HomeCommitteesNational Young Lawyers Young Lawyers Convention 2011: Professional Development Classes - Empowering the 21st Century Lawyer (2 July 2011)
Young Lawyers Convention 2011: Professional Development Classes - Empowering the 21st Century Lawyer (2 July 2011)
Wednesday, 06 July 2011 04:47pm
Contributed by Yip Xiaoheng
The second day of the 4th Young Lawyers Convention 2011 started with a session themed “Professional Development Classes - Empowering the 21st Century Lawyer”. The moderator for this session was Janet Chai, while the speakers were Raphael Tay, HR Dipendra and Steven Thiru.
As an introduction to the session, it was revealed that Bar Council had been pushing for a system of continuing professional development. The structure for the system of continuing professional development, previously known as “Continuing Legal Education”, was already in place. Bar Council had tried to make it mandatory, but it was defeated due to anxiety as to what the word “mandatory” had meant.
Raphael Tay shared that in his research, he discovered that in countries that practised the common law system, such as Canada, Australia and England, some kind of mandatory/voluntary continuing legal education system was in place. For example, in Singapore, it was compulsory for lawyers to undergo continuing professional development courses.
Raphael Tay admitted that the scope for continuing professional development courses was very wide. He mentioned that a research done at the New South Wales Bar revealed that winery courses were approved, and considered to be a type of course that contributed towards lawyers’ continuing professional development as they helped lawyers gain a better understanding of the wine industry.
In Malaysia, continuing professional development courses have been worked out since 2004. Raphael Tay explained that the courses would have to be revised and updated constantly. One of the proposed revisions was for professional development courses to be considered on a two-year cycle as busy lawyers would find it difficult to invest a lot of time in them, considering that their attendance would be mandatory. Points would also be given to lawyers who undertook activities that contributed towards developing professional standards such as attending conventions, giving lectures and taking up a Masters degree in law.
Why should continuing professional development courses be implemented? In order to improve and become better, lawyers had to continuously develop themselves. Raphael Tay added that it was incumbent for lawyers to improve themselves, regardless of whether continuing professional development courses were implemented in the near future.
The second speaker, HR Dipendra, pointed out that in light of the mushrooming of universities in Malaysia that provided law degree courses, competition in the legal profession would be fierce as everyone could be a lawyer. He rhetorically posed, how would lawyers play a part to improve themselves in order to fend off challenges and get to the top? He then elaborated that as human beings, we never stopped learning. Thus, when lawyers improved their standards and professional competence, their career progression would become advanced in turn. Therefore, young lawyers were urged to embrace the introduction of continuing professional development courses as they were designed to improve and make them better lawyers.
HR Dipendra further queried, taking into consideration the liberalisation of the Bar in the near future, if lawyers were ready to go to Jakarta, Bangkok and Hong Kong for work. He stated that different skill levels would be required as clients in those countries would have different expectations. As the right skills were necessary for lawyers to compete with their foreign counterparts, continuing professional development courses would therefore be important.
The last speaker of the session, Steven Thiru, viewed the legal profession in Malaysia to be lacking in the “culture of quality”. He explained that as professionals, the most important thing was to have a “culture of quality” to ensure that the quality of lawyers was maintained and enhanced over the generations. He then implored delegates to look at the United Kingdom, where back then, lawyers used to say that Lord Reid was arguably the greatest English judge to walk the corridors of the English Commonwealth court. He further stated that in the 21st century, we had Lord Denning and Lord Neuberger. All these showed a perpetuation of quality throughout the generations; something that we ought to follow.
Steven Thiru highlighted that lawyers in Malaysia were too cocooned in the comfort zone of incompetence. He warned delegates that we could not talk about globalisation, nor could we rub shoulders with the top lawyers of the world, if we did not step out of our comfort zone. Instead, lawyers should go out and improve themselves to compete with the best in the region. He argued that it was not that we did not have the intellect – it was the system that choked us.
Steven Thiru ended the session by stressing that continuing professional development courses would lift the standards of each and every lawyer, thus enabling all lawyers to have a mark of quality on them.
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Committees 
Raphael Tay shared that in his research, he discovered that in countries that practised the common law system, such as Canada, Australia and England, some kind of mandatory/voluntary 
The second speaker, HR Dipendra, pointed out that in light of the mushrooming of universities in Malaysia that provided law degree courses, competition in the legal profession would be fierce as everyone could be a lawyer. He rhetorically posed, how would lawyers play a part to improve themselves in order to fend off challenges and get to the top? He then elaborated that as human beings, we never stopped learning. Thus, when lawyers improved their standards and professional competence, their career progression would become advanced in turn. Therefore, young lawyers were urged to embrace the introduction of 
The last speaker of the session, Steven Thiru, viewed the legal profession in Malaysia to be lacking in the “culture of quality”. He explained that as professionals, the most important thing was to have a “culture of quality” to ensure that the quality of lawyers was maintained and enhanced over the generations. He then implored delegates to look at the United Kingdom, where back then, lawyers used to say that Lord Reid was arguably the greatest English judge to walk the corridors of the English Commonwealth court. He further stated that in the 21st century, we had Lord Denning and Lord Neuberger. All these showed a perpetuation of quality throughout the generations; something that we ought to follow.
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