I handled a case around my seventh or eighth year of practice that severely tested my ethics.

The case happened before what I call the ‘Zaki revolution’ of our administration of justice system. That happened during Tun Zaki bin Tun Azmi’s time as Chief Justice from 21 October 2008 until 9 September 2011 (2 years, 10 months, 19 days).

I use ‘revolution’ because his Lordship was responsible for initiating and driving the court digitalisation platform and process that continues until today and completely changed how the judiciary operated despite his short tenure.

His Lordship was the one who took us from pen to pixel. He was a hands-on, walk-the-floor kind of guy. Legend has it he turned up unannounced not just in courtrooms but even in the back offices where the staff sat.

The moment he became Chief Justice, we went instantly from first gear to fifth gear. We were throttled into the future. Trials, which commonly took four to five years to mature, were immediately shortened to nine months, pending cases too. The court fixed trial dates at the first case management date then fixed the pre-trial direction schedule working backwards.

At the time, the court’s priority above all else was to finish the case in nine months, no matter how complicated. It wasn’t a problem if you had one case. But if you had several, all these short trial dates added up, and the workload became incredibly intense for us Ghurkas on the ground.

I did not enjoy the experience at the time. It was challenging, as it is anytime there is a sudden, drastic change to the environment and status quo. At a forum with the judges leading the changes, I described the process as ‘rough justice’. Surprisingly, one of them admitted it but explained it was a necessary phase.

14 years after his Lordship’s departure, in retrospect, despite how personally unpleasant it was and I felt a certain amount of injustice occurred, I have come to agree with the judge’s view – it was necessary.

Nobody gets things all perfectly right. Change is messy. And big change is big messy. What more, an entire administration of the justice system? It was the first time he was doing it too. Big change should be evaluated many years after instead of immediately or a few. We need that temporal distance to better put that period into perspective and against what happens after. And when I do, I think Tun Zaki was the judicial administration’s best administrator thus far despite the abrasive changes. No pain, no gain.

As a result of the digitalisation process, litigators these days do not face regular problems lawyers of my vintage did such as: court documents were rejected for filing due to minor and non-existent breach of procedural rules as determined by the court filing counter (whose decision was unappealable to any court), our court case was not listed for mention or hearing on the date previously given, the court file goes missing for a while or a long while, filed documents were not in or never reached the court’s docket (file), originating processes, applications, judgments and enforcement applications took weeks if not months to be sealed, draft orders took forever to be checked, approved and returned, followed up with another forever for the order to be sealed (embossing [now digitally] the court order with the court seal, and the registrar signing off on it.

All that doesn’t happen anymore.

But that’s a lick of it of what it was like before the Zaki revolution. The court administration then were inefficient, leisurely paced, bureaucratic and careless. I previously wrote about an instance of that carelesness – the file reconstruction phenomeneon – in the Transer Application and the Forgotten Case. So much so that the occurence of efficiency served as a mark of suspicion. It was a signal that something funny going on or happening. That was my experience with the Klang Valley courts at the time.

It was in this pre-Zaki revolution stage that the case I handled took place.

We acted for a bank branch out of state. It was sued for tens of millions for encashing endorsed cheques to third party holders. That was legislatively prohibited at the time those cheques were encashed. The bank had a plausible explanation for the practice and could raise a defence that the plaintiff took advantage of its own wrong. The legal suit was filed in that state. I travelled a few hours to and fro each time for every mention and hearing.

The diference in treatment we received from the court administration was brazenly unfair. It processed whatever the plaintiff filed fast, whereas ours were slow. We’re talking weeks slow, which is an age in an urgent situation for anything that needed to be processed. In contrast, whatever the plaintiffs filed they received on the same day. Eventually summary judgment was allowed by the Deputy Registrar despite a few more days left on our deadline. A summary judgment is when the court gives judgment without a trial because the claim has no defence or does not need to be tried. We filed an appeal immediately.

I was traumatised by the experience. The sheer unfair treatment burned and consumed me. I never experienced such treatment before. And it wasn’t just the court either. An internal struggle in the bank management at the time brought a lot of tension to our relationship. There was a faction that wanted us, and another that didn’t. The former were more influential than the latter. As a result, we frequently received unfair and critical treatment from our client as well. We were told in no uncertain terms that if we lost the appeal to the judge in chambers, we would be sacked.

