The SMU School of Law is one law faculty starting to see the benefits of helping students into internship opportunities during their last two years of study. A spokesperson has said that the 10 week internship requirement the SMU introduced has left a ‘deep impression’ on law firm Rajah & Tann.

The firm has also reportedly agreed to take on the most SMU graduates out of all Singapore firms, a total of 27. According to Singapore’s Mandarin Broadsheet, Lianhe Zaobao all those who intend to practice out of the 106 students who will graduate this year have found training contracts three months prior to graduation.

While the news is good for SMU and its inaugural batch of graduates, the university and the students faced the challenge of giving law firms an in-depth understanding of the programmes being offered. Lee Eng Beng, senior counsel with Rajah & Tann, said that the way his firm got to understand how the SMU programme operates and puts theory into practice was through allowing interns to come to the firm as well as collaborating with students on various other activities. By making the internship a course requirement, students are guaranteed the benefit of work experience and the opportunity to demonstrate their abilities to potential employers first hand.

For non-SMU School of Law graduates, other universities which don’t make internships or the like compulsory still saw a satisfactory result. Singapore’s NUS law faculty reported that those students who did not take up a training contract were those who were not intending to enter practice or who were taking one year off following the completion of their studies. A spokesman for the NUS said that there were no official numbers available, however .