On your first morning at a Malaysian firm someone will hand you a bundle and ask you to read it. If the only court documents you have seen are Australian, the front page will look foreign for about ninety seconds. Then it will look obvious, and you will wonder why nobody explained it sooner.

The heading tells you the court

A Malaysian cause paper opens in Bahasa Malaysia, with the English underneath or alongside. It begins DALAM MAHKAMAH MAJISTRET DI KUALA LUMPUR, in the Magistrates Court at Kuala Lumpur, or MAHKAMAH SESYEN for the Sessions Court, or MAHKAMAH TINGGI MALAYA for the High Court of Malaya. Then the state, then the suit number.

That first line does real work, because in Malaysia the court is chosen by the amount in dispute. Under the Subordinate Courts Act 1948 the Magistrates Court hears claims up to RM 100,000 and the Sessions Court up to RM 1,000,000. Anything above that starts in the High Court. So the heading is already telling you roughly what the case is worth before you have read a word of the claim.

Australian practice does the same thing with a different vocabulary. In Victoria the Magistrates Court hears claims up to $100,000 and the County Court has unlimited civil jurisdiction, with the Supreme Court taking the larger and more complex matters. Same idea, different names, different numbers.

ANTARA means between

Under the court and the suit number sit the parties: the plaintiff, then the word ANTARA, between, then the defendant, then DAN, and. The plaintiff is the PLAINTIF and the defendant the DEFENDAN. A company carries its registration number, No. Syarikat, and an individual their identity card number, No. K/P. Australian pleadings name the parties the same way and rarely include either number, which is one small difference worth noticing: in Malaysia the identifier is part of how you serve someone properly.

The document names are worth learning

You will meet the same few documents over and over.

Writ Saman, the writ of summons, which starts the action.
Penyata Tuntutan, the statement of claim, which sets out what the plaintiff says happened.
Saman Dalam Kamar, the summons in chambers, an interlocutory application.
Afidavit, the affidavit supporting it, sworn before a Pesuruhjaya Sumpah, a commissioner for oaths.

The body of most commercial cause papers is in English. It is the headings, the court name and the signature blocks that are bilingual.

The rules have numbers you will hear out loud

Malaysian civil procedure runs on the Rules of Court 2012, and lawyers refer to orders rather than rule numbers. You will hear Order 14 for summary judgment, where a plaintiff says there is no defence worth a trial, and Order 23 for security for costs, where a defendant asks the court to make the plaintiff put money up before the case runs. If you have studied Victorian procedure, the ideas are familiar: summary judgment sits in sections 62 and 63 of the Civil Procedure Act 2010, and the test there is whether a claim or defence has a real prospect of success.

That difference in wording is one of the better things to write a comparison essay about, because the same facts can produce different outcomes on either side of the Timor Sea.

What to do with the bundle

Read it in this order and you will be useful by lunchtime.

The heading: which court, which state, what suit number.
The parties: who is suing whom, and in what capacity.
The prayer at the end of the statement of claim: what the plaintiff actually wants.
The dates: when it was filed, when anything is due next.

Then ask the lawyer running it one question, not five. The question that earns the most goodwill is usually the simplest one: what am I looking for in this.

General information about court practice, not legal advice. Court rules and jurisdictional limits change, so check the current position before relying on any of it.