Prospective law students must examine their motives before pursuing their course of study, cautioned newly minted Law Society (LawSoc) chief Gregory Vijayendran, while also urging current practitioners to “check their hearts” regularly.

“Do I see a mission in my practice of law? Can I use my legal skills to help someone in society? (These are) questions to be asked across the board,” he said.

A partner in Rajah & Tann, the 48-year-old had served as LawSoc’s vice-president for a year before succeeding Senior Counsel Thio Shen Yi as president on Jan 1.

In an interview with TODAY last week on his vision and plans for LawSoc, Mr Vijayendran warned the legal fraternity to guard against “external trappings”, such as perceptions of a good salary and prestige.

Reiterating Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon’s comments during the Mass Call, a proceeding that formally admits lawyers to the Bar, last August, Mr Vijayendran said “motive examination” would meaningfully address the current glut of younger lawyers here.

“Lawyers and law students must see the practice as a long-term vocation...If we don’t have the right motives and resilience, the challenges that come with the practice like stress and failures can enervate and paralyse us,” he added.

Legal practitioners must constantly put themselves in the context of the community, he said. Quoting the New York State Bar Association’s Professional Responsibility Code, as “guardians of the law”, they play an important role in the “preservation of society”.

“If it is just about money, you will feel jaded after a while. You will lose your soul ... For long-term staying power, we need to embrace the noble calling of law in the various spheres of the profession that we practise in,” said Mr Vijayendran, who is also a member of the Bioethics Advisory Committee and the Tribunal for Maintenance of Parents.

For the LawSoc president, what fuels him is the “deep sense of fulfilment which money cannot buy” from solving a legal problem to helping a needy client, and being involved in advocating justice.

“It was when I started legal practice that I saw real-life problems faced by real-life clients, and found myself going the extra mile to find a conventional or creative legal solution ... Undergrads, master your subject areas well in law school but remember that a different journey will begin for you once you start legal practice,” he said.

To help the younger members of the legal fraternity, Mr Vijayendran said the LawSoc will take on a more active role in supporting law graduates seeking training contracts and legal trainees who have failed to secure a job, such as by matching them with other openings within the industry, or pointing them to opportunities outside the industry.

“We hope to reach out to (those affected) this year and advise them on what they can do in this interim phase, based on their areas of interest.”

Honing their skills in specific industry disciplines such as financial markets, will make them “more marketable” in their future practice, he said.

The LawSoc will also step up efforts to publicise and refresh its existing directory that matches firms offering training contracts with applicants.

Mr Vijayendran plans to devote more attention to caring for lawyers’ mental health during his term.

Noting that studies in the West have often found lawyers to be at higher risk of depression than the general population, he stressed the importance of having “healthy outlets (to) de-stress” and being able to “fail forward”.

“Learning to accept the mistakes as part of life’s learning ensures that we do not place unrealistic expectations on ourselves that could become a huge pressure point. We need to allow room for ourselves for self-improvement,” he said. Kelly Ng

Source:
courtesy of TODAY

by KELLY NG

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