LEGAL OFFICERS MUST KEEP ABREAST OF SOCIETAL CHANGES

SINGAPORE, April 16 (Bernama) - Legal officers must keep track of the fast-
changing world and amend the legislation accordingly to maintain its relevance,
Singapore Law Minister K. Shanmugam said Thursday.

He said that with the effects of globalisation and the advent of science and
technology, legal frontiers had expanded beyond the domestic territories and
legal dealing was becoming more complex.

The minister was speaking at the opening of the three-day Fourth Annual
Event of the Attorney General's (AG) Chambers of Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore
at the Sentosa island resort here.

About 130 legal officers from the three countries are taking part in the
annual event which was last held in Brunei. The next event will be hosted by
Malaysia's AG's chambers next year.

Shanmugam said legal officers had to undertake to keep abreast of these
changes as the governments needed to anticipate and keep pace with societal
changes.

He said public prosecutors also could not escape the changes in the
fast-paced world either because the methodologies of criminals were constantly
evolving as technology advanced.

"Public prosecutors must keep at least one step ahead of the criminals to
maintain their effectiveness in discharging their duties," said Shanmugam, who
is also the Second Minister for Home Affairs.

He said that with globalisation, the volumes of cross-border transactions
now were ever-increasing and business deals were getting more complex.

Each country must ensure that its legal service sector was able to support
the continued growth of key sectors of its economy, in particular, the global
nature of the banking and financial industry, he said.

"What is needed is a common baseline of laws that will protect the integrity
of financial institutions and agreements," he said.

Shanmugam also mentioned the proliferation of new media platforms which
posed another challenge to the legal fraternity as it could be used by criminal
syndicates to commit crime, evade detection and prosecution.

He said criminal laws generally did not have extra-territorial reach, and
the Internet allowed criminal syndicates "to operate without the need to step
foot in the country where offence is committed".

The minister said to deal with these growing challenges, the countries
concerned could not afford to look only within their geographic or
jurisdictional boundaries.

They needed to establish a commonality of legal concepts, and more
importantly, structures for cooperation and strengthening the relationships
between their law enforcement agencies, he added.
-- BERNAMA