Few have written as insightfully as Seneca, the first century Stoic philosopher, of the plight of the lawyer, always arguing other men’s causes, besieged by others’ needs and problems, never having enough time for himself, so that at the end of his days, he mourns that life has passed him by:

Indeed, you will hear many ... crying out amidst their hordes of clients or their pleadings in law courts or their other honourable miseries. ‘It’s impossible to live.’ ... That advocate is grabbed on every side throughout the Forum, and fills the whole place with a huge crowd extending further than he can be heard: but he says, ‘When will vacation come?’

Sometimes, it seems as if our profession has learned nothing in the past two thousand years, for so many legal lives disappear into an abyss of bickering and bargaining. The Census of the Legal Industry and Profession, 2001, unsurprisingly found that the principal reason why people left the profession was the heavy workload and the long working hours.

So what can we do about it? Apart from switching profession that is — to a chef, perhaps, as my eight-year-old intends, or a farmer, as my six-year-old hankers for, or an astronaut/ ballerina/teacher, as my three-year-old wishes to become (the only girl and already a multi-tasker — I’m sure there’ll be a market for ballet teachers on Mars by then).

Simple to say, but hard to do, the answer is to claim back time for yourself. This requires two things. The first is discipline. You do have to learn to say no — even to clients. Agreeing to an impossible deadline won’t do anything more than postpone the evil day — the client will be angry when you miss it anyway.

The second is system. A haphazard approach will quickly lead to all of one’s time being devoured by work — fighting fires as and when they flare up. Instead, a bit of organisation will stop some problems from ever arising and make sure that you allocate time at the right time to deal not just with client work but also financial and practice management.

The Law Society believes that its new voluntary practice standard, PrimeLaw, will help lawyers find time for themselves by managing their practices better. In the course of the year the Society will run various activities intended to educate proprietors, partners, directors and practice managers of law practices about business and management. Moreover, as a mark of the Society’s commitment to the new voluntary standard, the Society will offer small firms (meaning those with less than six lawyers), who commit to achieving the standard, a rebate of sorts in the shape of underwriting their costs to attend relevant professional development training at the Society.

I would like to thank the following volunteer members for giving up so much of their time to help the profession as a whole in the development of this voluntary practice standard: Young Chee Foong, former chair of our Practice Management Committee, Leo Cheng Suan, chair of its standards subcommittee and committee members, Patrick Ang, Stanley Jeremiah, Douglas Leong, Muthu Kumaran, Naresh Mahtani, Yasho Dhoraisingam and Lim Seng Siew. This project would also not have been possible without the support of Alexander Forbes (Singapore) Private Limited.

So whatever size of firm you’re in, ask yourself — could my practice be improved by having a proper system of work? Could I claw back more time for myself if I had a proper way of managing cases? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, then the next step is to look into and consider obtaining the Law Society’s new voluntary practice standard — PrimeLaw.

Philip Jeyaretnam, SC
President
The Law Society of Singapore