On the 27th April 2019, the Asian Law Students Association of Taylors University was given the honor to host the ALSA National Conference for the year 2019. The National Conference is an annual hallmark event organized by one of the 12 local chapters in Malaysia. This conference aims to provide law students across Malaysia with more knowledge about the current legal issues in the country in hopes of shaping future brilliant lawyers. This conference was attended by 115 participants from both local and private universities in Malaysia. This event was held for a day and a half.
The National Conference commenced at 9:00 am on the first day whereby during the opening ceremony, the event was officiated by our former Federal Court judge, Tan Sri Dato Seri Dr. James Foong. The conference involved prominent speakers as well as legal practitioners who were invited by the ALSA organizing committee to speak at this conference. This event also included panel discussions as well as parallel sessions. The parallel session is a session whereby discussions will be carried out by a few non-governmental bodies such as the Women’s Aid Organization and Refuge for the Refugees in Malaysia. The participants were allowed to choose from a range of topics that is best suited to their respective interests. On top of that, we also managed to invite Malaysia’s very own prominent human rights advocate, Dato’ Ambiga who spoke on the topic of “Youth in Politics”. It was truly an insightful and highly interactive session as the parallel session was carried out in groups of 30 students.
The panel discussions also benefited the students to a large extent as we had panel discussions on interesting topics such as ‘Decriminalising Suicide’ and ‘Online Information Theft’ presented by well-known speakers in the legal industry including Dato’ N. Sivanathan, Ms. Adlin Abdul Majid from Messrs Lee Hishamuddin Allen & Gledhill. Besides that, a workshop on the art of persuasion was also carried out by Dato Mahdev Shankar and Dr Harald Sippel from AIAC. The art of persuasion is also key skill that should be possessed as a law student as it helps in building and developing confident and capable lawyers in the near future. Moreover, Mr Raja Kumar from Azman, Davidson & Co. was also present on that day and presented on an important topic which was the skill of networking in which he provided many tips on how to tackle this particular skill which is especially vital for a lawyer.
A networking lunch was also held on the first day whereby the participants were given the opportunity to interact and network with few of the speakers and lawyers who were present on that day and to also make an impression amongst the practicing lawyers. The participants also had the chance to exchange ideas and viewpoints among the lawyers as well as gained insightful and useful information about the demands and workings of the legal industry. The lawyers who were present during the networking lunch were also kind enough to share their own experience working in the legal industry.
The success of this event can be attributed to the arduous tasks and responsibilities undertaken by the group of organizing committees of ALSA Taylors as well as the supportive law lecturers of Taylors Law School. Besides that, we have also managed to obtain sponsorships from AIAC as well as Messrs Azri, Lee Swee Seng and Co. We appreciate AIAC as our platinum sponsor for this event as well as Messrs Azri, Lee Swee Seng and Co. as our Silver sponsor. It was definitely a pleasure working with AIAC as well as the aforementioned firm and we look forward to collaborating in future events.
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