Indonesian Law Education

Indonesian Legal Education...


Legal education in Indonesia is still developing and profesional qualifications are uneven.

The following is an excerpt from the Asean Law Association website, available in full HERE.

The Indonesian legal profession can trace its roots back to the Dutch colonial era and the two types of lawyer that practiced in the jurisdiction; namely, pokrol bambu (zaakwarnemer or native/indigenous lawyer) and advocaat en procureurs or advocate.

Both types of lawyer consulted and assisted people with legal problems and also were primary players in the litigation process.

However, there were also differences. The two major differences dealt with professional requirements and the venue in which they were allowed to represent or assist their clients. In order for an advocate to practice it was compulsory for them to hold a Master of Law degree. Furthermore, an advocaat en procureurs provided legal services for Europeans throughout the colonial court system including the District Court (Residetie-Gerecht), the Appellate Court (Raad van Justitie), and the Supreme Court (Hogerechtschof). In contrast, the Dutch colonial government did not require the pokrol bambu to have any legal education or even a legal background as neither was considered to be of critical importance to the intended functions of the pokrol bambu. The function of he pokrol bambu was to provide legal services for and to the indigenous population throughout the native/indigenous court system; namely, the Landraad, Districsgerecht, and Regenstschapsgerecht.

The regulatory framework included provisions for advocates to be supervised by judges sitting on the appellate courts and Staatsblad 1927-496 set out provisions designed to protect indigenous clients from any malpractice and manipulation that may arise as a result of retaining the services of untrained pokrol bamboo representing clients that possessed even less knowledge of the law and the legal system. The structure of the legal system was prone to abuse and corrupt practices within both the judiciary and the government, a concern that remains even to the present day.

The issue of regulating the behavior and acts of advocates in Indonesia through the enactment of specific legislation has always been a source of contention, conflict, and controversy. Many advocates hold a belief that the enactment of laws infringes on their professional independence and amounts to State interference in the performance of their functions. The concept of professional autonomy... is premised on the belief that self-regulation of advocates is the best method to ensure a competent profession. In contrast, the government believes that regulation by the State is the most effective method of maintaining professional and political stability.The concept of politically stability and the advocate profession became intimately intertwined during the Suharto era as a means of controlling the profession and removing the threat that knowledgeable advocates would oppose the government’s policies on human rights and democratic grounds.

According to the Advocates Law only those that have successfully graduated from an institute of higher learning specializing in law may be appointed as advocates once they have completed a professional education program approved by the Bar Association. Advocates may be dismissed for breaches of the Advocates Law or the Bar Association’s Code of Ethics. both of which enumerate a number of reasons that would lead to an advocate being disbarred.

In the period after World War II the demand for legal education has increased exponentially and there are now more than two hundred accredited law faculties stretching the length and breadth of Indonesia. The potential profits that education can generate for private educators and companies providing private education services has meant that there has been significant growth in the provision of private education including legal education. This has meant that two parallel legal education systems have developed; namely, State or public education based faculties of law and privately-owned institutes of higher education with a faculty of law.

Of the more than two hundred accredited law faculties throughout the country, a mere twenty seven of these are stateowned or approximately 10%. The majority of these state-owned law faculties offer undergraduate programs that allow students to graduate with a Bachelor of Laws or LLB (“Sarjana Hukum” or “SH”). Only a small number of these state-owned institutions have sufficient resources available to them to run post-graduate law programs at the Masters level and even fewer still at the Doctorate level. Legal education in Indonesia is undergraduate in nature and students are not required to have a first degree before enrolling in a legal education program. It is important to note that one of the primary differences in the Indonesian legal education system from that of Europe, Australia, and the USA is that the system does not currently cater for a professional skills component with in the program. An Indonesian law degree in this regard is considered to be general in nature preparing students for further academic study or employment in any other number of professions outside of law rather than necessarily equipping them for the professional practice of law.

The basic premise of the law curriculum is to produce graduates with legal skills (“kemahiran hukum”) that are ready for immediate employment in the law profession. The concept of ‘ready for employment’ does not distinguish between public and private practice and the Decision can reasonably be construed as preparing law graduates with generic legal skills that are applicable to both the public and private practice of law. An initial and persistent criticism of the standardized law curriculum was and is that it is in fact too academic and too generic in nature to adequately prepare graduates for anything but further academic study. It is important to distinguish the national law curriculum from other regulations that govern the provision of continuing legal education and professional skills such as advocacy training.

The current CLS curriculum is divided into two main areas; namely, compulsory subjects (the national curriculum) and elective subjects (the local curriculum). The national curriculum is inflexible and contains a list of law subjects that must be taught by each accredited faculty of law. These national curriculum subjects in essence do not differ substantially from law faculties located in any other part of the world and include such subjects as ‘Introduction to Law’, ‘The Indonesian Legal System’, ‘Civil Law and Procedure’, ‘Criminal Law and Procedure’, ‘Administrative Law’, and ‘Public International Law’, among others. The local curriculum, in contrast, is determined by each individual faculty and as such reflects the strengths and weaknesses of the staff on each individual faculty.

Although this system is not resistant to change, any changes that have occurred have been labored and slow. However, it is interesting to note that increasing emphasis is being placed on the provision of professional legal skills at the under-graduate level although a comprehensive curriculum of professional skills is still not readily available to be taught nor would most law faculties have the necessary resources, financial or human, to support such an initiative.

One of the major criticisms of the current national law curriculum is that it does not provide graduates with the necessary analytical skills that are required to adequately apply the generic legal skills that their law school educations have provided them.

However, there is perhaps a more fundamental criticism that must first be leveled to understand the plight of legal education in Indonesia; namely, the ad hoc application of the national legal curriculum and the disparity in resources, human and others, between law faculties throughout the country. Although the universal application of the national law curriculum may alleviate some of the disparity issues between law faculties in Jakarta and the regions, the reality remains that many of the leaders in legal education are concentrated in Jakarta, which leaves only the most committed of legal educators in the regions outside of Jakarta.

Finally, legal education is the most critical component of the development of a sound legal profession in Indonesia, as without it the enforcement of the law by highly-qualified and skilled legal practitioners is not a reality but an unsustainable fantasy. The necessary building blocks for a comprehensive legal education sector are already in place but this infrastructure and the ongoing commitment to the development of legal education needs to be clarified and regulated to ensure that all objectives are successfully met.

Here are some summary points from the article:

  • From its origins in the Dutch era, the Indonesian legal system was split into two levels under two legal systems:
  1. The Advocat, with a Master of Law degree, practicing in the European courts, and
  2. The Pokrol Bambu with an informal law education, providing legal services for the indigenous peoples.
  • The current Indonesian system attempts to combine the two systems through both government and private law schools of uneven resources and quality.
  • The S.H. or Sarjana Hukum degree is an undergraduate degree, not a professional law school degree as understood in most countries, although the S.H. can still become a fully-practicing lawyer through entry to a Bar Association.
  • The Indonesian government has shown itself to be conflicted between allowing strong self-regulation of the law profession to advance the rule of law, and fear of a strong law profession which might challenge government authority.

Bar Associations

Government fear of an independent and well-regulated law profession is still active: in 2014 the DPR weakened the authority of PERADI—the main Indonesian bar association—to self-regulate their profession by issuing a decision to permit multiple bar associations.

Institutional infighting then caused PERADI itself to split into three opposing factions.

Other bar associations such as KAI have also sprung up, catering to aspiring lawyers who for one reason or another are unable or unwilling to join one of the PERADI factions.

As a result, self-regulation of the profesionalism and ethics of Indonesian lawyers and advocats is increasingly chaotic.