The Red Velvet Lawyer

Qatar University College of Law  Wins Prestigious Award for its Legal Skills Program The Qatar University College of Law won the Law School Award for furthering Global Legal Skills Education at the 13th Global Legal Skills Conference (GLSC) held in Melbourne, Australia, from December 10-12, 2018. GLSC recognized the law school and its Legal Skills Department for its leading contributions to global legal skills, and in particular, the development of legal skills education in the Middle East and North Africa.  Dr. Conrad Sturm and Dr. Melissa Deehring accepted the award on the law school’s behalf at the opening plenary of the conference that hosted over 120 participants from law schools around the world.    Since the inception of its Lawyering Skills Program (LSP) in 2010, the Qatar University College of Law has incorporated legal skills courses and active learning into the curriculum in order to produce more competitive, skillful, and bilingual

Time with my Students is Coming to an End We have long semesters at Qatar University College of Law.  It means that we are all very exhausted by the last week of the semester.  This year, the Ramadan fast adds another dimension to the challenges of teaching this last week. I am trying to make it a little easier for students to complete all the sections of the Memorandum of Law that I have taught them to write this semester. They have analyzed the use of the same name, Azul Marine Supply , and a similar trademark in connection with two marine supply shops.  They have used two Qatari trademark cases and several sections of the Qatari code to complete their analysis.  They have listened to and summarized a meeting with the partner, a client interview, and an interview of a confused consumer.  They have learned to brief cases.   They have also learned to conduct legal research in two databases, including Westlaw Gulf.   I have also required them to keep all the handouts

Heads Down  and Do Your Own Work! That's what I tell my College of Law Students as we shift to more independent writing in my Legal Research & Writing I course.  Through Week 8, we slowly build the scaffold for this independent work with case briefs, exercises, and sample writings. Last year at this time, I was not so enthusiastic about the work ethic of my male students.  Almost half the class was not prepared to handle this challenging course in a second language.  Several students tried to close the gap with attempts at cheating.    But this year, the students are far more mature (many have jobs and families) and most of them have pretty good English-language skills.  The students with very good language skills lead discussions and set the pace.  I am very proud of Hamad, Abdullaziz (both of you), Mohammed (several of you), Awad, Amer, Fahad, Hadi, Hussein, Saoud, Walid, Khalid, and Jaber (and his "Egyptain lawyer" tutor). At the same time, each

The Semester  Again Ends I work here for one reason.  I love my students.   The young women here are getting the skills they need to serve as leaders in this quickly evolving country.  Those graduates with especially good English-language skills will find opportunities that open as Qatar plays an expanding role on the international stage.   They remind me of me when I graduated from law school in 1982, when only 8 percent of all lawyers in the U.S. were women. They will face many of the same challenges entering the legal profession here.  At the same time, they understand that the ongoing recognition of human rights in the country will support their career ambitions.  They have many great female role models to emulate.  We are close to ending the Fall 2017 semester.  I teach one of the skills courses QU College of Law offers: Legal Research & Writing I.  This required course serves as the first course in our Legal Skills Program.  Before graduation, students must also

The Semester Comes to a Close I had hoped to post a blog every week of the semester about my experience teaching Legal Research & Writing 1 to my Arab students.  But, the semester gets so intense about Week 10 that I feel happy just to keep up with class prep and grading.   Over the past two weeks, I have conducted individual conferences with students. We look at their attendance record, the point scores on their assessments, their current ranking in the course, and the chance they have for a higher letter grade.  I then review their written work.  My female students met with me first.  All of them have been working hard this semester. They are dedicated to their studies and show it by good attendance, preparation for class, and a level of engagement that still surprises me.  After all, we meet from 3 to 4:45 p.m. at the end of a very long day.   I told them that coming to class is like looking out on the sunny, eager, upturned faces of pansies in a flower garde

Best-Laid Plans  of Mice and Men . . . . This week, I had planned to take students through a second CREAC exercise to get them ready for the CREAC Test later in the week. I wrote a new exercise that was more similar to the problem the students would analyze on the test.  They would apply Qatari trade name and trademark law to two restaurants using a very similar trade name: "The Oryx Diner" and "The Oryx Diner on-the-Go."   At the beginning of the week, I ran through about 50 of the slides I had prepared. Before you gasp in horror, please know that 50 percent of each slide is a photo or other image.  I still had about 20 more slides to discuss before students would feel more confident about the CREAC Test. In the meantime, many of the students had four or more exams this week.  They were feeling overwhelmed, over-worked, and a little hopeless.   Because of some scheduling issues, students in my afternoon class had exams scheduled during my c

