Constitutional Justice Saldi Isra speaking at a webinar on "Legal Higher Education and the Constitutional Context" organized by the Law Faculty of Bengkulu University on Saturday morning (12/9/2020). Photo by Humas MK/Ilham.

JAKARTA, Public Relations of the Constitutional Court—There are four key things to improving the legal skills for law freshmen. The first is the willingness to read various literature that offer multiple perspectives. The second is the courage to speak in public. “The [third] is writing skills. This is the biggest challenge for today’s students. Everything is virtually accessible. Students often copy [papers off the internet]. I’ve been writing essays since 1995 in the media. I’ve been doing it since my college days,” said Constitutional Justice Saldi Isra at a webinar on "Legal Higher Education and the Constitutional Context" organized by the Law Faculty of Bengkulu University on Saturday morning, September 12, 2020.

The fourth is improving proficiency in English. Law graduates who are proficient in English have more opportunities for any professions at multinational companies. “If you study well, believe that law graduates have a higher work opportunity than any other graduates. [They] could work at the administration or legal [department] of hospitals, while graduates of medicine cannot be judges. Judges, prosecutors, and advocates can only be occupied by law graduates. Law graduates are needed at the legal department in companies nowadays,” he said, addressing the Law Faculty freshmen of Bengkulu University and other universities.

He also revealed that after he graduated from the physics major in senior high school in 1988, he took an entrance test to the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) and the UMPTN (state university entrance selection) but failed both. He then went to Jambi for work and after saving enough for school in 1990, he took the UMPTN and chose the mining engineering major at Sriwijaya University, the civil engineering major at Andalas University, and the law major of Andalas University.

He passed the entrance test to the Law Faculty of Andalas University. Enrolling in the law faculty was much different from his physics major in high school, where crunching numbers, not reading, had been his daily activity. The amount of note-taking and memorizing made him doubt his choice of major. In addition, legal books were scarce at the time and he had to rely on his textbooks. However, it challenged him even more. Now he has ten books published as well as ten essays in international academic journals.

“In university, I never brought more than one note. I jotted down the gist of the lectures. At home, I transferred everything more neatly onto other notes. Nearing exams, I became a favorite. My classmates copied my notes,” he said. He also participated in various competitions in the campus and won against other faculties.

He hadn’t expected to reach a 3.71 GPA in the semester. In the second, he had a 4.00 GPA. “Only then did I think that it was God’s secret that put me in law studies,” he said. He also advised the students to believe in God’s plans. The constitutional justice, who was born in August 20, 1968, received his bachelor’s degree with a 3.86 GPA before receiving his master’s degree at the University of Malaya in 2001 and his doctoral degree at Gadjah Mada University in 2009.

Writer: Nano Tresna Arfana
Editor: Lulu Anjarsari
Translator: Yuniar Widiastuti (NL)

Translation uploaded on 9/14/2020 17:13 WIB

Disclaimer: The original version of the news is in Indonesian. In case of any differences between the English and the Indonesian version, the Indonesian version will prevail.