A fairly interesting ATC
Today marks the first day of Young Lawyers Committee ("YLC")
interraction with the law students all over our beautiful country,
Malaysia. The whole batch of us, which consists of the KLYLC Chair -
Dipendra, KL BAR Pupils’ Welfare - Mr. Richard Wee Thiam Seng, External
Liason head - Chee Hoe, Chooi Peng, Sandesh Kabir Singh, Allan and
myself, had given our time back to the community by heading a "meeting"
with all potential lawyers of KEMAYAN ATC, KL.
The
programme started fairly late, as the organizers had state that the
students were not used to waking up early for anything. A point to note
to lawyers-to-be there. Dipendra had head off the opening speech which
had then followed by Richard. Both lawyers who had fair deal of how the
system looks like in the outside world was there to guide the potential
lawyers to expect the unexpected.
At
about 11am, the students were broken up into groups of five. They were
then placed in all "conference" rooms located in the 3rd Floor. We
chose our rooms… but fortunately (or otherwise) my room was shared
with two other lawyers… Kabir and Richard. Being the senior, Richard
had done most of the talking. Introducing himself, the bar.. the
organization.. what to expect in a chambering/pupilage life.. legal
aid.. the general scope of work he does in his firm.
To
some extend, Richard had made a "role-play" of how a typical case would
look like. The procedure and the amount of work that is required of ONE
single file. He reminded the students that there’s a fairly amount of
files to be handled by one person. Hence, a balancing act is required.
All
in all, it was a rather good day for me. A morning well spent with the
lawyers, organizers and students of ATC. I was mainly introduced as a
pupil who is ending her pupilage real soon AND also quite involved with
AWAM. That made me happy. Giving back to society is good.
I
find that MORE of these type of awareness is needed in making sure that
the new batch of lawyers will feel comfortable in dealing with the
people from Malaysian Bar or KL Bar… or even me.
There was a question that goes like this… " Have you ever had to handle a client who lied and how did you handle these clients?" To my answer… "I’ve
not yet handled a client who lied in telling me what had happened…
but i have handled clients who in actual reality thinks they know the
law way better than I do and INSISTS that they are right" (Richard, in the background- I wonder who you’re talking about, with a snigger)
Interesting
people were met. I find that people ARE interested to contribute in
Legal Aid… the only thing that’s stopping them is the amount of time
and money they have to sacrifice. But trust me… once you know you’ve
made a difference in someone’s life, all the time sacrificed and the
money not earned out of the file is worth it. And karma will get back
to you… you will get back what you deserved… good or bad.
Yes,
this would’ve been my report on ATC… but then again… I’m not doing
the report. Kabir is. Hihihi… (Kabir - you are allowed to copy paste
and edit this blog for report purposes, if needed be… *winks*)
