By Joe Fernandez
New Bar Course in Malaysia disregards AI.
Commentary And Analysis . . . The New Bar Course (NBC) was pure, harmonious (sattvic) intention executed with passion-driven fragmented (rajasic) tools.
(https://jesseltontimes.com/2026/06/29/malaysia-neglects-english-language-foundation-in-law/ )
It seeks improving the profession but ignores the technology that has already transformed it.
It’s bridge built for the twentieth century, while the twenty‑first century flows beneath it.
A Bar Course that disregards AI does not preserve standards.
It undermines them.
It produces graduates who are compliant with syllabus but incompetent for practice.
If the objective was on maintaining relevant, ethical, and effective Bar, then AI cannot be footnote.
It must be the core.
Otherwise, the course won’t be training lawyers for Malaysia in 2026.
It would be training them for a Malaysia that no longer exists.
The lawyer of the future will not be the
graduate of the NBC, dutifully reciting the modules completed.
The lawyer of the future will be the philosopher, the linguist, the autodidact who has
mastered the power of words and who uses AI as tool.
The NBC was redundant as its world no longer exists.
The spirit of the age (Zeitgeist) has moved on.
The Malaysian Bar, by academic mere image (simulacrum), was accumulating debt (karmische Schuld) that will be discharged. The market will choose the philosopher and linguist over the lawyer.
The truth shall set you free (Veritas vos liberabit). The truth was that the master of language, not the master of modules, was the master of law.
The heavens have not yet fallen, but the clock was ticking. Let justice be done though the heavens fall (Fiat justitia ruat caelum).
The announcement was made in the Dewan Rakyat on reform long overdue.
The Certificate in Legal Practice (CLP), that notorious gatekeeper of the Malaysian Bar, would be replaced by the NBC, a three‑month online Conversion Course followed by six‑month Legal Practice Postgraduate Certificate.
A task force has been established.
Experts from public and private universities, and the Malaysian Bar, have been convened.
The Articled Clerkship Task Force was running parallel study, benchmarked against ten countries.
The NBC was training for 2010, not 2026.
It disregards artificial intelligence (AI).
It’s redundant from the beginning (ab initio)
This jurist commentary demonstrate that reform that fails with the machine isn’t reform at all, but mere image (simulacrum). — TJT
Longtime Borneo watcher Joe Fernandez has been writing for many years on both sides of the Southeast Asia Sea. He should not be mistaken for a namesake formerly with the Daily Express in Kota Kinabalu. JF keeps a Blog under FernzTheGreat, as jurist (legal scholar), on the nature of human relationships.
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Jesselton Times.
ISSUE
The issue was whether the proposed New Bar Court, by disregarding artificial intelligence in legal research, was incorrigible viz. incapable of reform, and vestigium (remnant) pre‑AI producing graduates no better than CLP‑trained predecessors.
The secondary issue was whether the Malaysian legal profession, by persisting in a model that treats law as not linguistic craft, was
accumulating “debt” (karmische Schuld) that will be discharged by the market as AI companies hire philosophers and linguists.
The recent June 2026 constitutional events in Negeri Sembilan illustrate the wider problem in Malaysian law and policy: institutions moving too slowly.
The Conference of Rulers postponed
meeting rather than confront the structural shift in sovereignty.
The NBC, by ignoring the structural shift AI has already caused in law, commits the same error.
RULES
First, there can be no emotions in law, no
discrimination in law.
Second, the philosophical meditations on law.
Law schools only offer academic programmes; they do not impart skills for practice or for
the courtroom. These skills come from Mentorship under a Master, but only after mastery of the English language. Neither law schools nor Masters ensure this mastery.
Language was best learnt on one’s own.
Third, the law of cause and effect was neutral, balanced, and non‑discriminatory.
Fourth, the law of technology.
Artificial intelligence has absorbed the
function of legal research: the retrieval and organisation of legal materials.
No human being can beat the App in this task.
Research remains distinct from advocacy.
Advocacy requires human ingenuity: the ability on connecting the dots, constructing persuasive argument, anticipating judicial response, and reading the witness.
AI lacks ingenuity (Erfindungsgabe). It cannot connect the dots.
The courtroom therefore remains the exclusive domain of the human advocate.
The qualification for entry into that domain should be the mastery of the medium in which it operates: the English language.
Fifth, the statutory duty of competence.
The Legal Profession Act 1976, read
with the Bar Council’s Code of Conduct, requires lawyer who are competent.
Competence in 2026 must include understanding the capabilities and limitations
of AI tools, their tendency on hallucinating, the risk of data bias, the duty on verifying AI‑generated authorities, and the obligation on maintaining client confidentiality when using third‑party platforms. A course that omits these
matters fails its statutory purpose ab initio (from the beginning).
