Legal Eagle Entrepreneurship Education for Law Students: Special Reference to International Islamic University Malaysia

In Malaysia, entrepreneurship education in higher learning education is not new. The government has taken great efforts to transform the country's economy into a knowledge-based one and entrepreneurs have been identified as one of the key elements to the development of the knowledge economy. Lots of funds have been allocated by the government to propagate the importance of graduates to become entrepreneurs and less dependent on employers. For the law graduates in Malaysia, the job opportunities are multi structured whereby they could either be in the judiciary, corporate and banking sectors or conduct private practice. In most circumstances, law graduates will be attached to private practices and this eventually will lead to most of them opening their own legal firms. Despite the 1 nature of legal firms, lawyers can not avoid the standard business practices such as preparing cash flow reports, the business and succession plans and audited account reports. There are also many lawyers who set up businesses of different natures rather than legal, such as construction and trading companies. As such, it is highly perceived that business skills are also important to law undergraduates in preparing them for life after graduation. One of the ways to do this is through entrepreneurship education. This paper intends to discuss the perception and reception of law students on entrepreneurship education/skills. A quantitative research methodology is adopted to identify the level of interest and/or willingness of law undergraduates at the Faculty of Laws, International Islamic University Malaysia to learn entrepreneurial skills and to be involved in business once they graduate.