KUALA LUMPUR, March 19 ― The Malaysian Bar today urged the judiciary to consider lawyers' future requests for deadline extensions to file court papers, citing difficulties in working as law firms must close during the two-week Movement Control Order.
Malaysian Bar president Salim Bashir noted that the judiciary's March 17 directive said that e-filing or online filing of court documents should continue on as normal during the two-week shutdown nationwide of non-essential activities from March 18 to March 31.
Salim said, however, that lawyers are facing great difficulty in complying with deadlines for e-filing of cause papers and other documents in court due to the movement control order.
“The Malaysian Bar has been made to understand that, due to the MCO, a number of lawyers are unable to access their physical offices, for the purpose of retrieving files, documents and using facilities to do e-filing as directed; while some are not able to engage with clients to obtain instructions,” he said in a statement today.
He said that doing such e-filing work would require lawyers to breach the government's movement of control order (MCO), before asking for the courts to consider requests made by lawyers after the end of the two-week MCO period for extension of deadlines.
“Hence, the Malaysian Bar urgently calls on the Judiciary to reconsider matters pertaining to e-filing as contained in the directive, and requests the Judiciary to exercise discretion fairly and mercifully in entertaining abridgement of time applications after 31 March 2020, by taking into account the calamity facing large number of lawyers, who are unable to do e-filing of documents, notices and other ancillary applications within the required period of time under the law,” he said.
“The Malaysian Bar hopes that the Judiciary appreciates the concerns and appeals from Members of the Bar, in time to come. We hope that our Members can be given some space to deal with the situation on the ground,” he also said.
Yesterday, Salim had also as the Malaysian Bar president urged banks and financial institutions not to impose “unrealistic and unreasonable demands” or insist on “strict timelines” on their panel law firms for the provision of legal services and for the completion of tasks.
He had also highlighted that lawyers are currently deprived of the physical files and other facilities normally available to them due to the law firms' office closures for these two weeks, and had said lawyers may have to go back to their offices to meet the strict timelines if financial institutions insist on them and that the lawyers could then be breaching government regulations.
In the new government regulations made yesterday by Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Adham Baba, the list of essential services that can continue to operate from March 18 to March 31 include banking, finance, electricity, ports, airports, postal, prison, healthcare and medical, transportation, e-commerce, food supply, defence and security, and “any services or works determined by the minister as essential or critical to public health or safety”.
Law firms or legal services are not named in this list of “essential services” under the regulations.
