I have noted with dismay not only the recent announcement made by the Legal Profession Qualifying Board regarding the latest restrictions imposed on the Certificate in Legal Practice (CLP) examination, but also the responses from some law graduates who welcome the ruling.

In particular, I am staggered to read the letter titled ‘The latest CLP ruling amendments are reasonable’ (Malaysiakini and Malay Mail, Dec 29, 2016).

First and foremost, the merits of this ruling cannot be considered in isolation from the current framework of the ‘filtering exam’ for law graduates seeking to be qualified. Indeed, it would be terribly unfair if the local law graduates are out of the picture when it comes to any ruling amendments to legal profession that are aimed at enhancing the quality of legal profession.

The authors pointed out that the new ruling can deal with the huge influx of new lawyers to the profession, many of whom have been complained to be lacking the necessary skills, with which I wholeheartedly agree. But despite the ruling having the effect of controlling the supply of lawyers, the question remains, is such measure just and fair?

It is not fair to target only foreign law graduates

It must be reminded that at the moment the local law graduates are not subject to external common exam like foreign law graduates are.

If the large number of new lawyers being churned out from law schools and their deteriorating standards are the main concerns, then any measures to tackle such concerns must be directed at all relevant parties, ie both local and foreign law graduates, unless the authors are of the view that the local law graduates are already up to the standard.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. In fact, in 2012, a survey entitled ‘Survey on Employability of New Entrants into the Malaysian Bar: The Employer’s Perception’, has been carried out by the Bar Council to explore the concerns on the quality and standards faced by employer-law firms (note also that the survey has been commissioned to an independent research firm to ensure the credibility and integrity of the survey, according to the report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Common Bar Course).

It was found that whilst foreign law graduates scored well on most of the attributes considered important, most local law graduates came off poorly for such attributes. However, most foreign law graduates fell short of the expectations with respect to knowledge of the law and commitment to the firm.

The point is therefore clear. Although the authors did imply that the new law graduates including those from local universities also lack the necessary skills, I am puzzled as to why the authors failed to deal with the need to reform the professional exam for local law graduates.

As much as I understand that the said letter written by the authors are meant to be commenting solely on CLP ruling amendments, I humbly submit that it is impossible to isolate such amendments from the whole circumstances. In other words, such amendments cannot be reasonable if the local law graduates receive different treatment when it comes to raising the bar.

Overhaul the system, not merely setting the time limit and attempts

The letter published on Malaysiakini some 10 years ago by one Fahri Azzat is one of the sharpest criticisms leveled at CLP. I believe that nobody would dispute the fact that CLP is a mugging-type exam which imparts almost zero professional skills but pure memorisation works, coupled with the lack of transparency in marking the papers.

The intention of raising the bar is one that I believe all legal professionals and law graduates inspired to be lawyers would not object. However, this amendment of setting time limit and attempts do nothing to change the crux of CLP which has long been seen as a failed filtering system that does not impart the necessary foundation of skills for lawyers.

It may be noted that the authors did point out that the Common Bar Course as mooted by the Malaysian Bar would be the remedy to deal with the concern that CLP may not be an appropriate filtering examination. Whilst I am not sure about the authors' position on subjecting the local law graduates to also the Common Bar Course, I failed to grasp why the authors would support the amendments now, but not waiting for the Common Bar Course to be implemented.

Not easy feat, but irrelevant

The authors also submitted that being accepted into local universities to do law is no easy feat. As much as I agree with the authors, it is however of little significance on the matter. Firstly, hard entry does not mean hard examination. Indeed, if it is so difficult, why the deteriorating standards as found by the above-mentioned survey?

Secondly, hard entry does not justify the exemption from external common exam. To draw an analogy, while it is not easy to secure a place to study law in OxBridge or the National University of Singapore (NUS), the law graduates from these prestigious universities do still have to sit for an external professional common exam.

After all, what we are concerned with is the quality of the Bar, and we should not change our attitude and be rather forgiving for those who successfully secure a place in local universities to do law.

In particular, the authors argue also that some written examination components of the BPTC are much harder than the CLP papers. I would not dispute this, but it also leads to a bigger question: why much lower passing rate for CLP compared to that of BPTC? Does it mean that there is something wrong with our marking system? How is it right then to bring such amendment under such circumstances?

We cannot, on one hand, argue that CLP is not as hard as one thinks, and on the other hand, failed to come up with any plausible explanations behind the statistics. Otherwise the CLP candidates would have been put into a quandary.

Conclusion

In short, any amendment targeted only at foreign graduates in the name of raising the bar for legal profession cannot be reasonable when the same standards are not being applied to local law graduates. Hence, the authors must not cling to the delusion that this discriminatory amendment is for the sake of good quality of legal profession without fixing firstly the single-entry point to the legal profession.

Besides, a shadow of doubt may be thrown upon its effectiveness, considering the possibility of scarcity of foreign graduates caused by the new ruling would force the law firms to have lesser choices in hiring fresh lawyers, which, in the long run, will not improve the standards of legal profession. Until and unless we bring in a standardised system of measurement that is a level playing ground for all, an amendment like this is certainly not a reasonable one?