Anyone having any idea about the requirements of practising in Singapore.

I am doing my LL.M. from India. Suppose I do my LLM from NUS, will that make me eligible to practice in Singapore or do I need to undergo some training/test?

In order to practise in Singapore, your first law degree (i.e. LLB/JD) must either be from a local university such as NUS or from certain recognised Australian, Canadian, English or American universities. A full list of recognised foreign universities is available at http://www.lawsociety.org.sg/ble/faq.htm. Additionally, if your degree is a foreign degree, you must have a 2nd upper or its equivalent, which is usually defined as being in the top 30% of your class. An LLM by itself, even if it's from NUS, will not render you eligible to qualify for the Singapore Bar.

If you meet the above requirements, you would then have to do a 2 semester graduate diploma of singapore law course at NUS followed by (i) a 6 month full-time practical law course and (ii) 6 months of pupillage at a Singaporean firm.

Hope this helps

I have completed my LLB from India. If I do LLM form NYU@NUS, does it mean I wont be eligible for practice in Singapore or New york?

I don't have personal knowledge about the situation in New York, however the posts on this website seem to indicate that as long as your degree was from a common law country, you should be eligible to take the bar exams there.

In relation to Singapore, to the best of my knowledge, only those who did their LLB at one of the scheduled universities are eligible to be called to the bar. From memory, I can't seem to recall any university from India being on the List but they do change the list periodically, so you might still want to check out the link i gave. Additionally, it might be worth checking the website since it spells out the eligibility requirements in much greater detail than what I can recall.

On a side note, you don't need to qualify to do legal work in Singapore though. Not being called to the bar, just prevents you from getting to do certain things like appearing in court which is probably irrelevant in relation to stuff like corporate work. You could work as an in-house counsel (i.e. you work in and advise a company instead of working in a law firm), for example.

Hope this helps

Thanks for the reply. It does really help a lot and we get to think before taking any decision.
If you dont mind, would like to go ahead with one more query, that is if I pursue NYU@NUS, the Singabore Bar will not pemit me from appearing in Court.
But what are other job prospects as in you said "in-house counsel"
Because if I put in money, time and enegy for admission, it should be worth it. Hence would like to know.

I edited my previous post, to clarify what i meant by in house counsel

i have done my LLB from India and wish to do LLM from NUS. Except joining the Bar, working as a counsel in companies or law frims in singapore should'nt be a problem right??

Nopes. To my knowledge, there shouldn't be a problem working as in-house counsel in companies. You just can't go to court because a pre-requsite for that is that you have to be a member of the bar.

Further to this exchange, you may be interested to see the information now up (including videos) on
www.NYUNUS.org
There's also an article in The Hindu newspaper that may be of interest, accesible here:
http://www.hindu.com/edu/2007/09/03/stories/2007090350330400.htm

hi
i'm afraid actually this is not a reply to your post but i wonder if you can help me.i'm an iranian student and i'm studyng a relevant bachelor course in SBU university.but i wanted to join to LLM courses at NUS (if possible) so that i wanted to know what are the requirements for joining LLM at NUS? does NUS accept bachelors of courses but law? i'm a relevant bachelor.bachelor of trade economics. would you help me pleas?
yours sincerely
thank you in advance