As mentioned in our previous post, we have participated in the 2nd legal career convention this year.

The LCC was jointly organised by United Kingdom Malaysian Student Law Union (KPUM) and the Law Society of University of Malaya (UM) and officiated by Y.B Dato’ Ngeh Koo Ham (Alumni of Faculty of Law, UM 1985).

LCC started at 9am till 5pm. Aprt from visiting the participanting booths, the visitors can also attend a series of legal seminars.

“In conjunction with the Opening Ceremony, Dato’ Ngeh Koo Ham was invited to give a speech entitled Judicial crisis in Malaysia”

“The president of the Law Society of UM, Kiang Lee Lian”

“[from left] Professor Dr. Cheong May Fong (Dean of UM law faculty), Dato’ Ngeh Koo Ham and wife, Eddie Law (eLawyer)”

“eLawyer’s representative were ready for the day!- [from left] Leanne, Gerald and Christine”

“our representative was answering visitors enquiries”

“Leanne was introducing our law portal to a law lecturer”

“Christine was explaining about our Legal Blog Writing Contest“

 “Entrance to the LLC”

There were 16 law firms and 7 non law firms participated in this year LCC namely:

(more…)

 by Nur Farzana Mohd Zulkifli

When Ben Franklin said, ”It is better to know than to wonder”, he probably didn’t know how powerful those words are, or many people they would touch.  before law school or the Community Outreach programme and Clinical Legal Education course in University of Malaya I never would have envisioned a prison (at least not much) , let alone be able to talk about one from an INSIDE perspective.

Movies or books often dictate a pre-conceived set of emotions to feel ‘if and when’ you’re entering one, like fear and sympathy. Some say we should feel appalled after such an experience. What I felt after my first visit and those after that were different. There was empathy and humility, but most of all, gratitude and empowerment.

To clarify things a bit, what I saw in all my visits include physical infrastructures, like buildings that looked like hostel dorms, huge impenetrable-looking gates and barbwire, but also the human side of the prisons - among other things, fierce-looking wardens, extremely disciplined detainees. Note that I use the term detainees here instead of prisoners or convicts because I had only visited the juvenile-detention-center part of Kajang Prison, known as Sekolah Integrity Kajang or Kajang Integrity School. How is this different from a real prison? Well, for one the detainees there were found guilty for crimes while they were juveniles in age, while others were juveniles remanded or awaiting trial, mostly too poor to afford bail to be set free in the process; and their living quarters are separated from adult convicts in the prison, as the law demands so.

I was involved (and still am) in the Community Outreach Programme ( and later the Clinical Legal Education course) and our access into the Kajang Integrity School was allowed as we were there to teach these detainees about the laws, unorthodoxly using interactive teaching methods and laymen terms. Among the things I remember very clearly was what or CLE Advisor Assoc. Prof Hjh Norbani Mohamed Nazeri said to us the first time we arrived to teach,”…it’s not about you, its about them”. She was right. We were there to teach and we taught them law, but in the end, the teachers became the students.

(more…)

by Khairul Anuar bin Shaharudin (Advocate & Solicitor)

I am not an economist, an analyst or even a lawyer who advice banks how to close million dollar transactions. I am not even a stock player, unless you call owning ASB as stock trading. I have never has an amount larger than RM1,000-00 in my wallet and no more than RM10,000-00 in my bank account at any one time, other than the time my personal loans had just been approved where it ballooned, albeit very momentarily to just below RM50,000-00. My firm just do real estate and banking with corporate work for SMEs once in a while. Oh, and intellectual property. We would like to be known more as a boutique firm, more than anything. Hell, my staff knows each of their files by heart…We would like to keep it that way (is this advertising? I am writing this for friends and clients)

(more…)

by Donovan Lee Shyun Hyn

There are always pros and cons to an Act of Parliament. The notion that one cannot have the best of both worlds is indeed true and is applicable in this situation as what is good for the Executive may not go down well with the rest of the population. The proposed Race Relations Act is one fine example. Datuk Seri Shafie Apdal, the Minister of Unity, Culture, Arts and Heritage in his interview with the New Sunday Times, contended that the proposed Act is specific in which it would be able to deal better with issues of religion and sensitivities of race as compared to the Sedition Act or Internal Security Act which is too general, thus creating loopholes to prosecute alleged offenders.

One might think why do we need to formulate such Act after having achieved 51 years of Independence? Wouldn’t the world community laugh at us for the failure to govern race relations despite the existence of various policies and bodies which were meant to instill unity among Malaysians of all races and religions? I certainly have my reservations for that.

Great Britain was formed in the year 1707 with the passing of the Acts of Union which merged the two parliaments of England and Scotland while Canada was formed in the year 1867 by virtue of British North America Acts. They have both enacted Race Relations Act in which the former was established in 1965 and the latter in 1991. These countries were created way before Malaysia was born but the Legislatures see the necessity of enacting the Act which makes it unlawful to discriminate against a person on the grounds of race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin. Hence, the issue of humiliation does not arise here.

(more…)

By Lee Shih

Thirteen thousand. That is roughly the number of lawyers currently practising in Malaysia. It gives the impression that there are more than enough lawyers here. So why should we worry if a few hundred, or even a thousand, lawyers leave the profession to work in other jurisdictions?

Around 1,000 new lawyers join the profession annually so shouldn’t there be plenty of legal talent here in this country?

There is, however, cause for worry. Increasingly, law firms are complaining of a general decline in the quality of lawyers entering the profession. Our brightest and best law graduates are choosing instead to practise in other countries.

Further, the pace of lawyers leaving Malaysia for other jurisdictions like Singapore, Hong Kong and the Middle East appears to have also accelerated, and this exacerbates the legal brain drain that we are facing.

In her Putik Lada article ‘Not as Glamorous as Boston Legal’ (The Star, Aug 15), Melissa Tai touched on some of the problems the profession faces in attracting and retaining legal talent. What I will be setting out is a wish list of sorts and some solutions to this problem.

Wish List

At the top of any lawyer’s wish list would be the obvious factor of higher pay. Undoubtedly, other jurisdictions offer a significantly more attractive remuneration package, even after factoring in the higher cost of living.

It is accepted that present market forces result in relatively low legal fees being charged, which in turn contributes to a relatively low amount of pay compared with other jurisdictions.

The difficulty in attracting lawyers to stay in Malaysia goes beyond the issue of pay. One of the strong appeals of working overseas is the opportunity to be exposed to more international and high-calibre work. There is no easy answer to this, as other countries like Singapore, for example, also grapple with the same issue of lawyers leaving for this reason.

(more…)

When we were conducting our Legal Career Survey early this year, amongst others, we have also asked the legal industry in Malaysia as to which website they visited most.

Those websites that manage to get into the list were LexisNexis, CLJ, Malaysian Bar as well as Lexis. Which one do you think will rank at the top of the list out of the 602 responses? If you guessed LexisNexis, you got it right! 42% of the candidates have chosen LexisNexis as their favourite law website, and most of the people who agreed with it were the law students as well as the paralegals where 237 students and 9 paralegals were LexisNexis supporters! However, most of the lawyers picked CLJ and Malaysian Bar website as their favourite websites.

LexisNexis is one of the pioneers online portal providing essential law resources to the legal industry in Malaysia as well as the world. Apart from providing law resources, they also provide business information solution to corporation, government, tax and accounting industries.

(more…)