Welcome from YLC Co-Chairpersons
To the cohort of 2024,
Congratulations on your call to the Bar!
As Co-Chairpersons of the Young Lawyers Committee (YLC) of the Law Society of Singapore, we welcome you to the profession. You have worked hard for this moment. Do take a moment to pause and celebrate this milestone with a full heart.
You will be given advice by many in our profession. Instead of more words of advice, we just have three hopes for your journey in practice.
First, we hope you remember you are never alone.
In moments of celebration like this one, even as you congratulate yourself, remember that you stand (and may even have wept) on the shoulders of the many people who helped and cheered you on the journey. There is no contradiction in having the confidence to own your successes and the humility to know you have many to thank for your wins.
In the low moments, your pain and situation may feel very specific to you. You may feel like there is something wrong with you. You tell yourself – “no one else would have made such a mistake”, “how could anyone do such a thing”, “maybe I’m just not cut out for this”. It perhaps takes a different form of humility to remember that lawyering is an old profession. Many have walked the path you are on and made the same mistakes. The moment when your strongest survival instinct is to hide yourself and your mistakes from the world, is the moment to reach out for comfort and guidance. Practice will have its difficult moments. But remember, you are never alone. You are surrounded by many caring members of our profession who have been where you are now.
Next, we hope you remember that your self-worth is not tied to your profession.
You will do, achieve, and fail at many things. You will feel the highs of a successful application or the closing of a deal. You will feel the pain of a mistake. There will be even more arduous moments of unrecognised hours of work. Your worth as lawyer and even more importantly, as a person, is not defined by any single accomplishment or mistake.
Instead of measuring yourself and others by your wins and losses, we hope you find more meaning in how you showed up as a friend, colleague and mentor to others. You will meet so many along the way who will show you generosity, patience and kindness in big and small ways. Accept these acts with an open heart, and one day when you are able to, we hope you will pass on the kindness to another.
Finally, we hope you will know and hold fast to your values.
Many will try very hard to tell you what you should or should not do, who you should or should not be. These voices may be authoritative, forceful, and seductive. They may be well-meaning, sincere, and even come from people you trust. We hope that you will always hear, above that cacophony, your own voice.
Guidance and advice are invaluable. That said, the decisions that others make are based on their experiences, incentives and egos peculiar to them. Ultimately your life story is uniquely your own. We hope you tell a story that feels true to you.
At YLC, we hope to help young lawyers build community, raise competence and contribute to society. It has been said that community is much more than belonging to something, it is about doing something that makes belonging matter. You don’t just belong to the legal profession. You are the legal profession and what you do makes the legal profession. We look forward to building the legal profession with you.
Once again, congratulations on your call to the Bar and we hope to celebrate with you at the YLC’s mass call party!
