Raja Muda: Review quality of law courses

The Star

KUALA LUMPUR: Institutions of higher learning have been urged to review the quality of their law courses following the drop in the number of those who pass the Certificate of Legal Practice (CLP).

The Raja Muda of Perak Raja Dr Nazrin Shah said they should not compromise quality for quantity, especially in new intakes for law faculties.

He said there was an increasing gap between the quantity and quality of law graduates, as since 1994, the percentage of candidates who passed the CLP examination was below 50%.

“The scenario calls for a review of the quality of teachers, education, teacher-student ratio and the quality of knowledge and skills successfully provided to graduates,” Raja Nazrin said during the 18th CLP convocation 2012 at PWTC here yesterday.

He said that over the past three years, the percentage of candidates who passed remained low at 40% in 2010, 45% in 2011 and 41% last year.

Last year, 350 of 860 candidates passed the CLP and were qualified to practice.

“As such, an analysis needs to be done among the graduates who failed the CLP to find out how many of the failed graduates came from local institutions and how many from foreign institutions,” he added.

Raja Nazrin also said the analysis had to identify which local institutions had the highest number of CLP failures.

Last year, the Bar Council did a study among 393 law firms to get feedback on the attitude, skills and abilities considered important when hiring candidates.

“Four factors were considered important by the law firms proficiency in English, both oral and written, communication skills, legal knowledge and commitment to the firm.

“The findings have to be taken into consideration by the local institutions which offer law courses to ensure the graduates they produce have market value on par with those graduating from institutions in other countries.”