Sean, I fear I cannot agree with you (The Bar has never shown interest in me!"). A study of the Legal Profession Act will show you that the law has recognised that a training regime has to be established for the pupil. There are , both in the law and in practice, in–built systems of control. The Bar itself has, over a period of time, become rather inventive and creative of better and better methods of instruction.
Perhaps you will allow me a few minutes to engage your interest: and I start by saying, you cannot know, or comment upon, on what training you may receive, unless you get into pupillage, under someone is prepared to teach you. If you wish to wait for the perfect master, then, as a matter of instruction, let me take you down memory lane.
I had a very hard Master; it is not necessary for me to repeat what happened; I will only say that it was very difficult. While I do not wish such an experience on anyone, I have come across many practitioners who speak of him with fond words: on how much they have leaned from him, and he had moulded them. He once said to me: 'If you can take me, you can take on anyone, any judge, any opponent'. After a decade, I find that he was right. After many years I myself had a chance to engage a pupil, and so shocked I was by the pupil's ignorance and nonchalance that I asked myself what I had let myself into: since then I have had numerous pupils, of different aptitude and character. I had the same complaint of all them. My friends in similar positions said the same things. It all sounded familiar:
Well, the complaint of the practising Bar is a simple one: a pupil spends 3 years at the university learning theoretical law, 9 months at the CLP (or his local 4th year) and a further 9 months at pupillage. In that 9 months s/he is supposed to put into practice what he had learned at the university. But as a Master, one gets the impression that they appear to have learned nothing at all. Consequently, 9 months pupillage, we find, is wholly inadequate. A good pupil requires only a little buffing; and bad one requires major re–alignment and some rock sculpturing. It is as hard for the rock, the chisel and the sculptor. And that comment relates only to the interested pupils. The hard–headed ones just fall away.
So the putty which is to be shaped comes in all manner of colour and consistency. We work with all sorts of material when pupils present themselves to us. Most of them have simple demands: they want to 'do' 'corporate law' (without knowing what that means), earns loads of money (well ,at least, I can hear them say 'RM5K within 3 years'), drive a BMW within 3 years, require to leave the office for Zouk or the Hard Rock Cafe by 5 p.m, need Saturdays off, and are often heard to say: 'what do you mean, I don't get to be a partner is 4 years?'
Yet the pupil is unable to distinguish between a warranty, a term and a condition, and how this distinction matters in practice; s/he does not possess sufficient confidence to write a simple letter to the bank to request for a redemption sum; does not know how to talk a client who is hurting and requires a remedy. And I speak of overseas–trained lawyers, who speak with foreign accents for the first few months, and consider themselves God's gift to the Bar. I hasten to say that I make no comments about the locally trained ones (and they are not necessarily worse off, or indeed, better).
A pupil has to be taught, one fibre at a time at odd moments: when a case is going on, when the client is clamouring for your attention, when the other side lawyer is breathing down your neck, when the judge piles on the pressure, when written submissions have to be drafted within a short time, when affidavits are outstanding, when a trial is to go on tomorrow and cross–examination questions have not been prepared; when one is shuttling from court to court, or from one corporate meeting to a difficult negotiations. It takes energy, effort and patience.
In our firm we train them on all sorts of things. Having a pupil is a great burden; and some of the partners just will not accept them, because they complain that pupils create more problems by being around. Yet somebody has to teach the student. Naturally one can teach a pupil only what one knows, and in the area one practices. This limitation exists in all professions, whether it is medicine, accountancy, engineering, or architecture (their profession takes a long time too).
In all these professions, the aspirant or acolyte faces all sorts of difficulties. His/her complaint is only one: that there is no 'proper system' in place for his training.
Well, welcome to the world: one has to take it as one finds it.
Yet, from the little experience I have, I find that it is all individual. Some people turn up knowing nothing, and leave the firm reaffirming your faith in the human race; others you fear to associate with in public! Some slide right into the system, understanding what is required of them; while others just mark time and move on. The latter generally are the 3 year BMW, or 'corporate law' sort. They will demand for higher salaries, move from firm to firm, until there is no place to go.
But there is a dangerous third category: these are those who become advocates and solicitors because it is a great social status (according to them). They really cannot comprehend why they should kill themselves on hours of research and study. For them everything is 'simple'. I hear them telling clients: 'this is a simple case, you cannot lose, let me have RM5K deposit and we'll talk after than...'. They get run straight out of the firm.
The fourth category is where the pupil has everything set up just pat. They will glide along nicely because their father or uncle is someone pretty senior at the Bar, or holds an influential partnership in a large legal establishment, and the pupil's placement is guaranteed. Thereafter, a few years in a political party, and lo! They become nominees for some politician, and they are on. Or their uncle or father dies and there is no place to go.
And then there are the plodders like me, who have had nothing to start with. After years of work, work and more work, you begin to discern a glimmer of the law. And just when you think you understand it, a number of things seem to happen: one, the law moves on or changes, and stays just ahead, visible but quite out of your grasp; second, you realise that it is all about communication: saying the right things, in the right order, at the right time; and the third: it is who you know, not what you know.
Lawyers tie themselves up into all sorts of knot in applying this third principle, in order to get to know people: they play golf, they go clubbing, they place themselves in all sorts of places just to meet the one (right) person who will make a difference to their practice. Suddenly one realises that not only are the lawyers doing it, but everyone else is too: the doctor, the engineer, the banker, the dentist; and the politician. All are into self preservation.
In all this melee there are a small band of us professionals fools who keep out of the fast lane, and consistently appear at our respective work places, attempting to appease our consciences, balance our bank accounts, and educate our children.
So when a pupil appears out of the blue and says, 'teach me', I have but one reference point: and that is how I felt when I was the pupil, the things I had yearned to learn, and the experiences which I thought were unpleasant. My policy is 'ambil yang jernih, buang yang keruh'.
I suppose I will probably cast my mind back at death's door, and ask myself what is it that I have done all these years.
And I hope to be able to answer by saying, I have left a piece of my experience with some pupil, for him/her to do things a little better than me, so that s/he can leave the world, and the Bar, a little fairer, a little nicer, than when I was given the privilege to walk into it.
Now, against this backdrop, place your original question: 'What about me?' and somewhere in this rambling article, you may find an answer.
For my part, if you are prepared to put up with me, or the many others like me, I am sure that they are, as I am, prepared to teach you what little I/we know.
While it will not be a pleasant journey all the time, it will not be an uneventful one either; and you may yet find me, and many others like me, tolerable guides after all.
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