I love You 1000+ Advocacy
The former deputy prime minister and current UMNO (United Malays National Organisation), Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, was charged with 12 counts of criminal breach of trust offences, 8 bribery charges and 27 money laundering charges in relation to the use of Yayaysan Akalbudi’s (“YA”) funds. YA was a limited company with the purpose of carrying charity work and eradicating poverty. A ‘submission’ is a lawyer’s argument. At the close of his defence, his lawyers were reported to have filed a submission of ‘about 1,000 pages’ on 15 June 2021. The prosecution filed their submission, which was ‘about 200 pages. We can infer the High Court judge hearing the case has to consider 1,200+ pages of written submission. Let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s assume it takes 2 minutes to read and understand each page of submission. We assume the cut off is 1,200 pages. That’s 2,400 minutes. That’s 40 hours of reading only the written submission. This hasn’t taken into account the notes of proceedings for 99 witnesses over the course of 53 days of trial. The report is not clear about it but my guess is the page count does not include the bundle of authorities. A bundle of authorites often accompanies a written submission. That is the collection of reported cases a lawyer refers to support their submission during a hearing. A bundle of authorities is often at least five times thicker than the written submission. So for 1,200 pages of submission, the bundles of authorities would be at least 6,000 pages. A member of the public would be entirely reasonable in thinking that with 40 hours worth of submissions to read prior to the hearing, it would be a short one. After all, the Judge should have seized the arguments by then. But no, the news report says that 7 days – 5, 6, 9, 11, 13 and 24 August 2021 – were allocated for oral submission. Now assuming the judge devotes a full day’s hearing to each of those days, we get 6 hours (10am – 1pm and 2pm – 5pm) x 7 days, which gets us 42 hours worth of oral submission. By the end of submission, theoretically, the judge would have spent at least 82 hours of time on just reading and listening to submissions alone. The astonishing thing is this is just the end of the prosecution’s case. We have not yet arrived at the end of the defence’s case. I fear to speculate how long the end of defence submission would be. This is what Lord Bonomy wrote in his opinion in relation to submission prolixity: [28] I deal now with the remainder of the original thirteen grounds of appeal in the reclaiming motion relating to the petition. The reclaimer’s case, like so many before this Court conducted by litigants rather than lawyers, includes many grounds of appeal, some relating to the points discussed so far, but a number relating to other issues. They are expressed in a series of written submissions that in many places seem designed to conceal rather than elucidate the point that is sought to be made. The danger of unduly prolix submissions by litigants, naturally immersed in the complexities of the case and the emotional turmoil that it has generated for them, is that good points may not be highlighted and may go unnoticed, drowned in a morass of sludge. The reasons why none found favour with me may be brief, but the time devoted to ensuring that no point of substance is overlooked has been considerable. John Humphries Parkes + John Humpries Parks v Robin Macgregor and Cintec International Limited + Cintect International Limited [2011] CSIH 69 I imagine it is well within the court’s jurisdiction to impose a page limit. Even if the court sets a 100 page limit, I think that more than enough for such a case. Criminal cases are not rocket science. A seasoned litigator and a seasoned judge too would look upon a 1000+ page submission, not as a show of strength but an inference of infirmity. A strong case does not need a battalion of pages to carry it; twenty well-written pages would suffice to manifest it. A 1000+ page submission is not a submission, it is a monument of a submission; it is meant to awe the unlearned, not persuade the wise. I think the volume of material submitted to the court on both sides has not helped the court but done a disservice to it. It may also have done a disservice to the impressionable of our profession as well as members of the public in leaving them with the thought that this is how submissions are done. It is not. A lawyer’s job is to distil, distil and then distil some more the legal issues and relevant facts to its pivotal issues to assist the court in coming to a decision. We, as lawyers, are there to narrow the issues, not inflate and conflate them. We are there to facilitate the court arriving at a sound, reasonable and fair decision as efficiently as possible so it can get on with its many other cases The longer a court spends on our case, the less time it has for others. Contrary to popular belief, a lawyer’s job is not to confuse, obfuscate or make a case more difficult for the court to decide. It is to lessen the more, and do more with less. The following eloquently makes the point: [10] The case of Taman Bandar Baru Masai Sdn Bhd v. Dindings Corporation Sdn Bhd provides a salutary reminder of the need to ensure that a party’s case is presented, at the very least, in an organised manner, and better yet with clarity, succinctness and coherence. It was said in this case: It is a condition precedent, when a party relies on any of the sub-section under s. 37 of AA 2005 there is a duty and obligation in law to clearly identify the sub-section,
