VERBATIM SPEECH 

BY 

THE HONOURABLE PRIME MINISTER OF MALAYSIA, YAB DATO’ SERI ANWAR BIN IBRAHIM 

ON THE OCCASION OF 

THE COMMONWEALTH LEGAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (CLEA) CONFERENCE 2026

“LAWYERING 2030 – SKILLS, STRATEGY & LEGAL EDUCATION FOR A CHANGING COMMONWEALTH”

2 APRIL 2026 (THURSDAY) | 9:30 AM DEWAN TUNKU CANSELOR, UNIVERSITI MALAYA

 

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh dan salam sejahtera.

 

The Right Honourable Datuk Seri Panglima Wan Ahmad Farid bin Wan Salleh,

Chief Justice of Malaysia;

 

Yang Berhormat Dato’ Sri Azalina binti Othman Said,

Minister In The Prime Minister’s Department (Law and Institutional Reform);

 

The Honourable Tan Sri Datuk Zainun Ali,

Pro Chancellor University Malaya & Consultant of CLEA;

 

Tetamu-tetamu yang dimuliakan;

 

The Honourable Professor Dr. S. Sivakumar,

President of CLEA;

 

The Honourable Justice Prashant Kumar Mishra,

Judge, Supreme Court of India;

 

Rakan-rakan yang saya muliakan.

Satu penghormatan bagi negara kita untuk bersama-sama menjayakan satu sidang oleh Persatuan Pendidikan Undang-undang Komanwel (The Commonwealth Legal Education Association) dari segi meningkatkan mutu latihan dan pendedahan kepada anak-anak kita. Saya ucap tahniah kepada pihak penganjur kerana menyelenggarakan majlis ini.

 

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

1. It is a profound honour to inaugurate the opening of the Commonwealth Legal Education Association Conference at the University of Malaya, my alma mater, and one that I proudly share with some of the nation’s leading legal minds throughout our history.

 

2. Before I continue, let me let me just respond to the, two profound speeches by our CJ and the Indian CJ. Now it’s just a coincidence if you’re talking about his father’s attended the Kampala conference in 1967. And my late father, then an MP from UMNO, was a member of the delegation the Commonwealth Parliamentary conference in Kampala 1967. And the CJ made this very pertinent point about the need to imbibe and understand values because values remain an integrating force in society and culture.

 

3. And in the MADANI framework, it is precisely for this reason while we do focus on the need to educate our young and expose the society to the IT, new technology. But the imbuing values is a very certain and integral part of our educational process.

 

4. The failure of Western societies or even some of us by ignoring the importance of values in ethics have led us to be more extremely secular and devoid of ethics and values.

 

5. And therefore the issue of lacking, in the issue of compassion and honoring the dignity of man or woman. And this reflects of course to the remarks by the Indian CJ on the issue of decolonization. I am particularly attracted because the Indian anti-colonial experience certainly is a remarkable feat in the whole history of Asia and the post- colonial world.

 

6. And your reference to the need to educate and expose our young to the decolonization process is very pertinent because at times there’s concern express the legal fraternity because of the traditional exposure and education, and the dependence and subscribing to the tenets of education and values imparted in the west tend to ignore the importance of the historical antecedents, the cultural facets and the strength of this enormous his legacy, cultural that we need to expose our young. Of course, the CJ made the same reference too.

 

 

Ladies and gentlemen,

 

7. A guiding, overarching principle, which we may find in the Rule of Law prescribes that the same set of laws are accessible and enforceable to all. The need to maintain this first principle is equally central to our lives as citizens as it is to us as a community of nations.

 

8. That of course is the ideal. In the geopolitical arena, we witness the Rule of Law being displaced with the law of the jungle – where sophisticated ideals of justice give way to baser instincts and where might is right.

 

9. There is deep irony here, an insidious form of hypocrisy, and I would go even further, a pathological perversion of values where some of the strongest advocates of the rules- based international order not only fail to observe it but manifest utter contempt for it.

 

10. The Rule of Law in international relations cannot be invoked selectively. It cannot shield one party from accountability while denying another its inherent right to self-defence. Its credibility depends on consistency.

 

LAWYERING IN 2030 AND BEYOND

11. We should neither mince words, divert our gaze, nor close our minds, as this is the reality that future lawyers will be stepping into. And this is even without having to point out more obvious challenges, such as the mainstreaming of large language and reasoning models. It is therefore apt that this conference is themed “Lawyering 2030 – Skills, Strategy & Legal Education”. My legal education just in court for decades, having to listen. I’ve learned a great deal, C.J. From the good and the bad.

