KL legal firm unveils learning series to help candidates navigate looming CLP reform

 

WITH Malaysia’s legal qualifying landscape on the cusp of its most significant overhaul in decades, a Kuala Lumpur law firm is stepping in to offer practical support to the thousands of aspiring lawyers still navigating the current Certificate in Legal Practice (CLP) examination.

Tay & Partners will launch the first session of its “Master the CLP Learning Series” on June 30 by targeting one of the examination’s most technically demanding papers – “Civil Procedure”.

The initiative comes at a particularly consequential moment for the legal profession.

Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform) M. Kulasegaran confirmed in the Dewan Rakyat this week that the New Bar Course (NBC) will be introduced to replace the CLP with a new approach placing greater emphasis on practical training and professional skills.

Under the proposed framework, the NBC would comprise two programmes – a Conversion Course and a Legal Practice Postgraduate Certificate (LPPC) – with the Legal Profession Qualifying Board Malaysia (LPQB) having established a task force on April 27 to develop the operational framework in a study running until April 2027.

Malaysian Bar president Anand Raj confirmed that the task force established by the LPQB has submitted its Phase One report with the Bar supporting the direction of the proposed reforms.

He noted that the CLP, introduced in 1984, was originally designed to provide LLB graduates from the UK and other foreign universities with knowledge of Malaysian law before pupillage and was never conceived as a training programme to prepare graduates for legal practice.

Senior lawyers have welcomed the proposed shift while a former Malaysian Bar president said the new assessment approach would help candidates think critically and prepare for the evolving demands of legal practice.

Navigating common pitfalls

Yet for the current cohort of CLP candidates, the road ahead remains unchanged. The proposed NBC framework is still undergoing development while the CLP is expected to remain the principal qualifying route for law graduates for the foreseeable future.

The stakes are considerable: only 189 candidates achieved a full pass in the 2025 CLP examination — the lowest number recorded in five years.

It is against this backdrop that Tay & Partners is launching its Learning Series. The inaugural session will be conducted by Leonard Yeoh, a senior partner of the firm, together with Chen Mei Yan, a former law lecturer who now practises as an associate under Yeoh.

Unlike conventional revision classes, the session is designed to equip candidates with practical tools by covering common pitfalls, issue-identification strategies, analytical frameworks and insights drawn from real legal practice.

“Many students view Civil Procedure as overwhelming because of the volume of rules involved. In reality, once candidates understand the underlying structure and procedural flow of a civil action, the subject becomes much easier to navigate,” Yeoh told FocusM.

“Our goal is to help candidates develop that structure and learn how to apply it effectively in an examination context.”

The initiative grew out of direct experience with aspiring lawyers at the firm. “Over the years, we’ve worked with many aspiring lawyers who joined us as interns, paralegals and support staff while pursuing their legal qualifications,” enthused Yeoh.

Tay & Partners’ senior partner Leonard Yeoh

“Many were balancing multiple responsibilities while studying for the CLP. Having seen their dedication first-hand, we wanted to create a platform where practical guidance could be shared with the next generation of practitioners.”

In fact, the broader CLP reform debate has sharpened the relevance of initiatives like this one.

The Malaysian Bar has emphasised that reform must close gaps in oral advocacy, professional communication, drafting abilities and bilingual proficiency – competencies that some graduates entering pupillage currently lack.

While focused on examination preparation, the “Master the CLP” series speaks directly to this same philosophy: that bridging the gap between academic study and legal practice is a responsibility the profession itself must shoulder, not merely the qualifying examination system.

The session on June 30 is open to all CLP candidates. –  Focus Malaysia