It is a long drive for me. I drove from KL to Penang one day before (26.6.2009) the forum together with Cheng Leong, one of the speakers.
We had a good time talking through out the long journey. I told Cheng Leong that if I am asked to choose to stay in other state apart from KL (my current residence) and Perak (my home town), I would prefer to live in Penang or Malacca as both places have many historical buildings, espacially Penang is surounded by sea, which creates a holiday mood feeling to me.
The Bloggers & Law Forum was held in USM, Usains Center. In addition to Penang Bar, USM was also our supporting organisations.
The traffic on that day was pretty congested as it was also the registration day for their students.
Amongst the participants, there was a blind man who attended this forum. I was touched by the effort of this gentlement.
The man in black T-shirt is Calvyn who owns an tech blog - www.icalvyn.com
I always like to give surprise to (and treasure) those who support our work. Hapiz was the 1st participant (follow by Lucia Lai) signed up for this forum. After taking to Hapiz, I realised that he is actually also a lawyer-cum-blogger. Wow…it seems that more and more lawyer are bloggers now. However, through my observation, many bloggers-lawyers blog for fun and a better justice, not many blog for money though.
(from the left: Mr Fareed from Penang Bar, Mr Foong Cheng Leong (speaker), Ms Ooi Poh Yan from Exabytes, me, Stephen Tan (speaker), Mr Khairul (moderator) and Ms Nashuha from USM.
Below is the power point slides presented by Cheng Leong during the forum.
I am very happy about this Penang trip as apart from successfully organised this forum, I also met many new friends. I found that overall Penangites are comparatively friendly.
There are few Penang lawyers attended the forum, including Edmund and Chin Ling.
Dr Mulari, Paula and Angela.
Khairul was sharing how he got himself into blogging and how he schedule his blog post.
The awaiting Q & A session.
I think Jacky and others staff from Exabytes for taking many wonderful pictures and also taking the effort sending the pictcures to all of us.
Please see what other bloggers said about this forum:
It has been a long while since I updated my blog. I was away to Penang for the bloggers & law forum. I know this is not an excuse anyhow.
I drove to Penang together with Cheng Leong on last Friday morning. Upon arrival we met up with another speaker, Stephen Tan, who came together with his legal assistant, Mable.
They both were very kind and giving us a very good hospitality.
They brought us to one of the famous Nyoya food in the town of Penang.
We all had a really good lunch and Stephen is such a humorous person. We heard many funny stories from him.
Mable is a very friendly and easy going lady. She shared with us about her “CLP” story - she said she did the CLP exam on part time basic and she needed to travel from Penang to KL to attend weekend classes almost every week. Moreso, she managed to pass the nutorious exam in 1-go. I salute you Mable!
After meeting with Stephen, we paid a visit to Exabytes’ HQ in Penang.
We discussed about the preparation of next day forum together with Poh Yan and Sing Yee of Exabytes and thereafter Poh Yan, the sale and marketing manager, took us for an office tour in Exabytes.
It would be interesting to see how the largest hosting company in Malaysia operates.
As Poh Yan said most of their clients only communicate with them via emails or phones, they don’t have many walk in clients. Therefore, let me take you for a cyber tour of the office here. hehehe!
This is the cozy and morden meeting room.
Poh Yan showing us the corner of the reception area and was explaning the lastest products offered by Exabytes, e.g. the Live Meeting system, the Ebuzzz email blasting system and the web-based Human Resource Management system.
Exabytes was established in 2001 and currently there are more than 50 employees in the company. They are currently hosting more than 40,000 domain names.
I found all of their staff are very very young, or at least they looked so. They are so young so that I thought I was in university campus. If you don’t already know, Mr Chan Kee Siak is not even hitting his 30s, (I guess). Well, this is what one calls “young man power” right?! hehehe!
These are part of the technical team. One of good things about this office tour is I got to meet many familiar names (espacially staff from the support team) in person, e.g. Andy, Alan, Ee Dawn and etc.
This are the sale and account departments. You will find the office is designed in an open concept manner.
I found the office space is properly utilised, whereby few rooms are actually located at “1st floor”, including this training room.
Being an IT company and managed by a young enterprenuer, Exabytes has a “fun room” for the staff to “have fun” during their break time. Well, please don’t compare this with Google, as we are in Penang Suntech not US Mountain View.
Mr Chan, the founder of went for an overseas trip, the visit would be perfect if Mr Chan was around…
Few hours ago, I received the below email from one of my blog readers, stating his dissatisfaction and disappointment about his lawyer.
Below is the full content of the email:
“Dear Mr. Eddie.