That is an incredibly exhausting, physically and psychologically, situation to be in. The period leading up to the appeal was a trying one. I was tired, miserable, frustrated, and depressed. For the first time in my life, I seriously entertained the thought that if the other side was playing dirty, then it was time I got down and dirty too. Why bother playing by the rules when I was up against those that didnt’? Perhaps it was better to be dirty and effective instead honest and seemingly ineffective? I was consumed by these thoughts during that period.

So it was fortunate that the late Dato’ Peter Mooney called me out for lunch during that difficult time. Peter, as he always insisted on, was a legend at the Bar. Yet carried himself with genuine humility and profound respect for others. He took an interest in me because I think my earnest and shrill writings on online legal forums afforded him some amusement. Our infrequent emails changed into occasional lunches, which were convenient because both our offices at the time were at Bukit Damansara.

Towards the tail end of the lunch, I finally worked up the courage to ask Peter what was bothering me.

“Peter, I have a situation that I am in that I would like your advice.”

“Of course. What’s on your mind, Fahri?”

I described the case, the different treatment I received, and share my frustrations with the situation and what I had in mind.

“I can understand your frustration and why you are upset about the situation. But I don’t think you mimicking what they are doing would improve the situation. You would simply turn the situation into an auction. Isn’t that worse?”

“I didn’t think of it that way.”

“There are some that draw a distinction between the means and ends. I think that is an illusory distinction. The means and ends are intimately connected. You get to the end by your means. If your means are dirty, so will be your ending. There is that saying, live by the sword, die by the sword? You know that one?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s like that.”

“I understand, Peter. But they are getting their way with the courts! Whatever I file is delayed. Whatever they do is fast. We are looking so bad with our client. Some of them are waiting for a reason to sack us. I feel so powerless and frustrated at the situation. How do I get back at them or at least remedy the situation?”

“I don’t know, Fahri, but I do know thing: If you adopt their ways, you become like them. If you stoop to their level, you will stoop to their level. The more you use their methods, the more you will be like them. So, I urge you: Don’t be like them. Stay true to your values and principles. I know this is not an easy thing to do, especially here, and with what you are going through. Do you often get cases like these?”

“Thankfully, no.”

“Then be doubly careful about throwing away your values over one case. There will be other cases that come your way. Don’t change to be something else because of one case.”

“Thank you, Peter. I appreciate that very much.”

“Most welcome, Fahri. Now that we have that heavy bit of discussion out of the way, would you like some dessert?”

I have always looked back at that moment as a significant one personally. I am also grateful that Peter called me out for lunch when he did. I needed to be told by a great man what I needed to hear to give me the courage and tenacity to stay true to my values and principles. And that talk has stayed with me since. Whenever I feel a situation where my values are challenged, I go back to this memory to find direction and strength and of what Peter told me.

I wasn’t Peter’s close friend or acquaintance. We didn’t have a long history together. We communicated mostly by email, text or a phone call, and we met up a handful of times during the time I was working in Bukit Damansara. What I did take away from that though was that Peter made time for the young and generously share his deep experience and learning about the law. And that’s something I admired and continue to mimic: To be there and listen to the younger set of lawyers during their difficult moments.

As I reflect on that period now, years later, I see parallels between Tun Zaki’s judicial transformation and my own ethical trial by fire. Both required standing firm through discomfort, maintaining principles when expedience beckoned, and trusting that integrity would ultimately prove worthwhile.

Peter passed away in 27 April 2015, but his wisdom continues to resonate. While Tun Zaki revolutionized our courts from pen to pixel, Peter reminded me that certain values transcend technological advancement or procedural efficiency. In our profession, where pressure constantly tests our moral compass, these moments of clarity become lighthouses we return to again and again.

I’ve since found myself in Peter’s position—sitting across from young lawyers facing their own ethical crossroads. In those moments, I share not just legal strategy but the inheritance of wisdom passed to me that afternoon in Bukit Damansara. The true revolution in our profession isn’t just in how efficiently we process cases, but in how faithfully we transmit the values that make the pursuit of justice meaningful in the first place.