Newly-minted de facto law minister Azalina Othman Said met with the Bar Council today on the controversial amendments to the Legal Profession Act (LPA) that the government has proposed.

However, both parties did not arrive at any agreement on the matter and plan to meet again in September.

At a press conference after their 80-minute discussion, Azalina again brushed off the allegation by lawyers that the government intended to amend the LPA in order to control the Bar Council.

"This is my first formal discussion with Bar Council. The talk is good... in fact, more needs to be discussed," she said.

"What happened lately was that legal professionals and outsiders (claimed) that the government wants to intervene (in the Bar Council), directly and indirectly.

"I want to say that such statements are not true. There is no finality on the LPA yet. It is still at the discussion stage.

"The Bar Council representatives, who were led by their president (Steven Thiru), have brought up issues on which they agreed and disagreed," Azalina said.

She said they did not not arrive at any consensus on the government's proposal to appoint two government representatives to sit on the Bar Council.

The issues discussed, she said, were more on the "bread and butter" issues, which included the Common Bar Examination, English proficiency as well as the proposed implementation of electronic voting.

"On the Common Bar Examination, the Bar Council told me that other countries (practised) a single standard of examination.

"There is a need to discuss the matter because we don't want (different) qualifications from various quarters," she said.

"I heard that (some) lawyers cannot speak and read English. While the court cases are conducted in Bahasa Malaysia, some of the references are made in English; these are bread and butter issues for Bar members," she added.

"The amendments to the LPA are not about quorum (to hold the Bar annual general assembly) and representatives' issues; it is more on bread-and-butter issues.

"Let it be an overall amendment that can benefit the 17,000 Bar members, not just a one-off issue," she said.

Azalina also said she reminded the Bar Council on the need to foster good relationship with all its members as stipulated under Section 42(1) (1) of the LPA.

"I told the Bar Council that it needs to prioritise its members. The members not only consist of civil and criminal case lawyers, but also corporate and syariah lawyers too," she said.

Meanwhile, Azalina said that she has set up a task force to oversee services provided by the Legal Aid Centre

She proposed streamlining the legal aids services provided by government agencies and NGOs.

Beside Steven Thiru, also present were solicitor-general Engku Nor Faizah Engku Atek and Legal Affairs Division director-general Mohd Zuki Ali.

When contacted later, Thiru said that the Bar Council would get feedback from its members via nationwide forums on the few proposals that were brought up in the meeting.

The implementation of electronic voting was one of the proposals brought up by Bar Council, he said.

"It was a productive discussion as we also discussed other issues such as legal education and liberalisation of legal services.

"(There were) no consensus on the issues concerning the proposed amendments," he said.