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A Sabah Lawyer

I am tired of people accusing Sabah lawyers of being anti-West Malaysia on the issue of the extension of the Legal Profession Act 1976 to Sabah.

The attorney-general has urged Sabah and Sarawak to open up their legal market to West Malaysian lawyers. He argued that it would be ironic when, under the GATS, foreign lawyers are able to come in to practice in Sabah and Sarawak in the future, but not West Malaysian lawyers.

He said it as if Sabah had happily agreed to accept that foreign lawyers could come in. The GATS liberalisation was forced down the throat of Sabah without taking into account Sabah’s objections. He is using something Sabah was forced to accept, an involuntary 'consent’, as a justification for pushing for a voluntary one. Why should Sabah be coerced once again?

Behind the scenes, a message has been sent to the Sabah legal profession that sooner or later, the central government would bulldoze through the reform by its sheer majority in the Parliament.

This is just a reflection of the way Sabah has been constantly treated ever since joining the federation as an independent state. The federal government has always threatened to bulldoze through this and that, and in the process, forcing Sabah to capitulate. This was not the kind of relationship Sabah had agreed to in 1963.

From the Sabah perspective, the moment we begin to give up on any of the arrangements for the protection of Sabah, such as the legal profession, we wonder what else we would be forced to give up.

The AG (who is a Sabahan) also argued that if Sabah lawyers respect a client’s right to choose their own counsel, then the client should be allowed to choose a West Malaysian lawyer. That question begs another question "Why would a client be reluctant to engage any one of the hundreds of lawyers in Sabah?” If all of them are reluctant to act for that client, you have to wonder whether there is something wrong with the client.

The Federal Court and the Court of Appeal are full of examples of Sabah lawyers winning their cases in opposing West Malaysian lawyers. Sabah lawyers are at least on par with the West Malaysian lawyers even the famous ones. Further, under the law of Sabah, a client is entitled to engage West Malaysian lawyers on an ad hoc basis if he can’t find any lawyer in Sabah competent enough in an area of law to act for him.

The idea of client’s freedom to choose the counsel of his choice is not absolute. The ethics rules enacted under the LPA are full of exceptions. All these are meant to maintain the high standards of the legal profession, and Sabah is entitled to have its own way of maintaining its standard.

As a matter of fact, the Sabah legal profession has a higher proportion of graduates from top universities, both foreign and local, than in West Malaysia. One of the reasons for this is due to the mandatory requirement for the passing of the Bahasa Melayu competency test under the LPA, which many Sabahans (who did their schooling in English-medium schools or overseas) can’t fulfil.

Therefore, after graduating from prestigious universities overseas or obtaining internationally recognised qualifications such as from the English Bar, they find that they can’t practise in the bigger legal market of West Malaysia. As such, Sabah presents a welcoming choice for them.

In terms of the training of our lawyers, I would argue that it is possible that Sabah has less half- baked lawyers, if any, than West Malaysia. The pupilage period under the LPA is nine months, but 12 in Sabah and Sarawak.

From personal experience, chambering for three months in Sabah could be as beneficial, if not more so, than nine months in Kuala Lumpur. When I chambered in Sabah, it was a one-lawyer firm, like many Sabah law firms. Therefore, I gained great exposure from more work, than chambering in a big firm in KL.

Indeed, as part of the requirement for being admitted to the Bar in Sabah, the current senior resident judge, Ian Chin J, wants to see that pupils study most of the areas of law before they are entitled to be called to the Bar unlike the LPA where such a requirement is lacking.

The sad tragedy is that law firms in KL are nowadays run like profit-maximising businesses, rather than like a good, old-fashioned 'honourable profession’. These are precisely the group of lawyers who are pushing for Sabah to open up its legal market, and I believe Sabah is fully justified in resisting the attempt to have its honourable legal profession cheapened as a result.

Finally, the AG said that while East Malaysians could get admitted to the West Malaysian Bar, the reverse was not possible. This is patently untrue. West Malaysian lawyers are welcome to join our profession if they can show a Sabah connection, and not necessarily just by birth. Being a resident of Sabah for five years also counts.

Those who complain that the five-year rule is 'protectionist’ are precisely those who do not fully understand the idea of the regulation of the legal profession. The manner in which a legal profession is regulated reflects the kind of lawyers wanted by the people. Requiring that an out-of-state person spends five years in Sabah is precisely the intention of the Sabah legislature and the Sabah people to ensure that the person comes to learn about and understand the culture and mentality of the people in Sabah, before he or she is accepted as a lawyer.

It shows that Sabah wants its lawyers to be attached and connected with Sabah, both physically and perhaps sentimentally, and not just come and go like some profit-maximising businessmen. Therefore, to the West Malaysian lawyers who want to practice in Sabah, they should not ask what Sabah can do for them but rather whether they really love Sabah.

If you really want to be a Sabah lawyer, not just some businessman, come and learn to become one of us, and Sabah will treat you like one of us.

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