Teaching and Learning of Procedural Law Courses: An Overview of the Best Practice

Abstract

Procedural law courses are important components in legal education in all law schools in Malaysia. The courses include civil procedure, criminal procedure, evidence as well as a more specific courses such as bankruptcy and winding-up proceedings. They are taught as compulsory courses in upper years of law bachelor degree in which students have already completed substantive areas of law. In schools that include Syariah law (Islamic law) as part of their curriculum, Syariah procedural courses both for criminal and civil proceedings are also taught. Similar to many other professional courses, a contemporary development suggests that teaching and learning professional skills require special approach different from traditional method of lecture and tutorial which centres on lecture-based instruction in classroom. This may address critics against local law graduates implying the needs to improve skills essential in legal professions including those that aimed to be instilled in procedural law courses. This paper explores the best practice in teaching procedural law courses by review of the existing literature relevant to the subject matter; and using a finding from a focus group discussion involving selected law teachers from different law schools in Malaysia. This is significant to contribute towards improvement of teaching and learning of the procedural law courses in law schools. Furthermore, studies on the aspects of teaching and learning procedural law courses have been rather limited especially in Malaysia.