One of the requirements prescribed by the Singapore Institute of Legal Education (SILE) that must be fulfilled before SILE will issue a certificate confirming that an applicant has met the substantive requirements to be admitted as an advocate and solicitor in Singapore is that the applicant complete the e-Learning: Ethics in Practice and the e-Learning: Legal Profession (Solicitors' Account) Rules courses conducted by the Law Society. This is a requirement under the SILE Practice Training Contract Guidelines,¹ which states:

For the purposes of rule 19(1)(c) of the Legal Profession (Admission) Rules 2011, a supervising solicitor shall ensure that each practice trainee under his supervision attends the following courses conducted by the Law Society of Singapore:

(a) a course on the Legal Profession (Solicitors’ Accounts) Rules (Cap. 161, R 8); and

(b) a course on professional ethics.

Overview

The course is an e-learning course consisting of animated videos.

The videos were bite-sized, usually just a few minutes in length, which weas probably intended to make the course manageable and make it easy to drop off and resume at any point.

Cost

The fee for each course is SGD 108, adding up to a total of SGD 216 for both. After making payment, you will receive a receipt via email.

Difficulty

The passing mark is 80% and you only get 2 attempts, but the course is fairly straightforward, especially so if you attempt it soon after taking Part B because it almost entirely overlaps with the Ethics and Professional Responsibility module in Part B.⁴

I completed each module within 2 hours. You can adjust the playback speed by right clicking on the video if you're using Firefox. I think this can also be accomplished using a browser extension on Chrome. Right clicking seems to be impeded on some of the 'interactive' videos because the interactive layer is overlaid on top of the video — this can be overcome with some fiddling with the z-index using the browser developer tools, or you can just sit through those videos, they are not unbearably long.

The assessment questions appear to be randomly chosen from a question bank so I did not see all of them, but I noticed that one of questions displayed to me had an incorrect answer:

Under Section 70F of the Legal Profession Act 1966, the Council has the power to inspect any law practice both on its own motion and upon a written complaint by a client. Anyway, I brought this to the Law Society's attention and this error should be corrected going forward.

Timing

You can register for and complete these courses at your convenience. However, it's probably best to register only when you are confident you have some time to sit through the videos and complete the assessment because your access will expire 3 days after registration.

At the time I took it, the WizLearn system that the Law Society used to conduct the course appeared to be configured such that no matter what time of day you registered, your registration would only take effect and you would only receive the login details at 1am.⁵ You will then have exactly 72 hours from that 1am to complete that course.

If you choose to register for both courses at the same time, you will get 6 days (i.e. 144 hours) to complete them both.

For reference, the registration confirmation email broadly takes the following form:

FROM: [email protected]

Dear [your name]

Thank you for Registering "e-Learning Programmes: Ethics in Practice & Solicitors' Accounts' Rules".

Do find the following details for your information:

Programme
- e-Learning: Ethics in Practice
- e-Learning: Legal Profession (Solicitors' Account) Rules'

Expiry Date
21 January 2023, Saturday 01.00 AM
*Strictly NO extension of the viewing period is allowed.*

Log In Details
Website 	https://lms.wizlearn.com/lawsocelearning/Login.aspx
UserID 	  [email address]
Password 	Please use [URL] to reset your password

**Please note that the access will automatically be disabled after the expiry date.**

For course related matters, please contact [email protected]

For technical matters, please contact [email protected]

Thank you.

The Law Society of Singapore
[email protected]
+65 6530-2500

Please note that the Learning Management System (LMS) will be under scheduled maintenance on the last Sunday of every month (from 00:00 to 07:00am, Singapore time). During this period, the LMS is not accessible. Kindly write in to us at [email protected] should extension of access is required due to the maintenance and we will grant the extension accordingly. Please note that request of extension of access for reasons beyond the maintenance and any other technical glitches will not be acceded.

[This is a computer generated email. Please do not reply back to this email.]

Completion

After you pass the assessment for each module, you will receive the certificate of completion for that module via email, which you will later have to provide to SILE when requesting for the SILE certificate.