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PENANG, Sat: It is said that the standards of the Bar have dropped. Alarmingly, some added.

Such a statement, by itself and fortified by the looming threat of globalisation and the advent of the trans-boundary free market for legal service, raised a high degree of concern.

The National Young Lawyers Committee saw the 3rd Young Lawyers Convention, with over 150 young lawyers from all over the country in attendance, as a platform well-suited to discuss the issue in depth, to find out where and how it went wrong and the approach for its betterment.

Steven Thiruneelakandan set a serious tone to this serious issue when he brought the delegates back to the proposal for lawyers to accumulate a minimum 20 points over a two year period which has yet to be sanctioned by the Bar.

He proposed a centralised mandatory scheme which may be followed for continuing professional development, presenting the list of subjects, the record sheet, the method for points collection and the blueprints to be followed to realise this effort. He further showed the delegates the list of countries all over the world where continuing professional development is made mandatory.

Colin Andrew Pereira, who was the chair of Kuala Lumpur Bar Continuing Legal Education Committee, explained to the delegates the approach and areas that have been addressed by KL Bar since five years ago to promote continuing legal education, which include the mandatory pupil’s program, fundamentals of practice, specialised areas and workshops.

He raised the issue that a centralised mandatory scheme may not cater for the needs of lawyers in other states and the State Bars which is why currently the State Bars are allowed create their own continuing legal education programs.

The hype of the session was when Dr Azmi Sharom from University Malaya took the rostrum. As an educator, he acknowledged the common public concern over the questionable standards of legal education in the local universities.

He stunned the audience for a short moment when he said it all boils down to “politik tak senonoh”, being the lack of political will to deter from interfering with the education system in the country as he later explained. He received a loud applaud and approving grins form the floor of these young lawyers for this audacious remark.

The plan to introduce the Common Bar Exam has its shortcomings, he said. For one, he pointed out, the lecturers will lose control over the integrity of the examinations, bringing the delegates back to the infamous CLP episode back in 2001. We have such a track record with Legal Qualifying Board, which is now the body governing the only common examination for the legal profession.

While he agreed that vocational programmes are important to raise the standards of the Bar, L.L.B. must remain academic because the practical law cannot improve without the theories and philosophies of law being studied and debated by the academicians.

What we need, he added, is a working relationship between the Bar and the universities where, instead of just reproving the quality of the students produced by the local universities, the Bar provides feedback on what is expected from the law graduates. The universities, on the other hand can provide the legal industry with the cutting edge, what could be important in the future.

Amer Hamzah Arshad, the moderator for this session posed the rather cliché question to the speakers, that whether it is true that overseas graduates make better lawyers than local graduates.

To this question, the speakers were in an agreement that this is not the measure to determine a good lawyer. Dr Azmi added that the difference between overseas graduates and local graduates is mainly on the level of exposure to the way of life of people in other countries which the overseas graduates acquire during their stint in the foreign university, and that kind of experience helped to broaden their scope of mind and perspectives toward things.

This Session 2 saw a more encouraging participation from the young lawyers. A chambering student questioned the marking system of the Professional Ethics Test, to which Steven and Colin explained that the Bar is keeping track of the standards of the test, reading out the statistics of the test and that the Bar does provide sessions with the pupils to explain to them why they have failed the test.

Amer concluded the session by suggesting the young lawyers to read a book entitled “Letters to a Young Lawyer”, written by Alan M. Dershowits.

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