ITS FINALLY OFFICIAL !

Alhamdulillah its finally official today ! Your girl here, soon will be working !

That I'm sharing the news, plus all the things related to it because I kinda promised myself ( I am not able to write it before because I am not that hopeful ) but regardless, now that its official , insyaAllah soon I'll start working as Pegawai Undang-Undang L41 at Jabatan Peguam Negara. 

* before anything , AGC stands for Attorney General Chambers of Malaysia thank you :) 

Disclaimer : this is purely written based on my own experience and how I see things - so take it if its applicable and related to you, I welcome corrections too okay? Thank you ! and yeah I wrote this post in three different times . One in the evening then I pause to go for Mydin shopping, then next after isyak , then suddenly A called so I pause again and I swear this is the last editing  

me sho lazy ady ! ( nowadays kids spell these way, so I got to keep up ) 

Timeline : The dates and events ( and its just me ranting unnecessary things sorrayh )

03/08/2017 - I applied for SPA , as part of requirements to lapor diri with JPA . And one of it, seems to be the closest to my qualification which is Pegawai Undang-Undang. Lol I even applied for Pustakawan , imagining myself sitting rearranging books while smirking at people who date in the library get a life somewhere else haha

[CLP]

[ still CLP ] to be honest I hardly remember I applied for SPA though 

[CLP] I can keep typing this three initials in many many rows but I decided to stop here

28/07/2018 - End of CLP yayers

02/08/2018 - only almost a year after I received an email to complete a psychometric test

10/08/2018  I sat for the online test initially thought its like PTD exam I got few months back which include math questions, but I would say the test I sat for is basically a test on your inclination. I remembered taking the test once the clock strike 12 am because I am traveling that 10th morning - and guess what I answered few of the questions that ask ' Adakah anda rasa anda diperhatikan? ' and I am like WHYDOYOUASKMETHIS more like why I am answering these hundreds of questions at this hour , 

10/10/2018 - Got my CLP result 

26/10/2018 - Received an email to go for an interview in Putrajaya on the 19/11/2018 

19/11/2018 - Went for the interview, I think the last date for the interview process was somewhere on the 22nd , and my group was the fifth group interviewed with five people in it 

24/12/2018 - Got the email saying that I passed the interview but still got to wait for the official appointment letter , its like getting excited but at the same time I had to be less excited + extra anxious

thankful for this blessing. 

31/12/2018 - Received the official appointment letter which I thought it will take longer than a week, and this came to me as a pleasing surprise. 

and indeed, Allah is the most merciful and I am grateful for this opportunity. 

Interview preparation 

I remembered the time when I was preparing for the interview, it got me thinking on what are the skills I can offer as a fresh graduate that will benefit the chamber? I was discussing with a friend who attended the interview way way earlier than me and she was telling me about the questions the panel asked and how her group reacted to the questions. 

The topics that they discussed can be various , but my advice is to update yourself with the current news - I got separation of powers concerning prosecution power under the AG , I heard there's ICERD, and there's also specific topics in Evidence that are being discussed such as corroboration of witness. 

But the sole question, which I can pretty say everyone will stand a chance to answer was, 

tell me about yourself and why do you want to work with AGC? 

I swear that I've been asking myself the same question all over again, asking different people on whether my answer can be challenged ( and if it can be, I wanted to seek answer to all of the counter questions ) and I prepared stages of answer to this question. 

I remembered this one time I was talking to a friend whom I got connected with in LinkedIn - I was like trying to stop the conversation by courteously ending the session by asking him if he had any job opportunity for me to explore, do let me know. 

Then he said that I made a mistake by saying it that way because when finding yourself in such situation, first you got to know the business your future employer ( what is it about - what do they do daily ) then you got to see whether there is any skills that you may contribute to the company , whether the skills that you have matched with the skills needed by the company. and whether your skills are able to value add to the company and at the same time, for your own personal growth. 

well , I am grateful that I made such mistake and someone correcting me on spot - which I consider a valuable lesson over a stranger to stranger conversation. 

so back to this AGC thing, 

Figuring myself out 

before going into the details , at this stage I already figured few things about myself 

I am into the area of law that involve human and partly emotions ( like employment and criminal ). 

How do I know that? 

One, I took this two subjects back in my undergraduate, and whenever I went for classes or tutorials for these two subjects, it feel exciting and I don't mind giving my opinions without having the need to carefully study for the subjects. 

