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Pupils Introduction Session
Organised by the KL Bar Pupils Welfare Committee (PWC), the introduction session for April was held on 04 April 2012. The session, attended by 84 pupils, was led by Jason Kong and Harleen Kaur (Leena). Pupils were briefed on the structure of the Malaysian Bar and the KL Bar, the election to both the Bar Council and the KL Bar Committee and highlights of the Malaysian Bar. The introduction session included a session for pupils to raise issues and problems faced by them during their period of pupillage and the Chairman and members of the KLBC were on hand to provide input and possible solutions. The issues raised by the pupils at this session were divided into the areas of Court, Office and Miscellaneous matters, with the following details :
Court
- E-Filing including the filing system
- Rude Court Staff - Admission Registry at RKKK (Rayuan dan Kuasa Kuasa Khas)
- Parking
- Section 36(2) Application (commonly know as “Short Call”) - long hearing date
- Court Canteen - Smoking zone. Currently there is a “No-Smoking” policy at the KL Court Canteen but it is not adhered to. The pupils suggested that the Court should come up with designated Smoking areas.
- SA Court - Q System. Bankruptcy matters, there is no uniformity, some are on first come first served basis, others record their names on the piece of paper and wait to be called in.
- Proposed to allow court documents to be printed on both sides of the paper
- Too many “Borang” for admission
- Admission to the Bar - long hearing date
- The compulsory 14 days Legal Aid Service
- Inefficiency of the Court staff
- Conveyancing - RPGT (Real Property Gains Tax). Pupils have an issue on the Form required to be filled up to inform the Inland Revenue Board of any parties who buy or sell properties.
Office
- Wages, SOCSO
- Courses for Master - Pupils opined that certain Masters needed to be reminded and guided on how to train their pupils
- Working hours
- Work station/condition
Misc
- Exemption on period of pupillage
- Filing of pupillage papers - There is lack of guidance on this
13 April 2012
Environmental Talk - Beyond Me & Mine: From Solid Waste to Climate Change
In conjunction with Earth Day 2012 and to kick-start KL Bar’s 4th year ‘Old/Disused Paper Collection Week’, the KL Bar Environmental Law Committee and Professional Development Committee presented an Environmental Talk by Mr Gurmit Singh at the KL Bar Auditorium at 3.00pm. As encouraged, participants brought along recyclable items as a ticket for admission to the Talk.
13 April 2012 to 23 April 2012
KL Bar ELC Earth Day 2012 Activity Week - Collection Of Recyclables, Paper, Bottles And Cans
The KL Bar Environmental Law Committee (ELC) organised the ‘Old/Disused Paper Collection’ for the 4th consecutive year for members to participate in the Earth Day Celebration which falls on 22 April 2012. This year ELC decided to include 2 more recyclable items namely plastic bottles and aluminium/tin cans to be collected besides old/disused paper.
16 April 2012
E-Filing Meeting between KL Bar Civil Court Liaison Committee (CCLC), KL Court Officers and Formis Representatives
The main objective of the meeting was to introduce the new CCLC members to the Court Officers and Formis Representatives in charge of the E-Filing System (EFS). In future the CCLC members may approach the Court Officers/Formis representatives directly should members of the Bar raise any issues with them pertaining to the EFS. Various issues and arising matters were also discussed at the meeting.
17 April 2012
E-Purse Briefing
The Civil Court Liaison Committee were invited for a briefing on the e-purse at 3.00pm at the Palace of Justice, Putrajaya. The Judiciary is looking for alternative methods of payment for the electronic filing system. The CCLC was represented by Brendan Navin Siva and Lew Chee Seong.
18 April 2012
PDC Seminar on Remand, Bail and Criminal Advocacy
Amrit Pal Singh from Messrs Amrit & Company presented the seminar which was held at the KL Bar Auditorium at 3.00pm. The seminar was attended by 55 participants. The seminar covered basic advocacy skills required for a Criminal Trial including Remand and Bail.
