'Writ at Large' gives readers a critical yet entertaining view of the Malaysian legal system and practice (All photos: Fahri Azzat)
If the great and intriguing Italian writer and novelist Italo Calvino is to be believed, we — each of us — inhabit a castle and our lives are but a series of “crossed destinies”.
Some years ago, prior to the age of the “great leveller”— Covid — I worked with our former lord president Tun Salleh Abas to complete his memoirs. Well into the experience and near completion, Covid robbed him of his life; and me, the opportunity to see through what would have been one of the most significant historical testaments in our life as a nation.
“I had never thought of going into law” is one of Salleh’s earliest sentences. “I wanted to be a writer” is the complimentary sentence that follows.
If Frank Sinatra is to be believed, there are only two kinds of lawyers: the bore and the boor. Through a vast political network, and as a result of his irrepressible popularity, Sinatra (he who did have his ring kissed) managed to evade the haul-up to a hearing many a time. Given that experience, greater it would seem was the Dickensian dictum when quoted by the Godfather, “the law … is an a--”.
There is no single civic or collective experience that appears as abstruse yet possesses the capacity to both hover and overwhelm.
“The perception of the law”, Fahri Azzat offers, “especially here in Malaysia, is that it is punitive; it is there to punish. And the law is not something to comply with; it is something to get around.”
Admitted to the Malaysian Bar in 1999 and the Shariah Bar in 2018, Fahri is the managing partner of Messrs Fahri, Azzat & Co. He professes a “broad and diverse” legal practice and repertoire, and “represents and advises across diverse legal interests and regularly takes on public interest cases”.
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Fahri has authored a legal text — The Malaysian Guide to Advocacy — and, in 2020, started a blog, “From the Bar Stool”, which chronicles day-to-day experiences as a practising Malaysian advocate and solicitor.
The changing nature of the legal profession — here and everywhere — is what moved Fahri to begin the blog, continue to publish and now offer his latest collection Writ at Large: A Legal Life Well-Rounded.
A distant memory: the age of manila folders teeming with loose sheaves of paper, bound by shards of string; contests in elocution held in smoke-filled bars, tipping with beer and whisky. E-filing and greater systemisation — for better and worse — define the profession today, along with the loss, perceived or not, of a certain “camaraderie”.
“I started the blog to engage younger lawyers, really. Especially since Covid, the legal profession has changed so much. E-filing has transformed the whole culture of the law — where at one time we could spend half a day waiting for the court files, today it is all there,” Fahri says.
“What was there before was camaraderie, and relationships built. The canteen used to be the gathering place while you wait. Now, when court concludes, no one hangs around to cari kawan (look for friends) and I feel that ties are starting to fade.
“I would like to bring back the sense that we are humans before lawyers — how we are with our clients. People don’t know how to be with each other, to empathise, to not always take themselves so seriously. You have a role to play, yes, but this role shouldn’t inhibit your humanity.
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“Younger lawyers have this unreasonable expectation that everything has to be straightforward and clear now. There is a sense that ‘I have done my degree, no more difficulty for me, please; this is the track and I will just go ahead’.
“The generational gap used to be 30 years. I fear it is really shrinking now.”
It is what, perhaps, the best of legal writing has always reached for — that there is a humanity beyond the law that expresses itself in intrigue, tragedy, quite some buffoonery, humour and always empathy.
One of the finest jurists, perhaps, who best combined the legal with the literary, was Henry Fielding, author of that most intrepid of novels, The History of Tom Jones, which contained one of the most astute allusions on legal practice: “And here, I believe, the wit is generally misunderstood. In reality, it lies in desiring another to kiss your a-- for having just before threatened to kick his; for I have observed very accurately, that no one ever desires you to kick that which belongs to himself, nor offers to kiss this part in another.”
As if to supplement that sense — rooted, really, in “that which we would not like done to ourselves” or that simple notion called “empathy” — Fielding also authored a study called “An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers”, a stark and merciless look at the causes of brigandry, namely poverty and inequality.
Writ at Large came as something of a sweet surprise. There is a reason that the blog is playfully referred to by more serious writers as a “bog”. Mostly self-indulgent and lacking what matters most — considered opinion — this kind of expression still manages to resonate, as a form, in the fleeting realms of contemporary populism.
Not so with Writ At Large. Rather than serving as “entries”, the collection comprises small essays that really delve into the “scope” of the law.
The idea of “crossed destinies”, again, locates this collection. It begins with the arrest of an African for drug smuggling. “Donatus Chidera Okonkwo was arrested at the airport and charged with drug trafficking” is the plain beginning of a moving essay titled “Right Up to the Hilt”. “I remember him because of his name, specifically his last name, Okonkwo. It is the name of the protagonist of one of my favourite novels, Things Fall Apart by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe.” It is an affectionate and empathetic beginning that sets an insightful and generous tone for the remaining essays.
There is a wide expanse that is embraced in Writ at Large. The Okonkwo essay possesses sociological dimensions, while other essays offer a keen and human look into the nature of the law, criminality and, especially, the humanity that vanishes with the act.
As with those blog entries, the pace is fast and the themes erratic, but they are threaded in this collection seamlessly. It is the nature of relationships — movingly described in such essays as “Hassan Ali and I” — and the act of, in the words of Fahri, “becoming kinder” with clients through which humanness is forged in a realm of the law that is intractable and difficult.
However, the search is in the introspection and the working through of dilemmas, as in “How Can You Defend a Criminal, Ah?” The law offers no mercy when it comes to paradoxes and the difficult logic required for resolution. Here, too, the personal touch is delicate and thoughtful, allowing great questions of morality and justice to be explored with sensitivity and that rarest quality in legal writing: a good touch of humour.
John Mortimer, the creator of the most memorable legal figure, Horace Rumpole, once advised: “No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean fingernails.”
The “brilliance” in Writ at Large does not lie in seeking common sense or extraordinary brilliance but in the beauty of its pace, open approach and generosity of spirit. That and — from close observation — the “clean” fingernails of Fahri, free-edged.
Purchase a copy of 'Writ at Large: A Legal Life Well-Rounded' at RM86.50 here.
This article first appeared on July 21, 2025 in The Edge Malaysia.
