HOW TO APPLY TO BE A MAGISTRATE (Part 1)

Yesterday I received a phone call from one of my ex-attachment student asking me how to apply to be a magistrate. She was then a UITM undergraduate doing her attachment when I was a magistrate in Pasir Puteh Kelantan. As far as I remember, I’ve explained to her about this matter during the attachment. Thus, almost all students who did the attachment with me, I gave the same explanation. So I answered her question that she must apply to the post using the SPA8 Form which could be obtained from SPA. Unfortunately she said that this is not about the SPA. She was looking for Palace Of Justice web page because according to her that would be more direct. Not totally understand with what she said, I texted her with a simple and short text http://theereis.blogspot.com/ that is my own blog which contain a short entry which I posted purposely to answer her quest on looking the Palace Of Justice web page. The post title is How Do I Apply To Be A Magistrate. The entry may be seen under this entry. Of course at that time I was a little bit upset because I’ve explained that to be a magistrate, you must first apply to be a Legal Officer (Pegawai Undang-undang- PUU) using SPA8 Form. Clearly she has forgotten lots of things that have been taught by me. But now the situation might has changed. As far as I know, at the time of writing this entry anybody who wish to be a magistrate may apply directly to Chief Registrar of the Federal Court's Office. But still I can not guarantee that you will get the post since there is a policy that new legal officers won't be appointed as magistrates. Instead they will be appointed as A Seniour Assistant Registrar.(SAR)

Okay, now let me further explain briefly here how to apply for the magistrate post. I hope this would be a helpful information especially for those who wants to be a magistrate and to all Laws Graduates.

The first thing in becoming a magistrate is to have graduated from laws school with laws degree from any certified universities. During my time we have to wait for the PUU job vacancies advertisement in local newspaper and after that fill up the SPA8 Form and then wait for the interview.

Even though it looks easy, but belive me that at that time it not easy to be a magistrate because when you apply to the PUU post you cannot simply choose what designation you want. This is merely because the Magistrate post is subjected under the Legal Officer Scheme or Skim Perkhidmatan Pegawai Undang-Undang (PUU). It includes both legal and judicial departments. Therefore, if there are some job vacancies advertisement, the advertisement would state more or less like this “JAWATAN KOSONG PEGAWAI UNDANG-UNDANG GRED L41…” and not “JAWATAN KOSONG MAJISTRET GRED L41”. But, as I said earlier, this situation might has changed.

Bear in your mind that if you are looking for filling up vacancies in goverment sector to be the government servant your application must be submiited through SPA8 Form. It's wise to know that the form could be submitted at any time without wating for the job vacacies advertisement. It could be submitted by post or by online. But some goverment agencies require you to submit your application directly to them. Meaning to say that if you want to be a mgistrate, you may submit your application directly to Chief Registrar of the Federal Court.

I think it's enaugh for today's entry. I do hope you understand. Inyaallah I will explain further about the PUU in the second part soon. To get the information on SPA8 Form please click here.