Setara
Article 5(3), made usable at the point of arrest.
A public-interest legal-protection pilot from Raul Lee Bhaskaran Advocates & Solicitors, built with Axon Avenue PLT. It brings the constitutional right to counsel from paper into the hands of ordinary Malaysians.
Bar-governed pilot before public scale
Basic Article 5(3) access kept free
Legal fees paid directly to advocates
No ranked, sponsored, or assigned lawyers
The constitutional gap
The right exists. The moment of use is where it fails.
Article 5(3) is not weak in text. It is weak at the handoff: the roadside, lockup counter, workplace questioning, or 2 a.m. phone call where the person cannot name or reach an advocate.
Setara is designed around that exact handoff. It lets a person pre-select advocates, activate an emergency flow, and bring a lawyer into the encounter while the right still matters.
How it works
A simple public flow, with professional controls underneath.
Choose your legal team early
A person selects advocates before anything happens. The platform does not rank, recommend, or steer.
Tap SOS at the point of arrest
The phone opens a rights screen, records the incident, shares location with trusted contacts, and starts the lawyer call.
Counsel appears on live video
The advocate can speak to the client, understand the setting, and preserve a contemporaneous incident record.
Why this belongs with the Bar
The Bar can turn this from a product into public infrastructure.
The clean version is not a private company placing lawyers in front of the public on its own terms. The clean version is a controlled pilot inside the profession's governance, with the technology, reporting, and public experience supplied by Setara.
Read the one-page paperProfession first
Setara should operate under the Bar, YBGK, Legal Aid Centre, or another structure the profession is comfortable owning.
Independence intact
Advocates owe duties to the client, set their own terms, and are never instructed by the technology layer.
Clean money streams
The platform does not receive or share legal fees. Sustainability comes from premium tools and institutional partnerships.
Auditable pilot
A controlled launch can produce anonymised data on response time, availability, language access, and rights awareness.
Public first, sustainable by design
The point is reach, not extraction.
The basic emergency connection should be kept free or as close to free as the pilot can responsibly support. Sustainability comes from premium technology features, institutional plans, grants, and partnerships, not from taking a share of legal fees.
No percentage of advocate legal fees
No paid placement of lawyers
No advice given by the platform
No replacement of YBGK or Legal Aid
Setara SOS
KL, 2:14 a.m.
SOS
Article 5(3)
You may consult and be defended by a legal practitioner of your choice.
What the prototype already demonstrates
The idea is visible in the product, not trapped in a memo.
Rights briefing
Plain-language Article 5 and Section 28A prompts appear before panic takes over.
Incident record
Timestamped recordings, GPS, and hash verification create a reliable file for the advocate to review.
Trusted contact alerts
Family or nominated contacts receive a live location alert when SOS is activated.
Multilingual by design
BM, English, Mandarin, and Tamil support make the right usable beyond the legally fluent.
PIN-protected session
The emergency flow stays private even where the phone is under pressure or in unfamiliar hands.
Night-window ready
The system is designed around the hour when most people cannot call a friend who knows a lawyer.
For advocates
More meaningful criminal access work, without surrendering professional control.
Lawyers decide when they are available, whether to accept a consultation, and what terms apply between lawyer and client. Setara's job is to make the call possible, preserve the record, and keep the user calm enough to exercise their rights.
Subscriber choice
Firm-level control
Bar-aligned governance
Legal aid pathway
Who is bringing this forward
Built by someone who understands both the profession and the product.
I am Raul Lee Bhaskaran, an advocate and solicitor at RLB A&S and a technology entrepreneur at Axon Avenue PLT. My work sits at the intersection of legal practice, access-to-justice infrastructure, and practical software.
Setara is not being brought to the Bar as a finished commercial land grab. It is being brought early because the right institutional home matters. My priority is for the man on the street to have a real, usable route to counsel when the moment arrives. Profit can only be justified if the public-access layer survives and the profession remains protected.
The next sensible step
Let the Bar see the prototype, test the governance questions, and decide the right pilot shape.
The technology is already self-explanatory. The paper explains the institutional frame: Article 5(3) delivery, public-first economics, advocate independence, and Bar-led governance.