Govt Allows Lawyers Temporary Access To Law Offices For Admin Work

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Lawyers can now apply to the Legal Affairs Division of the Prime Minister’s Department (BHEUU) for temporary access to their offices for administrative work.
Legal practitioners who spoke to Malaysiakini today gave mixed views on whether the permit for one-off, three-day access to law firms would, in the long run, help lawyers better represent people facing criminal cases as well as civil actions.
Through a circular from the Bar Council dated June 23, lawyers were informed that they can now apply online to BHEUU for a three-day permit to access their offices to settle administrative work.
Previously on June 18, Malaysiakini reported the Bar having proposed to the government to allow law firms nationwide to resume operation at partial capacity to help safeguard people’s right to legal access.
During the total lockdown that is part of the current movement control order (MCO 3.0), legal firms are generally not considered as part of essential services and are to remain closed as part of wide-ranging measures to combat the spread of Covid-19. These include law firms that specialise in criminal cases.
On June 1, Malaysiakini reported on concerns raised by lawyers that the general closure of law firms nationwide during the total lockdown period may jeopardise detainees’ ability to obtain proper legal representation.
Then on June 2, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department (Parliament and Law) Takiyuddin Hassan said that only law firms involved in corporate legal services and conveyancing for the essential services sector could apply for permission to operate during the total lockdown, together with the companies, factories or essential services-related businesses they represented.
Takiyuddin also said that only lawyers representing clients who are facing new charges, remand order applications and criminal case applications were allowed to appear in court during the total lockdown period.
According to the June 23 Bar circular, lawyers can apply to BHEUU for the three-day access permit by providing their firm’s names, address, date when to access the office, as well as names and Identity Card numbers of staff going to the office (while not exceeding 20 percent of the firm’s total staff number).
“We have been informed by the BHEUU that it has prepared and submitted to the police a letter template for the purposes of the application.
“Access to the office is permitted to enable members only to attend to the firm’s administrative matters as well as monthly and statutory payments. The permit is a one-off for a maximum of three days,” the circular stated.
Where will the income come from?
Speaking to Malaysiakini, lawyer Syed Iskandar Syed Jaafar al-Mahdzar pointed out that the new development still did not address the need for lawyers to at least temporarily access the office to actually prepare for clients’ court cases.
He said this is because the three-day permit is just to allow settling of administrative work rather than actual preparing for court cases such as face-to-face meetings with clients to properly understand the client's problems.
Syed Iskandar, who specialises in civil cases, said that the three-day permit is only to allow legal practitioners to access the office for processing of financial-related matters like claims, salaries, and bills payment.
“Only when lawyers can carry doing work there (access the office to directly prepare clients to face court cases) will there be income (from clients) for the office to pay everything (administrative matters).
“If the office is purely open for administrative matters, then from where will the income for administration come from, if not from the work being carried out by lawyers.
"We (lawyers) need to prepare for pending cases due for filing and this may involve travel for things that cannot be resolved via Zoom and Google meetings.
"Some clients are not well-versed with IT (information technology) and some might not be able to understand conversation in Bahasa Malaysia and English language properly unless you are directly in front of them in an attempt to explain to them things in order to get a proper reply," Syed Iskandar said.
However, lawyer Chan Yen Hui, who specialised in criminal court cases, opined that being allowed to temporarily access the office still helps clients via preparing updates on the status of the cases.
"I would say yes, more like preparing updates or status of the case to existing clients in criminal cases," she said.
She added that at present she is still somewhat able to prepare for her clients' court cases from her home, as she has some law reference materials at hand to refer to, among others. - Mkini

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