To me, loyar burok is generally perceived as a person who is not trained as a lawyer or professed to be a lawyer but yet provides legal advice or opinion solicitted or unsolicitted. In most cases, it has a negative connotation. In the medical profession, we have the equivalent in the form of a Dr Quack.

My fleeting research amongst fellow linguists somehow pointed to the fact that the word 'loyar burok' originated from the malays, and not from other races in Malaysia. It went back as early as 1920's. In my view, such labels came about because the Malays themselves (invariably the elderly or the 'superior') get easily startled and to a certain degree, envious of people who can speak and articulate well - sit back and observe, the losers in most type of arguments - from education to philosophy to whatever subject, will label the other 'loyar burok'. In my experience, it has nothing to do with the fact that the person in question - the loyar burok - is untrained as a solicitor.

I was told by a Malaysian lawyer that it meant someone who like to debate and that it does not have any negative connotations "in the estimation of right-thinking members of the Malaysian society".