Jonathan Swift once noted that ‘When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.’ This aphorism was drawn upon by John Kennedy Toole for the title of his comic masterwork, A Confederacy of Dunces. In this novel, the central character is Ignatius Reilly, a man filled with gargantuan gases as well as rage against the numerous excesses and shortcomings of the modern age. He is a seer and philosopher, somehow born in the wrong century. Forced to seek paid employment, he finds himself at odds with the modern world with each new career: an office manager whose filing is more disposal than system; an itinerant hot dog vendor who berates his customers. In spite of his obnoxious absurdity, the reader sympathises with his plight, for I suspect that most of us have felt at one time or another that we are not appreciated as we ought to be and that the time we have been born into is not the golden age we hanker for; somehow our true genius goes unrecognised and we are surrounded by dunces. Why is it that clients don’t beat a path to our door? Why doesn’t the judge understand and accept our arguments? Why don’t our bosses or our partners (if we have them) see how hard we’ve been working? 

This is a common feeling, but, unless we are absolutely convinced of our genius, it is also a dangerous one. It is not realistic to think that just by doing good, honest work, we must become a popular choice for clients. As for persuading judges, that is our job as advocates, and an unconvinced judge is a mark of our shortcomings as an advocate as much as it may be of unrecognised merits in our arguments. Bosses and partners too are human and will only appreciate as much of us as we make visible to them. 

That is why practice management gurus speak of the importance of maintaining client relationships as much as they do of ensuring quality of work. That is why business development is a must for every practitioner — at least spending 10% of his or her time thinking about where future work will come from and doing something to secure that work. 

For all these reasons, while my sympathies lie with lawyers who protest at the demands of the modern world, at the greater competition that lawyers face from foreign lawyers or other professionals like accountants, at the rush of technology and the constant battle to stand out from the crowd and secure the confidence of impatient clients more interested in price-cutting than in quality, I believe that our profession must respond to those demands and not simply set its face against them. 

As a profession, there are a number of trends that we must work with. First, the increasing speed of communications — the letter replaced by the fax, replaced by the email — which means that lawyers are expected to reply to clients in ever faster cycles. Secondly, the internationalisation of business, which requires us to understand legal systems other than our own and establish relationships with lawyers in other jurisdictions. Thirdly, the deluge of data — via internet, television and print — that makes it ever more vital that lawyers play a real analytical role; we can no longer just be gatekeepers to knowledge, making money out of informing people what this or that section in an Act states.  

The Law Society’s main response to these trends has been to try to free our profession from archaic rules that reduce flexibility and hinder adaptation and to offer lawyers new and varied structures for practice, so that firms of different sizes can find the one best suited for them.  

All of these changes have been intended for, and have worked to, the benefit of all practices in the profession, big or small. Both group law practices and law corporations offer options to one-lawyer firms to share costs and improve their branding without taking on unlimited liability for partners. The liberalisation of the publicity rules has helped level the playing field not just between our big firms and international firms, but also between dominant firms and entrant firms within Singapore. Publicity is first and foremost a tool for lesser known practices to break into markets dominated by established firms. 

Looking at the business landscape for Singapore firms, it is quite obvious that there continue to be significant advantages for firms to remain small — so as to keep costs down and to avoid being mired in the conflicts of interest that stop many larger firms from taking on particular litigation matters — so long as such firms can establish a specific niche of legal expertise. At the same time, there is good reason for larger firms to consolidate — so as to achieve a greater regional presence and clout that will enable them to service clients better. 

Varied and diverse business strategies there certainly are; the role of the Society is to give as free a rein as possible to the good business sense and judgment of members of our profession. But no firm nowadays can do without a business strategy of one form or another. 

So to return to my starting point, no matter how much we laud our own genius, we should think hard about how our practice works as a business and implement strategies that will help it work better.

Philip Jeyaretnam, SC
President
The Law Society of Singapore