If you have the time, please attend. It’s a great opportunity to meet new other fellow lawyers and make new friends. Networking among lawyers is useful especially when you are a specialist. A senior IP practitioner once told me that most of his clients came from referral from other lawyer friends.
The Young Lawyers Convention started off as a platform for Young Lawyers to meet and exchange views.
The 1st Convention was held at Kuantan around 6th April 2003. At that Convention, the Young Lawyers issued a Statement calling for the repeal of S46A, LPA. That provision bars Young Lawyers from being elected as Bar Council or State Bar Committee members.
At the 2nd Convention at Pangkor, the Young Lawyers came up with a revolutionary Statement. On 30th January 2005, the Young Lawyers issued a statement demanding :-
1. S46A LPA be repealed
2. Formation of a Shadow Council to shadow Bar Council
3. Reform the Bar elections, electing Bar Council members
4. Improving Professional Development classes (then known as CLE)
5. Better information be disseminated and published to members on better Professional Practise.
6. Improving Pupils Welfare
7. Revamping Bar Council Secretariat
8. Increasing legal activismMany proposals at the 2nd Convention is being implemented by Bar Council, till today.
By the time the 3rd Convention in 2008 came, S46A(1) para (a) was removed from the LPA. That freed the Young Lawyers to be elected as members of the Bar Council or State Bar Committees. With that in the background, the 2008 Convention set out retain the existense of Young Lawyers Committee and to ensure the lawyers are protected and defended.
Held at Penang, the 2008 Convention was crucial to ensure the Young Lawyers movement continued, despite the removal of S46A LPA. For a long while, many sees the S46A LPA as the principle batter cry for YLC, and that the YLC was created to give the young lawyers a platform to speak, since the LPA at that time disallowed young lawyers in the Bar Council/State Bar Committee. However the 2008 Convention was a water shed in the history of YLC, as Lawyers attending that Convention endorsed the Statement to demand that YLC remains in existense and that the removal of S46A LPA does not lead to the closure of YLC.
This coming Young Lawyers Convention focuses on improving the young lawyers, to ensure the Bar becomes better. A better Bar, would only mean better laws, which we hope would eventually lead to a better country.