I attended the eLawyer Law Conferenceon Saturday, after rushing down from the Bar AGM in the morning. OK, didn’t quite attend the Bar AGM, more like just signing my name, grabbing the Annual Report and then rushing down to UM.This was the first time I’ve ever been a VIP at any event. The experience was complete with a corsage being pinned on me, and then an usher quickly bringing me to the packed lecture hall, and then pointed to the front row reserved for the VIPs. I was there mainly because I was one of the judges for the eLawyer Legal Blog Writing competition, the results of which would be announced at the end of the conference.

Made it there just in time to see Cheng Leong start his Q&A session, and the audience was very active in asking questions, and you could see that there were a lot of queries from the bloggers out there. I think the bulk of the audience were bloggers, and their questions ranged from copyright issues to whether they could prevent someone placing up a picture on facebook. Cheng Leong answered the questions like a true pro I thought, but you can read his blog for how he was feeling.

Next up was Nizam with his talk on defamation and blogging, where he highlighted all the significant cases in the news recently and then set out the law on defamation. His Q&A session was buzzing as well, with lots of questions being posed and the MCs had to also cut this Q&A short.

Some of the VIPs, including Khairul Anuar and Eddie Law

After this, was essentially the prize giving for the eLawyer Legal Blog writing competition. Fahri Azzat spoke on behalf of the judges to give some feedback. Essentially, the judges were going to reward originality of thought in the blog writing competition. I then spoke very briefly on my thoughts about the blogosphere here in Malaysia, and its interaction with the law and the legal profession. Prizes were then given out for the consolation prize winners and then the top three prizes.

I thought it was a well-run conference, albeit a half-day conference. Good start for eLawyer and hopefully this can be expanded in the next installment. Will look forward to more sessions, including panel discussions and an increase in interactivity among the speakers on a panel and more importantly, an increase in interactivity with the audience members.