Are legal career fairs becoming irrelevant?

The mid-year months of June to August are traditionally popular periods for legal career fairs in Malaysia. During these months, law students are either on a break in between semesters, or on their summer holidays before the start of the new school year.

In recent years, there has been a notable decline in interest in these legal career fairs. Employers who have been participating in these events started noticing a few years ago that the number of attendees was beginning to drop. After some time, we are now seeing employers beginning to lose interest too, and the number of law firms and other employers who are willing to spend on taking up spaces at legal career fairs have reduced dramatically.

The failure of the most recent legal career fair in Kuala Lumpur — the Bar Council’s “Legal Expo” (LEXPO) on 30 July — is a perhaps extreme example of this trend.

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Securities Commission significantly revises take-over and merger rules

Takeover Code FB

Malaysia’s Securities Commission (SC) has announced significant changes to the take-overs and mergers regulatory framework.

In a statement, the SC explained that the new Rules on Take-overs, Mergers and Compulsory Acquisitions 2016 (Rules) “stipulates operational and conduct requirements in relation to take-overs”. The SC also clarified that the Rules, which came into force immediately, were issued as an SC guideline under Section 377 of the Capital Markets and Services Act 2007 (CMSA).

Together with the Rules, the SC also introduced a vastly revised Malaysian Code on Take-overs and Mergers 2016 (Code).

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AskTML: Our go-to mobile apps

This is the second post in the AskTML series. Do read the first post on Productivity hacks for working professionals. Thanks to all of you who have submitted questions; we have quite a few in the queue to be answered now.

In this post, we answer the question — “What are the go-to apps on your phone? Share a screenshot of your homescreen.”

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A serious threat to the independence of the Malaysian Bar

Serious threat to independence of Malaysian Bar

On 27 May 2016, the President of the Malaysian Bar issued a Circular to members of the Malaysian Bar (“Proposal to Amend the Legal Profession Act 1976 is a Severe Threat to the Independence of the Malaysian Bar“). The Circular informed members that the Bar Council had been notified by the Attorney General’s Chambers that the Government intends to pursue drastic amendments to the Legal Profession Act 1976 (“LPA”), and that those amendments “pose a serious threat to the independence of the Malaysian Bar, and are an unwarranted interference into the self-regulation and internal management of the Malaysian Bar”.

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AskTML: Productivity hacks for working professionals

AskTML - productivity tips

Since we launched The Malaysian Lawyer in October 2015, we’ve received a steady stream of requests to feature or write about particular topics.

We’ve decided to start a series called AskTML, and invite readers to submit questions on anything related to legal practice. You can submit your questions via any of the following methods:

  • Leaving a comment in the comments section of any AskTML post.
  • Tweeting us at @imleesh or @vangeyzel with the hashtag #AskTML.
  • Sending a LinkedIn message to Lee Shih or Marcus.

We look forward to receiving your questions!

To kick off the series, this post answers a question which we’ve been asked many times — “What are some productivity tips or hacks that you use in your day-to-day legal practice?”

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Malaysian employment law section on the Eversheds Global app

Eversheds app

I’m happy to share that I contributed the Malaysian content for the Eversheds Global employment law app.

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