2008 has been an interesting year for Legal Bytes/Brainstorm. It started with our presentation of BriefCase, our flagship application, the most user friendly and cost effective notes of evidence software, to the then President of the Court of Appeal, The Right Honourable Justice Tan Sri Zaki (now the Chief Justice) at his office in the Palace of Justice, Putrajaya. We did a presentation before him, the then Chief Judge of Malaya (now the President of the Court of Appeal) The Riht Honourable Justice Tan Sri Alauddin, and some other judges from the Federal and High Court. They were impressed with the application and wanted us to have a trial run at the KL High Court.

Judges listening attentively to Azizi’s presentation

Azizi presenting

Jourdein manning the application

So immediately after Chinese New Year break we had our first trial run of BriefCase at the KL Court complex. Although they were few hiccups during the week — our transcriber were not yet properly trained and there a few bugs in the app — the judges that had the chance to use BriefCase were impressed by the software. Hence we were asked to run a pilot project for 3 months. And during these 3 months, the judiciary is calling a few other companies to introduce their own system. So we had competitors which made it even more fun.

Azizi and Azmir setting up the audio recording during the first day of trial run

Falah briefing our first transcriber Aidil on BriefCase

4 systems were tried out during the three month stint and at the end the almost unanimously favoured BriefCase. In our final presentation to the then Chief Justice, The Right Honourable Justice Tun Abdul Hamid, he was very impressed with BriefCase’s performance.

Our transcriber, Ramlah demonstrating BriefCase to the two higest judicial officers in the country

Tan Sri Zaki and Tun Hamid following the trial with BriefCase

Azizi explaining about BriefCase

Tan Sri Zaki impressed with BriefCase

We also had the a group of visitors from UAE coming over to see our court systems. And fortunately for us, the court officials brought them to the courts equipped with BriefCase and we were asked to demo to the representatives from UAE. The UAE reps were very impressed by Legal Bytes in general and BriefCase in particular — especially the fact that the whole company consist of under 30’s. We may be young, but we are good.

Azizi preparing to demo BriefCase to the Arabs

Unfortunately for us, although we emerged as the best system, due to reasons which are part political and part economical, BriefCase is yet to be implemented in our courts. We are still negotiating with the government on the implementation of the system.

Moving office

In 2008, we also moved to a new office from Jalan Ipoh to Jalan Gombak. The new office looks really cool with a fire place and creepers all over the walls.

Azri and Superdeen at the new office

Jourdein at our new office

This year also we split our operations into two — Legal Bytes for marketing of our legal applications and solutions; and Brainstorm, a place where great minds brainstorms and turns great ideas into great products. At Brainstorm we wil be producing websites and web apps as well as mobile apps.

Well we had a great year in 2008; a lot of new experiences learnt and we believe that 2009 will be an even greater year for us. Here are some other photos of what we did in 2008.

Brainstorming session with Chris Hong on the development of BriefCase 2.0

Jourdein’s birthday celebration

The pilot project team: from left, Jourdein, Ramlah, Christina, Safiyyah, Alia, Superdeen and Azri. Missing from the photo, Azizi (photographer)

We have moved to a new office. Our new address is:

No. 10, Jalan Harmonis 1, Taman Harmonis, Batu 6 Jalan Gombak, 53100 Kuala Lumpur. 

Our new telephone number is +(6)03-6188-0020

Our new fax number is +(6)03-6186-9224.

Here are some of our photos of our new office and the moving in process. I’ll post more pictures soon.

eLawyer is organising the first and ever Legal Blog Writing Contest running from now till 30th Nov 2008. Below is the details of the competition:

The recent Political Tsunami in our country has yielded many changes for us, the Rakyat. We have seen the emergence of a dual-party system (well, almost), where a bigger and tougher opposition shares the limelight with the ruling party. We have seen giant-killers and the almighty falls of ministers. We have seen the weakening of racial politics and the strengthening of democracy.

