How Many Lawyers, Law Firms and Senior Counsel Are There in Singapore?
Official figures for the size of Singapore's legal profession, alongside court-record activity from 2,012 reported Singapore judgments (2023–2026).
As of , 2,012 reported Singapore judgments — the court-record statistics reflect the most recent reported judgment in the dataset and are recomputed live.
How many lawyers are there in Singapore?
Singapore had 6,512 practising lawyers holding a current practising certificate as of 2023, according to the Law Society of Singapore. Within this corpus of 2,012 reported Singapore judgments (2023–2026), 3,978 distinct counsel appear on the record — reported litigation is only one part of legal practice.
Source: Law Society of Singapore · as of 2023
How many law firms are there in Singapore?
There are over 1,000 law practices operating in Singapore as of 2024 (Asian Legal Business); about 80% are small firms of one to five lawyers. Of these, 691 firms appear as counsel in the 2,012 reported judgments collected here.
Source: Asian Legal Business · as of 2024
How many Senior Counsel are there in Singapore?
About 100 practitioners have been appointed Senior Counsel in Singapore as of 2026, administered by the Singapore Academy of Law. Senior Counsel is a rank of professional distinction conferred on experienced advocates — a mark of standing at the Bar, not a firm ranking or a performance measure.
Source: Singapore Academy of Law · as of 2026
Singapore's legal profession, in numbers
Published figures for the whole profession, each attributed to its source with the year it describes.
Total practising lawyers holding a current practising certificate (2023), attributed to the Law Society of Singapore.
Source: Law Society of Singapore · as of 2023
Number of law practices operating in Singapore (2024); about 80% are small firms of one to five lawyers, roughly 174 are mid-sized and 23 large.
Source: Asian Legal Business · as of 2024
Practitioners appointed Senior Counsel since the scheme began in 1997; a small number are appointed each year. Senior Counsel is a rank of professional distinction, not a firm ranking.
Source: Singapore Academy of Law · as of 2026
What the court record shows
Reported judgments are a sample of litigation that reaches a published decision — not the whole market. Across 2,012 reported Singapore judgments in this corpus (2023–2026), 691 distinct law firms, 3,978 counsel and 178 judges appear on the record, across 15 courts and tribunals.
Reported judgments by year
| Year | Reported judgments |
|---|---|
| 2023 | 556 |
| 2024 | 529 |
| 2025 | 538 |
| 2026 | 389 |
Reported judgments by court
Methodology
The profession figures are published counts for the whole Singapore legal market, attributed to the Law Society of Singapore, the Ministry of Law's Legal Services Regulatory Authority, and the Singapore Academy of Law, each with the year it describes — they are not scraped from any register. The court-record statistics are derived from 2,012 reported Supreme Court judgments published on eLitigation, counted as distinct cases and recomputed live from the current corpus. The two are deliberately separate: the reported record is a sample of litigation that reaches a written judgment, so it under-represents the profession. None of these figures is a measure of any lawyer's or firm's quality, success rate, or standing.
Explore the court record
See which firms and counsel actually appear in these reported judgments, ranked by how often they are on the record.