Australia's College Of Law is promoting something called the ASEAN+6 LLM by relying on this seeming endorsement from Nathaneal Kitingan of the Jeffrey & Joseph Kitingan clan
The Kitingan name is hard to ignore, and hence Nathaneal was queried about his endorsement and connection to the College and the ASEAN+6 LLM.His response:
Until your email I had never heard of the ASEAN +6 LLM.
From what I understand from the link you sent, the course I did, majoring in Commercial Litigation bears little resemblance to the course you are investigating. My LLM focused on practice in Australia and involved distance and face-to-face classes in Australian subjects highly relevant and practical to my area of practice, none of which are those listed on the page you sent me.
The College has this to say about its ASEAN +6 LLM:
The Master of Laws (Applied Law) in ASEAN+6 Legal Practice is designed to meet the needs of legal professionals engaged in cross-border practice between the 10-nation ASEAN group and the six nations that comprise the ASEAN+6 regional Free Trade Area (ASEAN, plus Australia-New Zealand, China, India, Japan and Korea), which is coming together in the new Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) .
It has been developed by The College of Law in collaboration with the Inter-Pacific Bar Association (IPBA).
Malaysian and Singapore based IPBA members who are listed as advisers for the course have been asked about their use of the Kitingan name to promote their course,but all have kept silent.The members of the Advisory Board are:
Dhinesh Bhaskaran Partner, Shearn Delamore & Co
Yong Jae Chang Partner, Lee & Ko
Michael Chu Partner, McDermott Will & Emery
Wong Tat Chung Partner, Wong Beh & Toh
Yewon Han Attorney, Stephenson Harwood
Raphael Tay Partner, Chooi & Company
David Tsai Partner, Clifford Chance
Wai Ming Yap Partner, Morgan Lewis.
Their silence is understandable.Quite apart from risking the wrath of the Kitingan clan,there is the not so small matter of backing a course which claims to offer some harmonized law product, when even Malaysia and Singapore cannot come to agreement on a common legal system,despite their commonn heritage.
The College Of Law is Australia's main provider of practical legal training courses which are compulsory for admission to practice in most states. Its CEO is one Neville Carter, who worked at MARA in the 80s,where he claims to have
"produced the inaugural Legal Practice Handbook with instructional details, materials and resources for Malaysian law and practice and also mentored an elite pilot group of 20 students who became the first cohort of UTM graduates admitted to legal practice in the Malaysian legal profession."
MARA lecturers from Malaysia who worked with him remember things somewhat differently.They recall a joint effort ,not quite the Great White Hope version that Carter recalls.
I was seconded from the College of Law, to UiTM in Malaysia to create a fourth advanced year of study that would enable law graduates to secure legal practice skills and qualify for immediate admission to legal practice. The course successfully addressed gaps in law practice in Malaysia. More than thirty years later, the Advanced Diploma in Law is now a full LLB qualification, still successfully providing students with skills that benefit the broader law-consuming public.
During my time in Malaysia I produced the inaugural Legal Practice Handbook with instructional details, materials and resources for Malaysian law and practice and also mentored an elite pilot group of 20 students who became the first cohort of UTM graduates admitted to legal practice in the Malaysian legal profession.
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