 

12. Now, while looking into the future of the profession and education in 2030 is important, I believe unpacking the difficult questions and seeking answers for the architecture of justice must take precedence.

 

13. Given that we are on the cusp of a sea change, this conference must allow for a significant exchange and advancement of how the law must evolve.

 

14. There appears to be a consensus ad idem – a meeting of the minds – that for lawyering in 2030, the “black letter” of the law – our statutes and precedents – will be the domain of AI. The lawyer of 2030 will therefore no longer be a “search engine in a suit” not batik, because far more will be required. It follows that what needs to be cultivated today must shift to those that are not easily replicated and are complementary to current and upcoming AI capabilities.

 

15. I venture to suggest a few.

 

16. Firstly, on values, in a world of agentic and autonomous AI, lawyers must be more than just experts of the legal minutiae such as researching and drafting. They must be the ethical authority, the moral anchor if I may, ensuring that what is correct is also just. They must also have empathy to navigate the human trauma lying beneath legal disputes.

 

17. This will allow lawyering to evolve into a more holistic dispute resolution mode, where alternative modes of dispute resolution like mediation, negotiation and conciliation provide real solutions, particularly in relation to individual and private law disputes domestically.

 

18. Secondly, on skills, as the nature of things expands beyond tangible assets within a sovereign state’s domestic laws, lawyers must be able to fluently navigate cross-border matters. And in the context of our multicultural, multiracial society, more so engaging, understanding the various facets, complexity of various cultures, history and religions.

 

19. Digital assets and climate change, for example, have redefined the types of legal assets and solutions that need to be found. The lawyer of the future must therefore be able to navigate the laws of multiple jurisdictions as easily as their own.

 

20. The lawyer must understand areas like financial technology and climate science as much as they comprehend the law of contract or torts.

 

21. And in relation to cross-border disputes which are increasingly prevalent as the world becomes more integrated, it is the lawyer who must remain the “moral architect” of cross-border agreements, ensuring that the mantra of profitability cannot be invoked at the expense of the principles of equity.

 

22. Thirdly, on knowledge, it would be clear by 2030 that legal information will be a commodity available and accessible to anyone with access to AI. To that extent, the law degree of the future must encompass the ability to make reliable and rigorous judgments in light of the voluminous data available.

 

23. Law students ought to be trained to be ethical filters in this vast sea of data. The lawyer of 2030 and beyond must be competent in relation to technology and AI, possess the ability to make sense of data and be imbued with the culture of ensuring that the law is utilised for the public good.

 

24. For current practitioners of the law, it is important that they lend themselves to evolving so as to meet the needs of the world as it functions today. It bears remembering that the law facilitates the day-to-day living of the citizen.

 

25. It is necessary to comprehend the needs of the public, and not to gate-keep the law within a gilded cage that makes it inaccessible to the common man and woman.

 

26. As we recall the famous maxim of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., “the life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience,” I think I heard Nalini has quoted this in the past. So, it must be with us as sentient beings walking the Earth, a species wholly differentiated from animals and other living things, no matter how close in composition of DNA.

 

27. Hence, the need to espouse the law with humanity is not a mere ideal among the stars but a real goal that should be accorded serious contemplatio

 

LAW REFORMS IN MALAYSIA

28. All these, in the struggle to ensure the continuity of justice, reflect what we are advancing in Malaysia through the ethos of our civilisational development – Malaysia MADANI.

 

29. Too often, it is the poorest and most marginalised among us who are deprived of meaningful recourse to the law. It is for this reason that my at administration, and thanks Azalina has made access to justice a central pillar of our broader reform agenda.

 

30. But we recognise, of course, that much work lies ahead. The ultimate goal is a point of legal singularity where there is access to justice for every single citizen in our countries, such that no one is left without a remedy.

 

CONCLUSION

31. The poet philosopher T.S. Eliot still rings a bell as we recollect the following bezel of wisdom:

“Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past.”

 

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

32. As we commence with this conference, it is important to realise that the Commonwealth is a grouping of countries that stay together not by reason of our shared past that is now cast in stone, but by a shared future that we have the freedom to carve, to sculpture, and to define.

 

33. While our past, namely, our history gave us a common language in relation to the law, the future demands that we leverage that commonality in an increasingly uncertain world.

 

With that, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I declare this conference officially open.