I love criminal law but I am that someone who keep questioning ' what if I defend the wrong person' , and I would say through the whole one year of CLP, I do get insights from my criminal procedure and evidence lecturers that shifts the way I look at this. 

Back to the principle of ' One is not guilty until proven otherwise ' - that if we prosecute someone based on lack of evidence, it will be detrimental to the person - even up to the point you are almost very sure yourself that this person is guilty but you're the defence counsel , you need to remember that you're facilitating justice as opposed to individual , hence its possible to persuade the accused to plead guilty and we'll go straight to the mitigation of sentencing. 

needless, I still have that contemplation , that if I am going to pursue my career as in private sector, with these very limited experience and exposures of mine, going into criminal law is maybe something I consider after employment law. 

After working for six months doing conveyancing , I am very sure that conveyancing is not something I would want to do in my youth years - and I would say I am not that profit driven person for now ( hopefully till forever haha ) that opening my own law firm may not be in the lists of things I want to do in the next five to ten years. but I never know if next year I changed my mind haha

with all these, I spent days to come up to the final answer I offered during the interview. Writing these down doesn't give justice to the amount of thinking and contemplation I did when drafting my answer. 

The Day itself 

Here's to the interview session ;

So during the interview, after briefly introducing myself ( my name, the last education I obtained ) I said basically I have three reasons to offer on why I want to work with AGC ( I had to mention the THREE because I want them to hear to all three, in case they ask me questions in between haha ) . 

I straightly said that I see myself as a deputy public prosecutor in the future ( because they would want to see which department you're interested to be in )

first I said, I drew particular interest in criminal procedure and evidence. Though on grades, especially criminal procedure, this may be a bit doubtful to begin with. 

I was anticipating questions from various topics when I offered this as my first answer, because days before the interview I saw myself revising my CLP notes especially the topics on trials ( s173 CPC Don't get me started people ) but I would consider myself lucky that they didn't ask a thing to test whether I had an interest in these two subjects ( I even paused for seconds to wait and see if there's any questions for me ) 

second, it can be summed up that my personality seems to suggest that I am incline to serve people at large as compared to individual interests. 

Hence I said being in AGC , give me the opportunity to serve justice directly and I relate with sentencing topic. Which it says about one of the aims of sentencing includes deterrence. Not only for the offender, but to deter the public from committing the same offence. By being in AGC, as well as a public prosecutor ( hopefully ameeen ) , I would be able to contribute to this aim to be achieved. 

Because after all , in Malaysia we practice adversarial system where prosecution and defence counsel plays an important role where judges will act like a referee as compared to inquisitorial system ( go and google haha ) 

the third and last one, is a personal story on how I started to do law , on how I perceive justice at the very start of my law education route , and how some other things that happen in between had successfully changed my view. I am not a fan of using stories in my speech ( most of the time ) but I've learned that I need to put some personal touch and story ( because anyway its my life story , it happened and I learned great lessons from it too ) 

My take from all the process

To be honest, I am not hopeful, partly because I don't know what are the things/skills I had to offer to the chamber , I am very newbie , still very ambitious about everything . Can't blame this girl isn't it 

I talked to a senior lawyer too, when I came up with my very first immature shaky drafting , he suggested to me that I should venture into private practice first before I can be eligible for the post in AGC. And yeah it can be true because as much as I want to serve in the government sector , I got to still do the reality check. 

I am very grateful that Allah crafted such a beautiful timeline for me, that he made it happen after a year when I've completed everything - that I wouldn't question my own qualification to fit in the post ( because they need you to be a qualified person under the Legal Profession Act, which indirectly saying you need to have your CLP with you )

it never come to me that I will (hopefully) escape the nine months of pupillage by serving at judicial legal service for a year ( hopefully again ameen insyaAllah), all these while it was just learned by theories in books. 

Last but not least, if you happen to read up till this point, please do make prayers for me for the smoothness of this route. Thank you for your warm wishes, I can't make it though without observing my surrounding, studying the people around me, delaying judgments in the things I first encountered , and actually reflect from countless of events in my life. 

Now it feels like adult-ing again. I need to start thinking about renting room ( this time around I want to have a non sharing room please take my money ) - creating liabilities like insurance and having that four wheel pet ( read car hahahhahahahah ) like can I buy a car that comes with the driver? - and basically to hustle again after few months off the working radar. 

I have a month plus left to snuggle with laziness HA-HA bye 

Love, the'ann