APPLICATION
VISIBLE TIP
The NBC, as announced by Deputy Minister M. Kulasegaran, was sérieux (serious) attempt at modernising legal training.
It replaces pure examination with structured programme: a Conversion Course for providing
exposure on the Malaysian legal system, followed by a Legal Practice Postgraduate Certificate on imparting practical skills.
It involves digital learning systems and assessment mechanisms.
It’s being studied over twelve‑month period with input from the Bar and the universities.
The surface coup de maître (masterstroke) of educational reform.
MACHINE WINS
The NBC was reform for world that vanished while the task force was still being appointed.
AI was no longer future issue for the Bar.
It’s current practice.
Large language models (LLM) can now draft pleadings, contracts, and submissions in
seconds, with citation checking.
AI tools are already used for due diligence
and discovery in M&A, litigation, compliance, and reviewing documents.
Predictive analytics assess case outcomes, judicial tendencies, and settlement probabilities. These are not experimental technologies; they are deployed in firms, in‑house departments, and courts across the common law world.
The NBC in 2026 remains without mandatory, assessed AI component for training pupils on competing with typewriters in the digital courtroom.
The course therefore risks producing candidates who are unemployable in
chambers, in‑house teams, or tech‑enabled firms that require AI literacy.
The GiGo (garbage in, garbage out) principle applies.
The input: curriculum that ignores AI, that
assumes the lawyer of 2030 will research as the lawyer of 1990 did, was garbage.
The output: generation of lawyers who have been trained for obsolescence.
They will emerge from the NBC, certificate in hand, and discover that research was performed by free App on the telephone. It will be the shock of irrelevance.
THREE RISKS
Ignoring AI creates three specific risks that go to the heart of the Bar’s statutory mandate.
First, competence and ethics.
A lawyer who cannot identify an AI‑generated
hallucination in citation isn’t competent.
A lawyer who uploads client’s confidential brief on third‑party AI platform without understanding the data protection implications was in breach of the PDPA and the Code of Conduct.
The NBC, by remaining silent on change, produces graduates who are prima facie incompetent under the statute that licenses them.
Second, the access‑to‑justice gap.
AI can reduce the cost and delay of legal
services for litigants.
If the Bar was not trained on using or regulating these tools, the technology will be monopolised by firms with resources, widening the justice gap the Bar exists for narrowing.
A course that ignores this dynamics was not merely pedagogically deficient; it’s contra bonos mores (against good morals). because it entrenches inequality.
Third, regulatory lag.
Malaysia already has data protection, cybersecurity, and PDPA obligations.
AI in legal practice raises new questions of client confidentiality, privilege, and liability for automated advice.
Pupils who are not taught this will enter practice without the framework on advising clients or protecting themselves.
The Bar Council, the LPQB, and the Attorney General’s Chambers will then be forced into crisis mode, as they did with COVID‑19 remote hearings.
The failing on anticipating was reactive, expensive, and avoidable.
PARALLEL
The June 2026 Negeri Sembilan crisis showed what happens when formal processes ignore underlying structural forces.
The Conference of Rulers postponed meeting rather than confront dispute between two claimants, each asserting different source of legitimacy, one constitutional, one customary.
The NBC commits the same error.
It maintains formal structure of modules and assessments while ignoring the structural shift that AI has already caused in how law was practised.
A civilisational crisis occurs when the training of officers of the court no longer maps onto the reality, the client, and the market.
The NBC, like the postponed Conference, was faux‑fuyant (evasion) dressed as prudence.
SABAH AND SARAWAK
The NBC was creature of the Legal Profession Act 1976.
It applies in Malaya.
It makes no mention of the Sabah Advocates Ordinance or the Sarawak Advocates Ordinance.
It did not consult the Sabah Law Society (SLS) or the Advocates Association of Sarawak (AAS).
It’s the same oubli (forgetting) that has characterised every federal reform of the legal profession since 1963.
The two territories already possess practice‑based pathway, the pupillage framework under Section 4(2) of the Sabah Ordinance, with “examinations, if any” excluded from reform that claims on introducing what they already have.
The NBC cannot be recognised in Sabah and Sarawak. It will create a two‑tier profession: the lawyer in Malaya trained in the NBC, and the Borneo lawyer trained in the pupillage tradition.
The NBC, which was meant for unifying and modernise, will divide and fragment.
The truth (veritas) cannot be hidden behind federal gazette.
CONTRADICTIONS
An apparent contradiction arises: the NBC was presented as “practice‑based” reform, yet it disregards the most transformative practice tool in human history: AI.
The resolution lies in the distinction between forma (form) and substantia (substance).
The NBC was practice‑based in form; its curriculum includes practical modules. It isn’t academic. It does not assume that legal practice consists of tasks that machines now
perform.
