Malaysian Bar Legal Directory Scraper — Lawyers & Firms

Extract all 25,000+ lawyers, 4,000+ law firms, and 1,000+ pupil-in-chambers records from the Malaysian Bar official directory at malaysianbar.org.my. The directory is a public register maintained under the Legal Profession Act 1976 — this actor returns structured JSON covering name, firm, status, admission date, state, contact details, and qualification across all 14 Malaysian states.

What does the Malaysian Bar Scraper do?

• Scrapes lawyers, law firms, and pupil-in-chambers records from the Malaysian Bar directory
• Returns records filterable by record type (lawyer/firm/pupil), state (all 14 Malaysian states), and alphabetical first letter
• Covers admission status, petition status, qualification, and master (supervisor) for pupils
• Returns firm-level data including associated lawyer names and pupil names
• No proxies or authentication required — the directory is a public JSON API

What data does it extract?

Field	Description
recordType	lawyer, firm, or pupil
name	Full name of lawyer, firm name, or pupil name
firm	Law firm affiliation (for lawyers and pupils)
status	Current bar status (e.g. Active, Inactive)
memberStatus	Membership status label
petitionStatus	Petition status for pupil records
admissionDate	Date of admission to the bar (ISO 8601)
petitionDate	Date of petition for pupils
qualification	Academic qualification
master	Supervising lawyer name (pupils only)
address	Registered office address
city	City
state	Malaysian state (e.g. WPKL, SG, PG)
postcode	Postcode
phone	Office phone number
fax	Fax number
email	Email address
website	Firm website URL (firm records)
lawyerNames	Pipe-separated list of lawyers in a firm
pupilNames	Pipe-separated list of pupils at a firm
lastUpdated	Last update timestamp from the directory
scrapedAt	Scrape timestamp (ISO 8601)

How to use it

Select record types and states. All 14 state codes are listed in the selector: JH (Johor), KD (Kedah), KT (Kelantan), MK (Melaka), NS (Negeri Sembilan), PH (Pahang), PG (Penang), PK (Perak), PR (Perlis), SG (Selangor), TG (Terengganu), WPKL (Kuala Lumpur), WL (Labuan), WPP (Putrajaya). Leave all states unselected to retrieve all states. Use alphabets to narrow the crawl to specific name initials.

Field	Type	Default	Description
recordTypes	array	["lawyer"]	Record types to fetch: lawyer, firm, pupil
states	array	all states	State codes to include. Empty = all 14 states.
alphabets	array	A–Z	First-letter filters for name lookup. Empty = full alphabet.
maxItems	integer	100	Maximum records to return. Set 0 for unlimited.

Use cases

• Legal market research — Map law firm density and lawyer concentration across all 14 Malaysian states; identify underserved regions for expansion planning.
• Compliance and due diligence — Verify bar admission status and WPKL registration for Malaysian counsel before engaging in transactions; cross-reference against the admissionDate and status fields.
• Cost-effective data acquisition — 25,000 lawyer records at $0.001 each costs $25 — less than one hour of a paralegal's time to manually copy the same data from the directory.
• Academic research — Study the distribution of legal qualifications, admission cohorts, and state-level bar membership trends using structured historical snapshots.
• Pupil pipeline tracking — Monitor pupil-in-chambers records across firms to identify law firms with active training programs; use master to map mentorship networks.

FAQ

Can I filter lawyers by practice area? Practice area is not in the current schema — the Malaysian Bar directory does not expose specialization tags at the record level. You can filter on the returned firm name or use admissionDate to scope to recent admissions. State (states input) and alphabetical first letter (alphabets) are the available filters.

How current is the data? The Malaysian Bar directory is updated by the Bar Council on a rolling basis. Each record carries a lastUpdated field indicating when the Bar Council last modified that entry. The actor scrapes the live public API so data is current as of the run timestamp.

Does the actor return inactive or struck-off lawyers? Yes — the status and memberStatus fields reflect the current bar standing including inactive, suspended, and struck-off members. Filter on status = Active in the dataset to scope to practising members only.

Results are available for export in JSON, CSV, and Excel formats from the Apify dataset tab.