It’s the system that needs a change
THE short notice on the change in the format of the Criminal Procedure paper for the Certificate of Legal Practice (CLP), the external exams for foreign law graduates which is due to be held in August, is unjust and unfair.
CLP candidates had hitherto been required to answer four questions out of seven. In the new format, they would be required to answer one compulsory question and three others of their choice.
The Legal Profession Qualifying Board (LPQB) held a meeting on the reformatting in December 2016 but the change was only announced many months later. There surely could not have been any expectation that tutors and candidates for the CLP exams would have enough time to adapt their approach to the Criminal Procedure paper.
Candidates should not have to fret over an additional burden when they already have to reckon with the requirement of passing all five papers.
Even before the recent change, candidates were always left somewhat in the dark about what to expect in the papers. The only thing they knew for certain was that they had thick bulks of legal material to learn within a stressfully short period of time.
But this is not to suggest that there should be no change per se. In fact, major reforms should be encouraged in the certification of Malaysia’s aspiring lawyers.
How would there be uniformity, quality and transparency when there are different exams for students from local universities, semi-government universities and foreign law graduates?
The focus of the LPQB should not be to make exams harder for some candidates but to make them consistent with a set standard for all aspiring lawyers in the country.
Attorney-General Tan Sri Mohamed Apandi Ali, who currently chairs the LPQB, should look into the matter and implement some necessary reforms, which are as follows:
1) Establish an independent committee to peruse the syllabus, decide on a set framework of exam questions, and enforce consistency in criteria and standards;
2) Act as reviewers to ensure that examiners who set the questions adhere to agreed standards; and
3) Implement a Common Bar exam for all aspiring lawyers across all backgrounds of undergraduate law degrees, whether locally or overseas, publicly or privately educated.
A consensus can be easily found among those who have sat the CLP exams that there is indeed a strong case to be made for scrapping the CLP and asking that a Bar exam common to all be administered instead.
Another reason is the blatant lack of transparency, as exam papers are not allowed to be reviewed and examiners’ reports are not provided.
Moreover, the CLP exams are over-reliant on memorisation and regurgitation.
As Lady Justice best illustrates, the law should be blind. How can the law be trusted to be carried out justly if the precursor to the law is itself not blind but discriminatory of where one is educated?
If some lawyers are to be certified differently from others simply because of an arbitrary factor, such as the geography of their education, how can we say with any level of seriousness that our lawyers are all consistently qualified, or that in Malaysia the word “qualification” means anything at all to those who seek justice?
This inevitably brings one to question whether the LPQB has truly set its priorities straight. The CLP might be certifying people who are huge memory hubs and not enough people who understand the law and have the practical know-how to best serve their future clients. While legal knowledge most definitely is best assessed on paper, for the LPQB it is worth considering the introduction of a practical element to the certification process so that new lawyers will already be wellequipped when they begin their legal practice or chambering stages, and above all ensure that clients can be confident that their lawyers are adept and efficient.