Why This Approach?
There is no doubt that both legal education and working in the legal profession are stressful - ask any current law student or practising lawyer and the answer will invariably be in the affirmative. It's important that students start to train themselves now — while they're at law school — not only to think positively about their professional identity during the law degree, but also to be resilient and to have good coping skills in the face of adversity or difficulty. Having strong resilience and coping skills will enable students to flourish and be successful and it will support students well-being — both at law school and once our graduates enter the legal profession.
This effort goes hand in hand with the vision and mission of the Legal Practice Department of Ahmad Ibrahim Kulliyyah of Laws, International Islamic University Malaysia of increasing the marketability and employability of IIUM law students. It helps to facilitate the department to produce better quality graduate that is equipped with practical legal knowledge and advocacy skills with a working mindset for the industry.
PERSONAL TRAINING
THE KEYS TO DEVELOPING YOUR PRACTICAL LEGAL SKILLS ARE COACHING, PRACTICE AND FEEDBACK.
By giving the students the opportunity to be involved in 'real' legal work, they can learn necessary practice skills in authentic recorded simulations in which I will play the role of the client, the court and the firm's boss. These realistic simulations offer them a unique opportunity to experience the unpredictable and complex world of legal practice in a controlled, simulated environment while receiving guidance and feedback from their "clients," the "judge", the court "staffs" , the "boss", their classmates, and their lecturer.
CORPORATE FITNESS
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The aim is to prepare students for a competitive, stressful and demanding work environment by empowering them to look at their own behaviours and to develop effective coping and managing strategies My focus is on supporting students to develop a positive professional identity as a law student. In order to do this I concentrate on positive lawyering knowledge and practice, and provide students with some realistic perspectives about the rigours and stresses of legal education and practice.
GROUP TRAINING
When people are placed in stressful situation in a group, they establish relationships and make friends with other people in the group — helping them become regular participants in group activities. Marketing guru, Seth Godin, refers to this as creating a tribe — each of us wants to belong to a group, which connects us to others who share similar traits and characteristics. Let’s face it, those of us who work in the legal practice industry love and live a healthy lifestyle making us a part of a tribe with others who are committed to the same interests.
MUSCLE TONE
According to Robin Sharma, at the base of all legendary performance in business, sports, music, relationships and life lies a strong character—born from well practiced self-control. Self-regulation or self control has been found to be a lot like a muscle: the more you exercise it the stronger it grows. It’s pure myth that elite achievers are born with gifts you don’t have. And buying into that idea is a great way to avoid the discomfort of doing the work you need to do to enjoy the success you deserve to have. By taking this approach in teaching my students civil procedure and civil litigation, I hope to that the activities that they will be involved in throughout the 14 weeks will be somewhat like an exercise programme that will help tone their legal practice 'muscle.
CORE STRENGTH
Through this approach, I also focus on strategies that will help students to build resilience, coping and well-being skills in order to manage the stresses and rigours of legal education and legal practice. By engaging the students and involving them in the real-like environment of the legal practice world, I hope to help the students to discover the inner strength within themselves, and to inspire them to brave the challenge of the legal practice world. Once they have completed this 14 weeks programme, they will have the realization that if they could survive the 14 weeks of pressure, they do actually have what it takes to survive if not excel as a legal practitoner.