20 April 2012
PDC Seminar on Maritime Law and Shipping Business in Malaysia
Prof. Dr. Sabirin Ja’afar who is currently Professor of Business Law and Ethics in the International Business School (IBS), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Kuala Lumpur presented the seminar which was held at the KL Bar Auditorium at 3.00pm. The seminar was attended by 64 participants. The seminar covered the following areas “Malaysia as a Maritime Nation”, “UN Convention 1982”, “Malaysia and UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea)”, “Shipping Trends” and “Ship Building”.
26 April 2012
PWC Pupils Workshop on Civil Litigation
The workshop, organised by the KL Bar Pupils Welfare Committee specifically for pupils, was presented by Richard Wee Thiam Seng on 26 April 2012 at 3.00pm. The workshop focused primarily on the practical aspects of handling a brief, opinion writing, drafting of pleadings and presenting a case in court. The workshop was attended by 22 pupils.
26 April 2012
KL Bar Vaisakhi Night
The KLYLC organised a Vaisakhi Night at Sangam @ Plaza Kelana Jaya on 26 April 2012 from 7.00pm onwards. 55 members attended this inaugural event. It was an enjoyable evening with good food and entertainment by the “Mumbai Stars”. Click here to view the photos.
27 April 2012
PDC Seminar on An Introduction to Due Diligence: Practice and Procedures
Kenny Poon and Anne Wong from Messrs Jeff Leong, Poon & Wong presented the seminar which was held at the KL Bar Auditorium at 10.00am. The seminar was attended by 105 participants. The seminar covered the following areas “What is Due Diligence?”, “Why is Due Diligence Necessary?”, “Relevant Legislation”, “Guidelines and Requirements”, “Important Elements of Due Diligence”, “Process of Compliance Due Diligence” and “Role of Solicitors in Due Diligence”.
30 April 2012
Meeting with the KL Criminal Court Officers and PDRM
The meeting was initiated by the KL Bar Criminal Practice Committee (CPC) and mainly to discuss the Jinjang and Dang Wangi Remand Centres and the problems faced by Criminal Practitioners such as the application of Section 28A and 'IO Ganti' during Remand Proceedings.
Edited by Jeremiah R. Gurusamy.
Stop emailing documents to yourself, share large files and collaborate on work on the go!
With Malaysia’s high internet penetration and improving bandwidth speeds, every citizen should be able to work away from home with the right tools at their fingertips.
For better or worse, being stuck in a meeting, being out-station or waiting in court is now no excuse for not being able to handle any incoming matters. This article will serve up a taster of three loose categories of “freemium”* applications which enables you to access your files from any computer, share them with other devices/computers and collaborate easily with colleagues at little or no cost. Now, anybody can work away from the office.
1. Auto-Sync Folders
First-off, there’s Dropbox. Imagine a folder which can be accessed by any device you have, be it your work to home computer (PC or Mac) or even your tablets/smartphones. You can even assign folders to be shared among your family or, in this case, colleagues. The folders will automatically sync and can be accessed without you lifting a finger. No longer do you have to email documents to yourself as Dropbox will automatically ensure all documents in your dropbox folder are available at your different workstations.
Just before you stop emailing yourself documents and throwing away your flash-drives, confidentiality and security are ongoing concerns with Dropbox. One way around this is to encode your documents before they go into your dropbox. Bear in mind that with any cloud-based solution, a 3rd party is basically receiving and storing all your data. Read this article on SecretSync if you would like an extra layer of security of encrypting your documents before putting them into your Dropbox especially if you are dealing with clients’ or any other confidential documents.
2. Remote Access Tools
If your office IT department has blocked Dropbox or you do not want to use Dropbox, as a last resort – there are remote access applications. These applications are commonly used by IT teams to service and troubleshoot your computer to investigate and solve its problems. Equally, you can take control of your work computer from anywhere in the world to email yourself a document you desperately need or to check any information on it.