For the legal community, the change came in the form of Datuk Zaid Ibrahim, the new de facto law minister. Hailed as “the most promising appointment” in the new cabinet by The Economist (Reference - “Shuffling deckchairs“, The Economist, 2008-03-19.), he has so far lived up to the name. From forcing the government to apologize for the 1988 judicial crisis (a huge leap, that one), the introduction of the Common Bar Examination, to his staunch support for establishment of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Lingam Video Clip –  Datuk Zaid is here to stay.

Thus, eLawyer, as your local legal community portal, would like to hear your views and concerns regarding some of the issues currently affecting the legal community and the country, as a whole.

We would like to invite all lawyers, law student and bloggers to participate in our blog writing competition, which features some ‘hot’ topics right now:

1) Towards an independent judiciary in Malaysia

2) Common Bar Exams: The creation of a new problem or a solution for an old one?

3) Welcome CheDet.com: the impact of Tun Mahathir’s blog

4) Anti-party Hopping Law- Agree or Disagree?

Choose EITHER ONE of the above topics, give your two-cents worth in not more than 1,000 words and you stand to win up to RM 500 cash! Successful entries will be featured in an exclusive section on our website.

Prizes

Grand prize   RM 500
1st Runner-up   RM 200
2nd Runner-up   RM 100
10 Consolation prizes  eLawyer merchandise

Panel Judges

1. Dr Azmi Sharom – an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Malaya. Apart from teaching, he is also a column writer for The Star newspaper. He is well known for his brave and critical view on various issues regarding the democracy and constitutional law in Malaysia. 

2. Lee Shih – a practising lawyer and a member of the KL Bar Committee. He chairs the Publications Committee and serves as Deputy Chair of the IT Committee. He tries to blog regularly, despite his hectic schedule.     

3. Fahri Azzat – a lawyer practises in Azzat & Izzat. He served as a committee member in the IT Committee under KL Bar Committee. Fahri is a blogger and is also the founder of an online email forum – “The Rostrum”, which is meant for legal professionals to discuss issues concerning the legal industry. 

Terms & Conditions

1. This competition is only open to eLawyer members. For non-members who wish to participate, sign up as a Basic Member for FREE at www.elawyer.com.my.

2. Entries should be submitted via email to contest@elawyer.com.my by 12 p.m. on or before 30 November 2008. Late entries will be automatically disqualified.

3. Format for essay entry:
a. E-mail ‘Subject line’ : eLawyer Legal Blog Writing Contest 2008
b. Document body : First write your contact details (Full name, address, e-mail address, phone number and occupation), followed up by essay topic & essay
c. Essay should not exceed 1000 words

4. Winners will be contacted via email / telephone and their names will be published at www.eLawyer.com.my.

5. The organiser reserves the right to display/publish/use any submitted entries in any way it deems fit.

6. Judges decision is final. No enquiries/appeal will be entertained pertaining to their decision.

7. Any other questions regarding this contest, you may contact us at 03-2782 5399 or email tocontest@elawyer.com.my.

This event is supported by:

Law Society, University Malaya

UK Malaysian Law Student Union

Law Student’s Union, International Islamic University Malaysia

Law & Commerce Soceity, Management & Science Univeristy

Law Society, National University Malaysia (UKM)

This is in fact the 1st of its kind competition in the history of Malaysia. We urge all of our members to take part in it and if you still not yet a member, please register as Basic Member (it is FREE) and email us your essay today!

We always believe that computers in courts should be virus proof. Well, why shouldn’t it — a lot of people’s lives depend on documents saved in the court’s computers. Judge’s decisions, notes of evidence etc, all these affects people’s life. And when a computer goes down, so may be the life of a few people. A few month’s ago we heard about how a case was postponed because the judge could not locate his notes of evidence. Today another interesting thing happened, the decision of the judge is attacked by a virus and — voila it is lost. The whole thing need to be retyped and thus delaying the decision and in the whole process delaying the whole judicial system and adding one more case to the almost 1milion backlog cases.

