Secrecy surrounding use of the Bar Council crest by Australia's College Of Law : Are there plans to have a new tax payer financed CLP ?

by Ganesh Sahathevan

Australia's College Of  Law has been accorded the unique privilege of using the Bar Council Malaysia crest to promote its courses;this is a privilege not afforded any Malaysian university:

The Master of Laws (Applied Law) in Malaysian Legal Practice, or Malaysian Applied Law LLM, is designed to meet the needs of the Malaysian legal profession for higher level, practice-based skills acquisition across a range of specialised practice areas.

 Download the Malaysian LLM Handbook

It has been developed by The College of Law in collaboration with Bar Council Malaysia.

The College's course delivery and content has been the subject of long standing complaints in Australia but it is something of a protected species within the Australian legal community, given its antecedents as a college once owned by the Law Society NSW.

The Bar Council's endorsement of the College's  "practical" LLM raises the probability the Bar Council intends with its foreign partner to enter the education sector by cornering the CLP tutorial market. It is uniquely placed to have the CLP upgraded to a Masters level course, and by doing so make the CLP course eligible for PTPTN funding. 

PTPTN funding is dependent on  Malaysia Qualifications Agency (MQA) accreditation and it is likely that the College and Bar Council will rely on the   fact that the College is in Australia a self-accrediting body.

While self-accreditation was once limited to the main public universities in Australia the Australian Government has since allowed for that right to be granted to a large  number of private colleges.Consequently the right to self-accreditation can no longer be regarded as any assurance of quality.

The Bar Council Malaysia has remained silent despite the many queries sent it by this writer. Meanwhile The College Of Law has sought the protection of the Australian legal establishment  who have agreed with its CEO Neville Carter and Academic Director Lewis Patrick that queries from this writer about its course content,delivery and financing are a form of harassment, threat and intimidation and thus need not be addressed. That shield has allowed the College and its managers to avoid addressing information provided by Malaysian authorities which contradict the College's claims about its past work in Malaysia.The College claims, among other things,  that it was responsible for identifying and curing gaps in Malaysian legal practice in the mid 80s.

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