I refer to the never-ending controversies surrounding the CLP in general, and specifically an open letter to the prime minister, Tahap kelulusan peperiksaan CLP dikawal 30-35% , which is about the existence of a quota for bumiputera candidates, as well as a quota for the total number of passing candidates for the Certificate of Legal Practice exam.
Year after year, the attorney-general himself has denied the existence of any form of quota for the CLP and the relevant authorities have always explained the declining annual passing rate on the grounds that the standard or performance of the candidates are too low.
I myself have had to endure the heartbreak of failing CLP once, but I have many friends (who are no less competent than me and other newly qualified lawyers) who have had to take the exam up to four times before they finally passed.
For those who do not know, CLP is compulsory for all law graduates of foreign universities before they can become a qualified lawyer here, whereas the graduates of local universities are exempted from it altogether after obtaining their Bachelor's Degree.
The rationale for the CLP exam is acceptable. Because foreign graduates do not study Malaysian law in their courses, they should be made to pass that exam in order to prove that they know enough about Malaysian law to be a Malaysian lawyer. That is fair, and is necessary, to protect the public from unqualified lawyers.
On that rationale, graduates of local universities are exempted from sitting for and passing the CLP, presumably because they have studied Malaysian law throughout their Bachelor's Degree course, so they don't have to prove that they know enough about Malaysian law to be a qualified lawyer.
My question to the authorities is:
Since the local graduates studied Malaysian law much more than the foreign graduates, and they have been deemed qualified enough in Malaysian law by the respective universities which awarded them their degrees, surely they would have no problem whatsoever in proving their competence by passing the CLP exam?
In fact, based on that rationale, they should be guaranteed to do better than the foreign graduates (who normally only attend courses at private colleges for about nine months before taking the CLP exam), since they have studied Malaysian law for four long years. And if they can't be guaranteed to pass, then there must be something seriously wrong in local universities sending out unqualified lawyers to misguide the public and pose a threat to the legal system, year after year.
If the foreign graduates are required to prove their competence, so should the local graduates. There is absolutely no justification for inequality or preferential treatment when it comes to proving your professional competence.
Therefore, to eradicate all suspicions of foul play and unfair practices which have dogged the CLP for so many years, why not make all law graduates foreign and local pass the CLP as a prerequisite to becoming a lawyer?
Countries like England, Australia as well as the US have a general professional exam compulsory for all aspiring lawyers, regardless of whether they are graduates of top or average universities in their respective countries. So, even Oxford, Cambridge Harvard and Yale law graduates have to prove themselves just like everybody else. So, what makes the graduates of Malaysian local universities so special?
If we are really that confident in the standard and quality of our local universities (so much so that we don't need them to prove that they are competent), I see no harm in requiring them to pass the exact same professional exam after obtaining their Bachelor's degree I'm sure they will do well.
After all, the rationale for a professional exam is to ensure the quality and standard of members of the profession and, above all, to protect the public. The public is entitled to be protected from incompetent and inferior-quality foreign law graduates who have no business calling themselves lawyers this as much as from local ones.