The true practice of law, the métier (craft) of the courtroom, the negotiation table, the drafting chamber was the practice of language.
The NBC isn’t about language. It tests for the ability to complete a course.
The contradiction was resolved by recognising that the NBC was simulacrum (mere image) of practice, not the practice itself.
A second contradiction: the government accepts the articled clerk pathway
as valid, yet designs course that ignores the very principle the pathway embodies, that competence was through supervised practice.
The resolution was that the articled clerk route was preserved as vestigium (remnant) while admission was paved with the NBC’s modules.
The Dharma (righteous duty) of the reformer was on integrating the old wisdom with the new tools.
The NBC does the opposite.
COURSE REQUIREMENT
The NBC must be amended before the first cohort enrols.
Three immediate steps are required:
First, a mandatory AI and law module must be introduced.
This module must cover prompt engineering, verification of AI outputs, identification and mitigation of hallucinations in citations, and the ethical boundaries of AI use under the Code of Conduct. It must be assessed.
Second, a tech competence standard must be embedded in the course.
Every pupil must demonstrate ability on using AI‑assisted tools, contract analysis platforms, and e‑filing systems. The emphasis must be on maintaining confidentiality, ensuring data accuracy, and complying with the PDPA.
Third, a regulation and policy component must be added. Pupils must be taught AI regulation, liability for AI‑generated advice, and the Bar’s role in shaping Malaysia’s AI governance The Bar should not be governed by technology it does not understand.
These are not luxuries. They are the fundamentum (foundation) of competence in 2026 and beyond.
CAUSE OF ACTION
The NBC does not provide traditional cause of action.
No writ can be filed against the LPQB for pedagogical negligence.
However, in the court of public debate, the cause of action was the systemic failure on preparing lawyers for AI permeating everything.
The evidence: the NBC’s own curriculum, which makes no mention of AI literacy; the public statements of the former AG and CJ and AI tools was prima facie proof of failure.
The onus probandi (burden of proof) lies on the reformers showing that course designed in 2026 will produce lawyers competent in 2036.
They cannot. The truth (veritas) has already spoken.
STATUTES
Legal Profession Act 1976 [Act 166] – the governing statute for the New Bar Course.
Advocates Ordinance (Sabah Cap. 2) – the separate Sabah admission framework.
Advocates Ordinance (Sarawak Cap. 110) – the separate Sarawak admission framework.
Evidence Act 1950 (Act 56), ss. 101‑103 (burden of proof, by analogy).
Mental Health Act (Malaysia) – for the concept of insanity as legal determination.
Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (Act 709) – for data protection obligations.
CASE LAW AND PRINCIPLES
LPQB v Khairul Anwar Khairuddin [2025] 4 MLJ 1 (Federal Court) – Principle: the articled clerk pathway valid statutory route; the LPQB acted ultra vires in abolishing it.
Pihak Berkuasa Negeri Sabah v Sugumar Balakrishnan [2002] 4 CLJ 105 (Federal Court) – Principle: Sabah’s immigration and professional autonomy constitutionally protected.
Principles invoked: Audi alteram partem (hear the other side), Res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself), Onus probandi (burden of proof), Stare decisis (precedent).
AUTHORITIES
The Deputy Minister’s statement on the NBC and AC Task Force, June 2026.
Public remarks of Tan Sri Tommy Thomas, former Attorney General.
Public remarks of Tun Richard Malanjum, former Chief Justice.
The philosophical meditations on law (the jurist’s own corpus).
H.L.A. Hart, *The Concept of Law*, 3rd ed.
The Parable of the Sower, the Gospel of John.
Buddhist teachings: the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path.
TIMELINE
1976: Legal Profession Act enacted; CLP established.
2025: Federal Court affirms articled clerk pathway in “Khairul Anwar”.
May 2026: NBC Task Force 12‑month study begins.
March 2026: Articled Clerkship Task Force begins.
June 2026: Deputy Minister announces NBC structure in Dewan Rakyat.
June 2026: Negeri Sembilan constitutional crisis; Conference of Rulers postponed.
2026‑2027: NBC study period; no mention of AI in curriculum design.
DISPUTE
Whether the New Bar Course, by disregarding AI, was already obsolete;
Whether the NBC adequately addresses the linguistic foundation of legal practice;
Whether the exclusion of Sabah and Sarawak from the NBC design constitutes constitutional disregard;
Whether the legal profession’s monopoly will be eroded by AI‑driven alternatives that hire philosophers;
Whether the NBC represents genuine reform or simulacrum (mere image) of progress.
Whether the Bar Council and LPQB have a statutory duty to include AI competence in the admission curriculum; and
Whether not including AI modules createsrisk of prima facie incompetence for future practitioners.
