From lawyers to 'Swiss Army knives'

THE role of lawyers continues to evolve. The requirement to be highly skilled legal practitioners is only the entry level. To be successful, lawyers are now expected to be financially literate, business savvy and strategic.

At the recent opening of the new legal year, Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon shared that the Ministry of Law is studying the possibility of regulating alternative legal service providers (ALSPs). This highlights the intensely competitive landscape that lawyers face, one in which the competition is coming from outside the traditional legal industry.

To meet these new challenges, there is an urgent need for lawyers to transform. In this regard, lawyers can possibly take a leaf from their general counsel (GC) counterparts who work in corporations and face many similar challenges.