Law Society on 'champs, chumps and chimps'
SINGAPORE: The recent debate over ministerial pay has left Law Society president Philip Jeyaretnam somewhat concerned whether private sector professionals, especially lawyers, will start viewing "national service" with disdain.He’s not talking about the military kind, but the various unpaid posts that people take on for a public cause.
“Given the materialist spirit of the times, people urged to do their part by way of such ‘national service’ will be forgiven if they sometimes wonder whether they are being taken for chumps,” he wrote in his president’s message for the May edition of his society’s publication, the Law Gazette.
The principle of benchmarking ministers’ pay to what they would otherwise have earned in the public sector may be realistic and assists transparency by disassociating political office with hidden perks.
“But, it can hardly be doubted that one effect of the emphasis on money is to undercut volunteerism and the spirit of public service,” wrote Mr Jeyaretnam, who serves on three statutory boards.
Sharp words indeed from a man who once told this newspaper that he would “speak truth to power”.
In 1986, a certain Francis Seow — Law Society president then, Opposition figure in exile now — publicly opposed the Government on laws curbing foreign publications, a move which led to legislation limiting the Law Society’s ambit to comment.
However, as Mr Jeyaretnam told TODAY, his message “was very much for lawyers to reflect on and was not intended for the general public”.
He established how the ministerial pay issue has a bearing on the profession in his message, Of Champs, Chumps and Chimps, which can be found on the society’s website.
“The public is told that top lawyers earn astronomical amounts. And that top engineers to the image and standing of the two professions?
For sure, the law faculties at (the local universities) will be even more oversubscribed than they are at present,” he wrote. “It is unfortunate that the public may be getting a rather skewed idea of the two professions - there is much less of a gap once one looks below the rung of top earners.”
Given the hype generated, clients would be left wondering “how to square lawyers’ complaints about the very real squeeze on legal fees with the apparent exuberance of top lawyers’ pay”.
He added: “Will they understand that the headline numbers don’t tell the whole story?”
The only way to redress the “misleading glimpse of what it really means to be a lawyer (or doctor or accountant or engineer)”, he said, would be for the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore to reveal the average income levels at different stages of a legal, medical, accounting and engineering career.
Lawyer Gopalan Raman applauded Mr Jeyaretnam for “walking the tightrope” between two groups in the profession: “The big-time lawyers who work for corporate clients that can be money machines … the group that harkens after money, and smaller firms doddering between survival and failure.
“Philip has treated the latter kindly because he’s saying money isn’t the be all and end all.”
Lawyer Peter Cuthbert Low, who was Law Society president when a salary benchmark for ministers was first established in 1994, shared Mr Jeyaretnam’s concerns.
“I don’t want the kind of lawyers who come out of law school thinking: ‘Now, I want to make money’,” said Mr Low. “We have a long, proud tradition of public spiritedness.”
In his message, Mr Jeyaretnam also shared a lesson he learnt during an overseas trip.
“When I was in India last year, I asked the daughter of a former Supreme Court Judge whether there was any difficulty posed by the gap that exists there between judicial salaries and private sector salaries.
“She looked at me as if I was mad, and patiently, as if to a small child, explained the tremendous respect in which she and her family had been held.
“As far as she knew, no one turned down a higher court appointment, as the opportunity to make and interpret law authoritatively was of incalculable reward for anyone who loved the law.”
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