. 

31. The court is now adjourned.

_{[1]           Committee for the Professional Training of Lawyers, “Report of the Committee for the Professional Training of Lawyers” (29 March 2018) (“CPTL Report”}
[2]           The composition of the Committee and its working groups are contained in the Annex of the CPTL Report.[3]           Ministry of Law, “Law Ministry Accepts Recommendations to Strengthen Professional Training of Lawyers” (30 August 2018).
[4]           Ethics and Professional Standards Committee, “Final Report” (8 January 2025) (“EPSC Report”) at para 34.
[5]           Forward SG, “Building Our Shared Future” (October 2023) (“Forward SG Report”) at para 76.
[6]           Sundaresh Menon CJ, “Answering the Call in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”, Mass Call Address 2023 (21 August 2023) and Sundaresh Menon CJ, “The Legal Profession – A Community of Learned Friends”, Mass Call Address 2024 (19 August 2024).
[7]           The four AI tools were CoCounsel (from Thomson Reuters), Vincent AI (from vLex), Harvey Assistant (from Harvey) and Oliver (from Vecflow). The results may be found at https://www.vals.ai/vlair.
[8]           The Singapore Courts have signed a memorandum of understanding with Harvey to develop a generative AI platform for users of the Small Claims Tribunal. See Lee Li Ying, “Small Claims Tribunals to Roll out AI Program to Guide Users through Legal Processes” (The Straits Times, 26 September 2023).
[9]           Microsoft and Singapore Academy of Law, “Prompt Engineering for Lawyers: Leveraging Generative AI in the Legal Profession” at pp 8 and 10.
[10]           See Sundaresh Menon CJ, Welcome Address at the SAL 35th Anniversary Dinner (22 November 2023) at para 9.
[11]           CPTL Report at paras 144–146.
[12]           CPTL Report at paras 132–135.
[13]           CPTL Report at para 147.
[14]           CPTL Report at paras 83–95.
[15]           CPTL Report at paras 73–82.
[16]           Forward SG Report at page 13.
[17]           CPTL Report at paras 96–103.
[18]           Working Group for the Reform of Legal Education, “Report of the Working Group for the Reform of Legal Education” (8 January 2024) at para 1. The Working Group was established under the purview of a Steering Committee, and it was tasked to holistically review the legal education and training regime for lawyers in Singapore, to ensure that the regime remains capable of equipping lawyers to meet the demands of modern legal practice and to support Singapore’s vision for the legal industry.
[19]           EPSC Report at para 17. The EPSC was tasked to develop a strategy to reaffirm the moral centre and values of the legal profession, and to enable lawyers and those who aspire to a career in the law to understand the legal profession as a calling to be answered with honesty, integrity and dedication.
[20]           Law Society of Singapore v Udeh Kumar s/o Sethuraju [2017] 4 SLR 1369 at [109].
[21]           Law Society of Singapore v Seah Zhen Wei Paul and another matter [2024] SGHC 224 at [62]–[69].
[22]           Section 25 of the Legal Profession (Amendment) Act 2023 amends section 82 of the Act to provide that a LNP is an officer of the Supreme Court. The provisions for disciplinary proceedings have also been extended to include LNPs (see the new ss 82A and 83 of the Act).
[23]           First Schedule of the Legal Profession (Admission) Rules 2024.
[24]           See ss 2 and 3 of the Legal Profession (Pro Bono Legal Services) Rules 2013.
[25]           Minister of Home Affairs and Minister for Law Mr K Shanmugam SC, Keynote Speech at the APAC Legal Congress 2024 (23 April 2024) at para 33.
[26]           The Law Society of Singapore, “Statistics of Legal Practitioners in Singapore” (31 August 2024).
[27]           House of Lords Library, “Post Office Horizon IT Scandal: Progress of Compensation” (20 February 2025).
[28]           Peter Walker, Daniel Boffey and Rowena Mason, “Horizon Scandal: Hundreds of Post Office Operators to have Convictions Quashed” (The Guardian, 10 January 2024)
[29]           See n 26 above.
[30]           Post Office (Horizon System) Offences Act 2024.
[31]           Rafe Uddin, “Post Office Scandal Exposes Ethical Dilemmas of General Counsel” (Financial Times, 23 April 2024).
[32]           Report of the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme (7 July 2023) at page 519.
[33]           Sundaresh Menon CJ, Opening Remarks at the World Justice Project’s Asian Launch of the Rule of Law Index 2021 (28 October 2021) at para 7.
[34]         Thomas W Simpson, “Trust and the Rule of Law” in Ruth Chang and Amia Srinivasan (eds), Conversations in Philosophy, Law and Politics (Oxford University Press, 2024); Gerald Postema, “Trust, Distrust and the Rule of Law” in Paul Miller and Matthew Harding (eds), Fiduciaries and Trust: Ethics, Politics, Economics and Law (Cambridge University Press, 2020).