Singapore CJ Sushil Nair and Law Minister Edwin Tong: "A Workplace Can Be Demanding Without Being Demeaning" — Sustainability Guide, SCALE Announced

Singapore's Legal Profession Sustainability Symposium continued to generate reform commitments this week. Incoming Chief Justice Sushil Nair pledged to continue the reform agenda, emphasising supervision failures, psychological safety, and the generational divide in workplace expectations (Singapore Law Watch, August 4). Law Minister Edwin Tong (Singapore Law Watch, July 30) announced three priorities: workforce reform (closer integration of education and practice, first-chair experience for junior litigators), workplace reform (Legal Profession Sustainable Development Guide — setting out professional norms and behaviours the profession should aspire to), and work reform (Singapore SCALE: AI Council for Legal Excellence, bringing together leaders from academia, technology, in-house practice, and the public sector to build an evidence-based understanding of how AI is reshaping legal work). Singapore Academy of Law survey data: 1 in 3 newly qualified lawyers expects to leave their current firm within three years; only 8 of 289 respondents said they intend to leave the legal profession entirely. Between 2015 and 2024: 60% of Singapore lawyers remained in practice after 5 years; 40% after 10 years. For law firm managing partners: the "demanding without being demeaning, candid without being disrespectful" formulation is the most operationally actionable leadership standard to emerge from any major regulatory statement this week. It describes the supervision problem precisely — the wellbeing failure is not that legal work is hard; it is that leadership and supervision practices have tolerated conduct that crosses from demanding into demeaning without triggering accountability.