JANUARY 11 — It is pleasing to note that Malaysia’s premier law school, the Faculty of Law, Universiti Malaya (UM), has stressed upon experiential learning of professional ethics.
Experiential learning, as explained by the Faculty’s Dean, is the process of learning by doing. By engaging students in hands-on experiences and reflection, they will be better able to connect theories and knowledge learned in the classroom to real-world situations.
Teaching professional ethics effectively poses a difficult challenge. For students, learning about ethics in the abstract is often far removed from the difficult ethical challenges that lawyers confront in legal practice.
I agree with Prof Jason Chuah that ethical challenges need to be felt and experienced, and hence experiential learning.
At the Faculty of Law, Multimedia University (MMU), students in the final year — rightly called the professional year — also undertake a module on “Office and Personnel Management” where students are guided on setting up, managing, and running a law office, and where students are also provoked to think, giving them opportunities to practise ethical decision-making involving the running of the law office and dealing with its clients, among others.
The law programme at MMU will be inspired by its elder law programme at UM to work closer with its important stakeholders — that is, members of the Melaka State Bar who sit in the programme’s Industrial Advisory Panel, and are appointed as Adjunct Professors and External Examiners — to provide real life settings for students to draw from in their hands-on learning.
The Faculty of Law, MMU is committed to providing hands-on as well as scholarly training. It has become more vital than ever that a law graduate possess practical, real-world experience. Law students have to learn and grow beyond the classroom.
*This is the personal opinion of the writer our publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