If you are interested, check out : Logmein and Teamviewer. (this writer has a personal preference of the latter – if you are using it commercially, please do get a commercial licence to support their good work)
If you have your mouth wide open right now, thinking anyone can take control of your computer right now – not to fear – you will still need the unique ID and password generated by the system each time the application is opened to gain access. If you are away on a long period but yet require constant remote access to your PC, with Teamviewer, you can set a preset password that can be left on, and access it through your smartphone or laptop as though you are right in front of it. Teamviewer also allows you transfer documents between workstations quickly and efficiently. The only theoretical limitation is the speed/stability of your internet connection.
3. Synced Notebooks
Don’t you hate it when you scribble minutes of a meeting or important notes but lose those key pieces of paper, or worse, the notebook you wrote them in? Well, applications such as Evernote and Springpad ** synchronize notes that you type into your computer/tablet/smartphone into their servers. So, you can access them again later on the same or other devices, or even on the web on totally different devices! You never have to worry about losing minutes or your diary if you use such a service.
Personally, I prefer Evernote as it can even “clip”(save) whole webpages or emails and save it into a notebook. This makes it very handy when you need to centralise all information about a certain subject. Eg: All investment related articles are clipped and saved into my “Investment” notebook. Whenever I access it, I can revisit websites I have read and also update, say, my investment portfolio there as well.
However, Evernote has received flak for its costliness when you upgrade to a premier account, and it does get a bit messy with the rapid accumulation of many notes. Others prefer Springpad as it has more character (it uses color coordination), syncs with your Google Calendar and generally comes across as more user-friendly. If you have to choose between the two, take your time to choose wisely as you wouldn’t want the recurring headaches that come with changing between the two.
4. (Okay, I said 3 but here’s a more Advanced Web-based Application) Project Collaboration
For the more advanced, you may want to checkout Mavenlink for better collaboration between teams and clients. Basically, its a virtual workspace where clients and project teams can collaborate on projects by posting updates, sharing files, assigning tasks, keeping track of time spent on projects and issuing invoices. For free, you can create two projects limited to two team members but will have to pay for more team-members and projects. Its very much a step-up from email e-groups and akin to a Facebook closed group for work. It also has elements of Linkedin as project managers’ profiles go public. This may be very handy for people who are freelance graphic designers, online video editors and event managers.
I think this is a great tool if you are working in different parts of the country/globe; however, from my observations, the platform still seems like it hasn’t been fully embraced by the online community. In my testing, most users relegated it to an email e-group and rarely logged onto the service. In hindsight, some quick tutorials (before forcing it onto them!) would have helped as the learning curve for Mavenlink was not too bad in my experience. Another advantage of Mavenlink is the ability to create project templates to be used over and over, targeted especially at those who deal with repetitive/similar projects, although this requires an upgrade.
Conclusion
Spoilt with the choice of applications/software out there, working away from the office is much simpler than before. This article is in no way meant to be a comprehensive review or how-to-guide, but just a taster as to the changing world of applications which could very much change the way people work.
Now, if only a kindly internet provider could install free internet at courts around Malaysia, maybe Malaysian litigation lawyers would find the wait around court more bearable and productive…
Do you have any apps which enable you to work better away from office or feedback? Drop a comment below.
* Freemium software – Software that is free for light usage (read: personal use) but usually charges for heavier (ie: commercial) usage.
**Note: If you’re using Google Chrome, Evernote and Springpad are available on the webstore for free as a Google Extension.
Click here for a video presentation on Dropbox.
Prepared by Joachim Leong. This Article appeared in LoyarBurok and is reproduced with permission from the author.
