From October Singaporean lawyers will no longer have to follow fee guidelines for conveyancing transactions.

The Singapore Law Society has scrapped the set of guidelines – which was introduced six years ago following the abolition of fixed fees – in order to encourage lawyers to negotiate fees with clients. “All fees should be freely negotiated between solicitors and their clients without guidelines ….there is no reason to treat fees for conveyancing transactions differently,” it said in a statement.

Ho Soo Lih, a real estate & conveyancing partner at Colin Ng & Partners, said that the firm’s real estate practice will not be affected by the directive. “The withdrawal … has no effect on us as our fees have always been market-driven,” he said. “Conveyancing fees are essentially dictated by the complexity of the case, the amount of time spent by the lawyer and the amount of responsibility involved.”

A spokesperson from WongPartnership said that the guidelines had been useful for its real estate practice. “As stated by the Law Society, the guidelines were intended for reference purposes only to assist in the transition from a prescribed scale of fees to market determined fees. We have been advising clients on real estate-related transactions since the firm's inception and the guidelines have been useful for our clients and us in the transition,” said the spokesperson.

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