I had an appointment with a lawyer today (on a lawyer and client basis) to talk about matters on a case he plans to take up. During the conversation, he was explaining to me about what he feels is the most appropriate methods and tactics to apply for the case, but he did not convinced or satisfied me and asked him couple of questions (as a client) relating to the case, the law and previous similar cases, which I had studied, but shockingly he got annoyed and started raising unpleasant words and statements to me like:
1. Since I am not a lawyer and I don’t know anything about the law or the court procedures and matters, therefore, I should not be discussing or questioning him about legal matters or how is he going about the case, because I am not qualified as a lawyer to talk to him, even though I had read many law books and cases and understood them. He also further claims “…that’s why the public sits at the back of the court and not permitted to be in the front with the lawyers, because lawyers are considered a different class of people…”.
2. But the most shocking of all, is when he told me indirectly that he was a former policeman (before he became a lawyer) and when people in the police station asked him too many questions, he usually shut them up by slapping them. Isn’t this an indirect intimidation?
I am really shocked with this lawyer’s attitude and does this mean a common man does not have the rights to defend himself in court without the aid of a lawyer or even raise any matters relating to the law, since he is not a qualified lawyer? I hope someone could clarify this for me and what action can I take against such lawyer. How to go about it?
Please send me an email at abc@yahoo.com if you need further calcifications.
Sorry, I would like to be anonymous for the meantime. I hope you understand.
Thank you.”
There are 2 issues raised in this email of which I believe many may want to know the answer:
1. “…does this mean a common man does not have the rights to defend himself in court without the aid of a lawyer”
This is an issue of “Right To Act In Court”. The short answer is YES. Any layman (mean a person who is a non-expert in a given field of knowledge, in our case law) can file an action to sue someone in court of law or to defend himself in court of law (see the exceptions below).
Based on Order 4 Rule 6 of the Subordinate Court Rules 1980 (SCR), any person (whether or not he sues as a trustee or presonal representative or in any other representative capacity) may begin and carry on proceeding in a court by a solicitor or in person.
However, there are 2 exceptions to this:
1. in normal case, a body or corporate must be represented by a solicitor, unless the law says otherwise.
2. in general case, “person under disability”, may not sue or defend by himself. Order 9 Rule 1 of SCR defines “person under disability” as person who is an infant or a patient. (Patient means a mentally disordered person within the meaning of Mental Disorders Ordinance, 1952. Infant means a person under the age of 18 persuant to Age of Majority Act 1971. see also definition of Minor (law) for other countries)
2. “…what action can I take against such lawyer?…”
This is an issue of making complain against a lawyer who acted in an unprofessional manner.
In Malaysia, legal profession is governed by the Legal Professional Act, 1976. The lawyer’s ethic is particularly set out in the Legal Profession (Practice and Etiquette) Rules 1978.
Rule 31 of the 1978 Rules states that “Every advocate and solicitor shall at all times uphold the dignity and high standing of his profession”. So if you feel that any lawyer is not acting in a professional manner, you may lodge a complaint against the lawyer for his misconduct to the Advocates & Solicitors Disciplinary Board at Medan Pasar, KL. The procedures of making the complaint against a lawyer has also been set out in the website.
Below is the contact details of the Board:
LEMBAGA TATATERTIB PEGUAM-PEGUAM
Advocates & Solicitors Disciplinary Board
8th & 9th Floor, Wisma Maran
28 Medan Pasar,
50050 Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia.
Jack Canfield is one of my most favourite motivational and self development speaker. He co-authored the book “Chicken Sup for the Soul”. Through the introduction of a Singaporean blogger’s friend, Rags, I bought Jack’s book entitled “The Success Principles” which I learned so much from the book. Thank you so much Rags
If you are still a student or working young adult but not too sure what career path you should embark on, Jack shared some of his thoughts during the video, he said when choosing a career:
1. just be honest to yourself if you have joy in your heart when you think of doing the job.
2. you may do some preliminary research about the job, e.g. asking someone who is doing it or get yourself an internship to see the real world of the job.
3. at the end, despite what people say, you still need to trust yourself based on the feeling in your inner heart and the objective research obtained from the outer world.
Once you have chosen the job, you should just lean to it and be committed 100% to the job that you ahve chosen.
He reminded us that no decision is forever, you may still change to go into other career if you found out that the previous job isn’t really suitable to you.
So law students or lawyers, practising is not the only choice for you…
Disclaimer:Eddie Law is currently not involved in legal practise.This Site is provided for your information only to help you understand some of your legal rights. It should not be relied on as legal advice because it is not a substitute for an in person consultation with a lawyer. Nothing transmitted to or from this Site constitutes the establishment of an lawyer-client relationship between you or any lawyer. Eddie Law shall not be liable for any lost suffered by you as a result of relying on the information herein.