08 March 2012
PDC Seminar on Preparation and Conducting Civil Trials
Colin Andrew Pereira from Messrs Goh Wong Pereira and Sanjeev Kumar Rasiah from Messrs Sanjeev Kumar presented the seminar which was held at the KL Bar Auditorium at 3.00pm. The seminar was attended by 125 participants. The seminar covered the following Preliminaries: “Preparing Agreed Facts and Issues to be Tried”, “Preparing Summary of Case”, “Preparing Agreed Bundle of Documents” and “Preparing Witness Statements”. The following areas on Conducting a Trial were also covered: “Opening Speech”, “Examination In Chief”, “Cross Examination”, “Re-Examination” and “Evidential Issues”.
15 March 2012
Briefing of the MyForm system by the Wilayah Land Office
The Wilayah Land Office had invited 10 Law Firms and the KL Bar Corporate and Conveyancing Practice Committee for a briefing and a trial run of the MyForm system on 15.03.2012 from 9.00am to 4.00pm. A full report will follow soon.
17 March 2012
PDC Seminar on Judicial Review of Industrial Court Awards
Muhendaran Suppiah from Messrs Muhendaran Sri presented the seminar which was held at the KL Bar Auditorium at 10.00am. The seminar was attended by 53 participants. The seminar covered the following areas, “A Brief History of the Industrial Court”, “Referral to the Industrial Court”, “The Indirect Route - S.20 IRA 1967, S.26 IRA 1967, S.33 IRA 1967”, “The Direct Route - S.33 IRA 1967, S.56 IRA 1967”, “Overview of the Industrial Court”, “The Jurisdiction of the Industrial Court”, “Award of the Industrial Court”, “S.33B IRA 1967”, “Finality of the Industrial Court Award”, “Overview of Judicial Review - Order 53 RHC 1980”, “Mandamus”, “Prohibition”, “Qua Warantor”, “Certiorari”, “Judicial Review Procedure - Leave Stage and the Cause Papers and Filing Periods”, “Judicial Review in the Context of Industrial Jurisprudence”, “Grounds on which the High Court will Review the Industrial Court Award”, “Appeal to the Court of Appeal - The Procedure”.
23 March 2012
PDC Seminar on Defamation - Latest Trends and Damages Awarded
Mohd Izral Khairy from Messrs Izral Partnership presented the seminar which was held at the KL Bar Auditorium at 3.00pm. The seminar was attended by 58 participants. The seminar covered the following areas, “Emerging Trend in the Last few Years”, “Order 78 Rule 2 Rules of the High Court 1980”, “Examples of Bad Pleading”, “Consequence of Bad Pleading”, “Usage of the Reportage Defence in Malaysia”, “The Reynold’s 10 Point Questions”, “Types of Damages”, “General Factors to be Taken into Consideration in Assessing General Damages”, “General Mitigating Factors - Assessment of Damages”, “Aggravated Damages” and “Exemplary Damages”.
Dragonboat Competition at Putrajaya
The KL-BARbarians (KL Bar’s Dragonboat Team), competed in the 2012 Pesta Air Putrajaya which was held on 24 March 2012. Only eligible to compete in the Open category, the KL-BARbarians were drawn to race in a tough Heat 2 against the Royal Malaysia Police, Kuala Lumpur City Hall, the University Kuala Lumpur Dolphins, the Royal Malaysian Navy and our friendly training neighbours, the Skrine Dragons. Click here to read the full report.
 24 March 2012
PDC Seminar on An Introduction to s.218 Companies Winding Up Petitions
Alex Chang from Messrs Alex Chang and Co presented the seminar which was held at the KL Bar Auditorium at 10.00am. The seminar was attended by 101 participants. The seminar covered the following areas, “An Introduction to Companies Winding Up Petitions in the New Commercial Courts”, “218 Petition - Unable to Pay its Debts”, “Affidavit Verifying Petition”, “Appointment of a Provisional Liquidator under s231”, “Advertisement of the Petition in the Newspapers”, “Registrar's Certificate”, “Affidavit In Opposition to Petition”, “The Unless Order, Appointment of Liquidator”, “Costs” and “Advocacy in the Companies Winding Up Court”.