And that is exactly why we’ve been pushing for Macs in courts as it is virtually virus free. And that’s why we make sure that our softwares runs best on a Mac. BriefCase for instance runs best on a Mac and at the moment BriefCase is the best real-time notes of evidence software in Malaysia and has been proven to speed up trials up to 300%.

To read the full news, click here and here.

Computer virus delays Irene Fernandez appeal

By M. MAGESWARI

KUALA LUMPUR: The appeal of Tenaganita Sdn Bhd director Irene Fernandez, convicted for maliciously publishing false news in 1995, was delayed once again because of a computer virus.

The notes of evidence on one of the computers being used for the proceedings had been corrupted by a virus, which meant they had to be retyped, said High Court judge Justice Mohamed Apandi Ali.

He said the lower court registry (criminal division) had been working very hard to type the notes for the appeal, but he received a letter dated Aug 4 from registrar Norhayati Abd Jabar on one of the typists in charge of compiling the notes.

“Three typists had been assigned to type the notes of evidence. Unfortunately, one of the computers used by a typist was corrupted with virus when she was half way through her work, and she had to type them again,” he said.

Justice Mohamed said that the registry was short of typists. “I have already requested the registry to double its efforts and even encouraged them to work overtime to complete their task,” he said.

Saying that the registrar had requested a month to finish the job, he set Sept 10 for mention to ensure that all records of appeal are ready.

In 2003, Fernandez was sentenced to 12 months’ jail by a magistrate’s court for maliciously publishing false news in a 1995 memorandum entitled Abuse, Torture, and Dehumanised Treatment of Migrant Workers at Detention Camps.

Our CTO working hard to finish up BriefCase 2.0 

We have been awfully quiet for the past few months. Here’s what we’ve been up to.

Pilot Project

We were involved in a pilot project for the transcription of notes of evidence in the Kuala Lumpur Court Complex. There were four other companies in the pilot and each with their own system. We were introducing BriefCase for the first time and we were present at 3 courts.

We were happy with the results of the pilot. Judges were very happy with BriefCase and they have have strongly recomended that BriefCase be used in our courts. The chart below illustrate the judges’ opinion of BriefCase.

BriefCase Speed

The whole idea of the pilot project was to find a system that would help improve the speed of trials. Well how much faster is BriefCase compared to the present system? Well, the figures we got were mind-boggling. We found out that BriefCase is about 300% faster than the present system. And not only is it much much faster, it is also significantly more reliable and accurate.

BriefCase’s speed comparison chart

Judges Feedback

We received great feedback from judges. Below are a few quotes from judges. Due to privacy reasons, we cannot reveal the names of the judges.

Good performance. Notes of evidence are excellent and reliable. Faster disposal of hearing.
-High Court Judge-

We would definitely stick with this system (BriefCase) for our other trials, (and) not other systems
- High Court Judge -

It shortens the court proceedings and enables me to concentrate on the evidence given by the witness.
- Session Court Judge -

A reliable system. Strongly recommended for court use.
- Magistrate -

One senior lawyer said that BriefCase is the fastest system he has ever used.

Mass Interview & Training

Legal Bytes organized a mass interview for transcribers and training.We interviewed about 200 people in two a week and short listed a few candidates for the position of transcribers. The interview was handled by our Head Transcriber Ramlah. We would like to thank Assoc. Prof. Aida for the list of candidates.

Ramlah conducting the mass interview.

A few months ago we embarked on a project to develop a website for the KL legal aid. However not even half way the Legal aid team were caught up with helping the Bersih and Hindraf people with legal problems. So we at Legal Bytes put up a temporary website while waiting for the legal aid team to supply us with more content.

Anyway now it seems that there are some breathing space for legal aid. So we have agreed to get the website done. Be on the look out for a whole new legal aid website in the next few weeks.

Legal Bytes’ Chief Technology, Jourdein has a not so new blog. Here he blogs about technology, programming and his life. Visit the blog here.

This is a cool add on for Firefox. You can now write a blog without logging into your blog’s admin page.