“Too bad, it is fixed” \u2014 this was the court’s response to a pregnant lawyer who requested a trial adjournment because the hearing dates clashed directly with her expected delivery date.<\/p>\n
And the senior lawyer wasn’t the only one. Lawyers say screaming and name-calling in Singapore’s courts have become normalised.<\/p>\n
“Nowadays, it (the court) has become a place for dehumanising and humiliating lawyers, especially junior ones. It makes lawyers want to leave the profession altogether,” another junior lawyer said.<\/p>\n
These are snippets from a recently-released study \u2014 the Legal Profession Sustainability Study \u2014 which was unveiled on Tuesday (Jun 23)<\/p>\n
Commissioned by the Law Society of Singapore, the four-year study relied on qualitative interviews with 855 lawyers.<\/p>\n
The study cited court deadlines and judicial interactions, a deepening well-being crisis and workplace culture as some of key factors why lawyers are leaving private practice.<\/p>\n
The 223-page report was commissioned by the late LawSoc president Adrian Tan, who warned in 2022, after 538 lawyers left the profession a year prior, that the attrition rate of young lawyers may eventually become a problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Most worryingly, these issues have gone on to affect a number of respondents’ mental and physical health.<\/p>\n
Among the respondents, about 55.2 per cent rate their physical health as fair to very poor, while two-thirds of lawyers report depression symptoms at mild or higher levels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Findings on Courts casts light on sustainability<\/h2>\n
The issue of sustainability in legal practice is not a new one.<\/p>\n
In his speech at the 2026 Mass Call Ceremony, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said commercial pressures and an “undue fixation on billing targets” could distort priorities and place practitioners under increased and sustained strain.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Similarly, in his response delivered at the opening of the 2026 legal year, he highlighted mental wellness as one of four areas to be taken seriously when he spoke about the future of the legal profession.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These aspects also featured in the LawSoc report, but the voices on court deadlines and judicial interactions, and their ensuing impact on wellness have cast new light on why lawyers are leaving.<\/p>\n
Given the anonymised nature of the study, lawyers have now revealed how institutional practices have created conditions that systematically undermined their well-being, thus contributing to attrition.<\/p>\n
Timeline inflexibility, despite the elimination of backlogs first institutionalised in the 1990s, has continued despite the issue having been eliminated, lawyers said.<\/p>\n
They also described being scolded, screamed at, ridiculed, or personally faulted by judicial officers, suggesting a longstanding pattern rather than an emerging concern.<\/p>\n
Such treatment has purportedly created fear and anxiety that undermines both psychological safety and the quality of legal work being performed.<\/p>\n
![\"Examples](\"https:\/\/www.asiaone.com\/sites\/default\/files\/inline-images\/Why-Lawyers-Quit-Court-Behaviour_0.png\")
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Then, there is the issue of inflexibility, which affects lawyers with caregiving responsibilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Respondents said the refusal to accommodate pregnancy, maternity leave, family emergencies, or even overwhelming workload as legitimate reasons for timeline adjustments forces impossible choices between professional obligations and fundamental life events, particularly impacting women in litigation.<\/p>\n
Junior lawyers have purportedly also been advised against litigation careers because of excessively stressful, harsh, and demoralising interactions with the bench.<\/p>\n
Yet, there is an absence or lack of formal channels for addressing problematic timeline practices or judicial officer behaviour, lawyers said, adding that this has allowed concerning patterns to persist uncorrected, as lawyers fear career consequences from raising concerns about the bench.<\/p>\n
Judiciary responds<\/h2>\n
Responding to the study on Tuesday, Chief Justice Menon said that an effective justice system relies on mutual respect, collaboration, and a “shared commitment to sustainability between the Bench and the Bar”.<\/p>\n
“While we must maintain the high standards necessary to deliver timely justice, our courtrooms must always remain places of dignity, professionalism, and mutual respect. We hold all our judges and judicial officers to these strict tenets of conduct,” he said.<\/p>\n
A judiciary spokesperson acknowledged that the report provides valuable feedback concerning contemporary practice conditions, adding that it takes the findings seriously.<\/p>\n
“A resilient legal profession is essential to the administration of justice. While the courts must maintain the rigorous standards expected by the public, the judiciary recognises that the long-term sustainability of the profession is vital to upholding those standards,” the spokesperson reportedly said.<\/p>\n
To address the feedback within the courts’ purview, the spokesperson added that a Judiciary-Law Society joint working committee will be established.<\/p>\n
It will look into the feedback regarding court-imposed pressures and courtroom conduct, and use it as the foundation for co-developing practical initiatives that support practitioner well-being while maintaining the effective administration of justice.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson also clarified that there are existing informal channels through which concerns about judicial conduct can be, and have been, surfaced to the judiciary for consideration and follow-up outside of the formal process.<\/p>\n
Notwithstanding this, the judiciary said it will review whether current dialogue mechanisms are working as intended at the ground level.<\/p>\n
“We are committed to ensuring that our courtrooms are places of dignity and mutual respect for all who appear before them, and that judges and judicial officers at every level model the professional standards we expect of the profession as a whole,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
In a social media post on Tuesday, the Ministry of Law said the findings must be “taken seriously and considered carefully”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The ministry stressed that legal talent in Singapore is a precious asset, highlighting that it is important to have an “open and honest conversation”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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editor@asiaone.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “Too bad, it is fixed” \u2014 this was the court’s response to a pregnant lawyer who requested a trial adjournment because the hearing dates clashed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64400,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/64400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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