24 March 2012
1st KLYLC Meeting
The KL Bar Young Lawyers Committee (“KLYLC”) held its first meeting for the term 2012/2013 at the KL Bar Auditorium. The structure of the KLYLC was reorganised to consist of the following sub-units: YL Professional Development chaired by New Sin Yew, YL Communications chaired by Phang Soon Mun and YL Socials co-chaired by Thirunavakarasu and Cindy Cheong Sing Yee. The Co-Deputy Chairs are Daniel Albert and Yeoh Tung Seng and the Representative to the National Young Lawyers Committee is Vince Chong.
PDC Tax Law Specialist Series Seminar on Taxation of Compensation
S. Saravana Kumar from Messrs Lee Hishammuddin Allen and Gledhill presented the seminar which was held at the KL Bar Auditorium at 3.00pm. The seminar was attended by 23 participants. The seminar covered the following cases, “KPHDN v Metacorp Development: Is Compensation for Land Acquisition Taxable?”, “Suasana Indah v KPHDN: Is Compensation for Termination of Contract Taxable?” and “KPHDN v Abdul Jalil: Is Compensation for Termination of Employment Taxable?”.
Edited by Jeremiah R. Gurusamy.
Having commenced training just shortly after the Chinese New Year break, the KL-BARbarians immediately went into competition mode to prepare for the 2012 Pesta Air Putrajaya which was held on 24 March 2012.
Only eligible to compete in the Open category, the KL-BARbarians were drawn to race in a tough Heat 2 against the Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM (A)), Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL (B)), the University Kuala Lumpur Dolphins, the Royal Malaysian Navy (TLDM (A)) and our friendly training neighbours, the Skrine Dragons. Things got even stickier as the team was missing their Captain for the weekend and sporting a new steerer and drummer.
Despite that, the team was excited to take on the first competition of the season. Our race was scheduled to be at 8.30am and everyone arrived bright and early at the grandstands of Putrajaya Watersports Complex at 7.30am to begin the pre-race preparations. Upon completion of the same, we found out that the organisers had altered the schedule of the day and postponed our race to 10.00am instead.
Thus, the team loitered around the grandstands munching on a healthy snack of brinjal, egg and cheese sandwich kindly prepared by one of paddlers, while we waited for our race to be called.
It was surprisingly windy out on the water as the boat made its way to the starting docks. Confusing race commands by the organisers caused us to take off on a shaky start. We recovered fairly quickly from that but unfortunately, barely 150 metres out, the right side of the boat had to contend with the strong wake coming from the PDRM boat which surged forward and went on to place first in our heat.
The KL-BARbarians set a time of 2:46 in the 500m race and came in 5th out of the 6 teams in our heat, defeating only the UniKL Dolphins by a few boat lengths. We failed to place top 3 in our heat to move on the next round but the team gained invaluable race experience.
The KL-BARbarians is now gearing up for 33rd Penang International Dragon Boat Festival 2012 which will take place at the end of June. The team is also recruiting and we invite members of the Kuala Lumpur Bar, your family and friends to join our dragon boat training sessions held every Saturday, 9.00am to 1.00pm at the Putrajaya Maritime Centre. If interested, kindly email Janet Chai at janetchai@chooi.com.my for further details. We guarantee that you will be able to paddle a dragon boat after a half-day session with the KL-BARbarians which will be conducted in a safe and fun environment.
Report and Photos contributed by Lesley Lim. Edited by the KLYLC
Dear All,
Kindly note that we will no longer be updating this Blog. Kindly log on to our KL Bar Website (http://www.klbar.org.my/) for updates.
Follow us on twitter (twitter.com/klbar) and also on Facebook (KL Bar Facebook Group)
Kind Regards,
Kuala Lumpur Bar CommitteeTingkat 8, Wisma KraftanganNo. 9 Jalan Tun Perak50050 Kuala LumpurTel: 603-2693 3585 (Hunting Line)Fax: 603-2691 1090E-mail: klbc@klbar.org.myWebsite: www.klbar.org.my
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