We pride ourselves on giving the very best
View(s):Interview with Saliya Pieris, Chairman of CfPS Law School
When one hears parents discussing the topic of higher education for their children, one needs to appreciate the fact that it is always against the backdrop of decades of saving hard-earned money expressly for that purpose. Educationists who are committed to imparting such education to all of Sri Lanka’s young sons and daughters appreciate this most of all.
The future of a young man or woman, someone’s son or daughter, is at stake, and needs to be approached with optimum care and empathy with the concerns and aspirations of both parents as well as students. Moving around in the halls of higher learning at the Center for Professional Studies and the CfPS Law School so very conveniently located in the heart of the city, equidistant from any approach in the swathe of Colombo’s fast developing suburban expanses on north, south, east and west, talking to its Chairman and board members including its deputy Chairman Mr.Ajith Perera who is not only a veteran lawyer but is also an elected legislator in Parliament, one is struck by the inordinately deep personal concern they have, with no exception, for the meaningful success of their wards. At this institution the obsession is for an elitist finesse to be imparted to every student fortunate enough to pass through its portals.
The following is a synopsis of answers to questions I asked the Chairman of the CfPS Law School, Mr.Saliya Peiris, who is also an extremely prominent attorney-at-law and a notable legal personality in this country, on the foundational objectives of the CfPS and other matters relating to the exceedingly high level of education imparted by its panel of distinctively high caliber lecturers who are not mere teachers but are senior practitioners at the bar and therefore impart to their wards fact and experience based interpretations of the law in their lecture rooms.
Q: Mr.Pieris, It seems to be a pretty well established truism in educational circles that the CfPS stands out as a beacon in a sea of confusion in today’s dog fight in the overall sphere of higher education. What has contributed to this reputation that the CfPS enjoys?
To begin with, we have for the past 21 years been recognised as the leader in legal education in this country and have unarguably provided the ideal environment for law students to go past their Degrees with much more than a mere legal qualification. I was in legal practice as I even now am. The language issue had progressively lent itself to a gradual deterioration in the quality of law students issuing out of our halls of higher learning. In court rooms across the country I would encounter young lawyers quite incapable of prosecuting or defending a brief. They had the basic knowledge in place and yet there was a missing ingredient which we identified as the overall ambience in which legal education was being imparted. We had to do something to ensure that our young women and men were accorded the wherewithal to pass out as an elitist attorney, equipped with the knowledge and finesse needed to launch into a legal career with confidence and flair in any court, anywhere in the world.
Q: Are you saying that the CfPS sets a global benchmark in legal education instead of just merely adding some cosmetic touches to make a legal education simply look better?
A. Not only am I saying that , yes, that’s exactly what we pioneered but I would go further and claim that we have accomplished that objective if one is to judge by the professional and personal finesse one sees in the scores of graduates who have passed through our portals. Ours is an ethic that not only moulds lawyers of distinct ability but men and women who are transformed from the mundane into men and women of also much social finesse.
So you could say that the CfPS produces men and women who can effortlessly move into any global ambience in legal circles , practice at any bar anywhere.
Q: Isn’t that a very bold claim?
A. We have a list of our alumni. You can try one of them out if you ever need legal services in any court. The proof of the pudding is in its eating.
Q: So what is the underpinning principle that produces attorneys of such a standard?
A. Not one particular facet really though basically we ensure that our lecturers are above par as far as academic qualifications are concerned, have several years of distinguished practice at the bar and have a personal commitment that ensures that every student receives what he/she is entitled to: the very best. It’s this commitment that sees attorneys pass out of our portals as young attorneys ready and fully equipped to don a cape with distinction.
Q: You speak of your lecturers as though they are exceptionally different from the run-of-the-mill
variety one encounters in legal educational circles……
Yes, we do have nothing but the very best on our staff. These young men and women are precious to their parents. Some are often an only son or daughter. Our founding objective was to give them nothing but the best. That is why we established links with the University of London which has unimpeachable credentials unlike in the recent fiasco in India in which thousands of foreign Degrees were withdrawn, including some from England and these Degree holders’ hopes and dreams were most wretchedly dumped into India’s waste bins. We only subscribe to the very highest benchmarks in ethics and principles as much as we do in education. Anything lower would be anathema to us.
Q: Much is being made of your internship programme. Would you please elaborate a bit on this?
We continuously keep dissecting our programme with the objective of fine-honing it to impart the very best education possible and this periodical review led us to the conviction that the missing ingredient was a pre-qualification exposure to a real court -in-session ambience. So we immediately enriched our curriculum with this apprenticeship. This translates into the fact that our graduates will need little or no pre-swearing-in apprenticeship before taking their oaths as an attorney. This includes important visits to parliament where one sees, up close, the debating process leading to new national legislation being passed into the statute and can better appreciate the causative factors which led to such new legislation, amendments to existing legislation etc. When they finally stand in court on any issue they are then better equipped to interpret the law more effectively for a client. In effect you could say that our graduates therefore are lawyers who already have courtroom experience by the time graduation day has arrived. This is so far very unique in the local legal educational sphere. Just as we spearheaded higher legal education we continue to retain avant garde status to this .
Q:Would you care to itemize the other positives a student can expect at CFPS ?
A. Well, we begin with the orientation programme which introduces each student to an understanding of the first principles in law. It’s the norm that CfPS has very exceptionally special guest speakers to address our students at these initiation sessions including top academics, lawyers and leading public figures to talk to them on what it’s all about to read for a Degree, or on such pivotal issues such as human rights or the legal history in the United Kingdom or even on topics such as the evolving legal-political ethos in the UK. One highly topical issue dealt with recently was the “Legal System in Sri Lanka”. We also have the most modern library that’s equipped with modern electronic advantages such as wi-fi, internet access, a very comprehensive collection of legal literature covering every possible facet of local and international law and not least of all every student has on-line access to the very enviably vast legal library of the University of London itself.
Q:What sort of progress monitoring mechanism do you have in place ?
A. This is perhaps one of our more very keenly addressed areas of need from a student’s perspective. Here too we’ve got a strict regimen by which our panel of specialist experts monitors every student’s progress , identifies areas needing to be addressed for improvement, ensures course-correction where students may encounter any setbacks and has motivations sessions as often as deemed necessary to ensure that students maintain a high level of keenness to guarantee they pass out with distinction. We also have a programme of psychological counseling running in tandem with this monitoring programme under which every CFPS law student receives free professional psychological counseling and guidance to overcome any issue that might be proving detrimental to their studies. The counseling by this expert psychiatrist is also aimed at ensuring that the work of the monitors and career guidance experts is taken to a higher, effective level to ensure every student reaches his/her highest potential in studies as well as sports included in extra-curricular activities.
Incidentally, our extra-curricular activities format is fashioned to add finesse to a student’s persona as opposed to his/her academic aims. Convivial inter-group interactions ensure growth in social graces adding finesse to him/her that is so vital in the social life of a legal professional. We also concentrate on sports as a weapon to promote physical health and a team spirit which make for a more effective and amiable individual in legal or social circles. We also arrange field visits which are also aimed at these very objectives including transformation of socially negative individuals into socially proactive members of society. We also have moot courtroom sessions and public speaking opportunities and anything else that might suggest itself as being a positive factor to promote overall development of the individual.
Q: All this would seem to be an educational ethos on par with any seat of higher learning abroad. You might be charging awfully high fees.
A. Yes and no. We pride ourselves on giving the very best but ‘no’ because it all comes at a comparatively low cost for all these advances features which result in a pretty superior lawyer ultimately walking out with an Honours Degree that has the highest international gold award stamp on it issued by one of the ten best Universities of the world.
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