We're bringing The Lawyer Guide to Singapore
For the past few months, I've been splitting my time between Oslo and Singapore. Now I can finally talk about why.
The Lawyer Guide is launching in Singapore in September 2026. It's our fifth market after Norway, Denmark, Switzerland and the US, and honestly it's the one I'm most excited about. Not because it's the biggest, but because Singapore might be the market where what we built actually makes the most sense.
Quick background if you're new here. We started The Lawyer Guide in Oslo in 2020 with Erling Løken Andersen. The idea was simple. Legal services should work the way hotels and restaurants already do, with real client reviews, structured profiles you can actually compare, and a way to reach the right lawyer without guessing. Norway proved that works. We took the same model to Denmark, Switzerland and the US, adjusting the sales approach for each market but keeping the same core product: a free profile for every lawyer, a paid tier for the ones who want better visibility, and reviews written by real clients instead of the lawyer's own marketing team.
Why Singapore made sense to me
I spent a while looking into how people in Singapore currently find a lawyer, and there are really only two options. You either go to a law firm's website, which is built to promote the firm rather than the specific person who would take your case. Or you use the Ministry of Law's own lookup tool, which lists every lawyer with a valid practising certificate and then tells you upfront it can't guarantee the information is accurate or complete. I actually respect that. It's the government being honest about what its own directory is not built to do. It confirms someone is a licensed lawyer. It does not help you choose one.
That's the gap.
There's also something bigger going on that has nothing to do with lawyers specifically. Singapore ranked third out of 182 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, and it has held that spot for years. That's not an accident. It comes from decades of building institutions around verification, audited numbers, licensed professionals, a bureaucracy that would rather put a disclaimer on its own directory than overpromise.
The legal profession runs on that same instinct. Singapore's rules on how lawyers can advertise themselves are strict, and one clause bans anything a court might see as unbefitting the dignity of the legal profession. Directories are explicitly allowed under those rules. What is not allowed is touting or the kind of hype legal marketing takes for granted almost everywhere else.
So a platform built around verified reviews and real data instead of paid placement gimmicks is not fighting the culture here. It fits right into it. That's rare, and it's a big part of why I'm giving this market the attention I am right now.
We did the boring work first
Before sending a single email, we checked our subscription model and our outreach practices against Singapore's own rules. Not because we were worried about getting caught doing something wrong, but because in a market this careful about how professionals present themselves, sloppy outreach gets noticed fast and it's hard to undo. Our subscription model fits within the existing publicity rules for lawyer advertising. Our outreach follows Singapore's Spam Control Act, which works on an opt out model: we can contact a business without asking first, as long as the message is clearly labelled, gives a working way to opt out, and actually stops the moment someone asks.
None of that makes for interesting reading. That's kind of the point. I would rather do this quietly and correctly than announce it loudly and get it wrong.
On the AI search question
I get asked a lot whether this is really about AI search now, ChatGPT, Perplexity, all of that. It's part of it. More people are asking an AI assistant who to call instead of typing a search query, and those tools tend to pull from sources they judge to be structured and credible. A directory with verified reviews and clear practice areas is exactly that kind of source.
But I won't tell you we can guarantee a lawyer shows up every time someone asks an AI tool for a recommendation. Nobody can honestly promise that, and I don't want to be the guy who oversells it. What a complete, verified profile does is improve the odds. That's it. In a market where lawyers themselves aren't allowed to overstate results to their own clients, I think that's the right way to talk about what we're offering too.
If you're a lawyer in Singapore
We'll be live in September 2026. If you want to be part of the first wave, write to singapore@thelawyerguide.com and let us know. Everyone who reaches out before launch gets a free trial of Premium once we go live.