Conclusion, Rule, Explanation, Application, and Conclusion I've talked about it for three weeks.  CREAC this and CREAC that.  Now, it's time for the students to write their first legal analysis using this format.  Baby steps. We will do it together. I have an exercise, based on the post-9/11 U.S. Patriot Act, that involves the effort of our "client" to bring onto an aircraft two sharpened pencils, knitting needles, and nail polish remover.  Are they prohibited dangerous weapons?  At the start of class, students are skeptical. How can these household items be weapons?   Then, in a dramatic demonstration, I light the nail polish remover on fire, jab the pencils towards the eyes of the nearest student (safely of course), and hold a thin knitting needle near the sternum of another student. Oh! Now the analysis becomes real.  The fun part is teaching them how to do the Application, where students compare the facts of the "illustrative case&quo

Working Harder to Create Student Engagement Qatar University has a very rigorous faculty evaluation program.  Once a year, we must upload a boat load of class-related data to a platform called Digital Measures.  The grousing among faculty members during this "upload" week is extensive, me included. As part of the process, we must submit a reflection on the past year -- something I enjoy. We also must submit a plan for professional development in the coming year. This year I promised to use the peer-evaluation process offered by OFID (Office of Faculty and Instructional Development).   Dr. Chris Stryker typically makes these class room visits and evaluations.  Chris, an American with a long history at QU, was great in providing feedback, both in writing and in our conversation after class. I am thankful that most of the feedback was very positive. But he dinged me on creating student engagement. "Ask more, tell less!," as his evaluation notes say. 

Getting Students to Think Like Baby Lawyers In lab this week, students conducted an interview of our client.  As I noted in my last posting , my good friend, Jessica, played the role of Fatma Alhamad, the co-owner of three gourmet chocolate shops in Qatar. She and her husband, Mohammed, want a competitor to quit using the same trade name, "The Chocolate Drops," and a similar trademark in his own chocolate shop business.  That's the basic outline of the simulation. To supplement these facts, I have provided students with memos either from me or the "senior associate" about the client, the alleged infringer, and the chocolate industry. With this background information, I required them to draft ten questions for the client.   The exercise helps students develop listening, note-taking, summarizing, strategic planning, and questioning skills.  The students in the male section met first with the client.  I was excited to see that most of the studen

Meeting with the "Partner" This week I began distributing to students legal memos on "firm" letterhead. The firm name is: Suliman, Alwahaibi & Young, LL.C.  The first memo, one of three to date, described my initial meeting with the "clients," Fatma and Mohammed Alhamad.  They own a specialty chocolate shop at three different locations in Doha.  A competitor is using the same trade name and a similar logo.  The trade name is "The Chocolate Drops." The second memo provided some background information on the competitor and the competing product line, store, trade name, and trademark.  The third memo asked the students, playing the role of "junior associates," to attend a meeting with me, playing the law firm "partner." You see, I need to give them their legal research and writing assignments.  Next week, the will get another memo from the "senior associate," Maryam, who will describe the

My Bright and Shiny Students This second week of the semester marks the first week in which we hold all classes, labs, and office hours.  Students are also finalizing schedules.   We are beginning to know how the semester will feel and be.  It will be a busy one for me again.   I have two admissions to make.  First, I needed another week of vacation.  Here in Doha, unlike the U.S., we only have about two weeks of vacation between semesters.  This job is more demanding than teaching law in the U.S., so I miss those extra couple of weeks to rest and catch up.  Of course, I created some of my suffering by traveling to Malaysia and Taiwan during the break and then having to nurse a respiratory infection when I got back.  So, as we move through the next two weeks, I plan to assume we are all feeling a little sluggish.   Here's my second admission.  I've got great students in both sections.  They are all bright and shiny, and I can't wait to see what they will

Growth Sucks! "We were hoping the college would drop the requirement. That's why we waited so long to take the course."  So said a candid senior student this past week. I teach Legal Research and Writing 1 at Qatar University College of Law.  Even in the U.S. students find the course challenging.  It forces them to grow in ways they resist.  And, it's a lot of work! No passive learning in this course.  Students produce a Memorandum of Law over the course of the semester. And learn critical thinking skills. So, the course is hard even for native English speakers.  But here, in Doha, I am teaching Arab students who take the course in English. Some students have very good English language skills, even if they are not so confident about them. Some students read at about a fourth grade level.  My job is to help them engage in very sophisticated legal thinking while they read and write in English. Why English!  Many of my student evaluations last seme

Writing Imperfectly While We Strive for Perfection Pam Jenoff -- in her  article :  The Self-Assessed Writer: Harnessing Fiction-Writing Process to Understand Ourselves as Legal Writers and Maximize Legal Writing Productivity,  10  JALWD  (Fall 2013) -- admits that students have a hard time committing fully to the timed writing exercise I described in my last post. She explains: When I use Goldberg’s exercise with writing groups, I read a passage that explains the importance of such exercises in silencing our inner editors: "Our “monkey mind” says we can’t write, we’re no good, we’re failures, fools for even picking up a pen; we listen to it. We drift. We listen and get tossed away. Meanwhile, wild mind surrounds us—sink into the big sky and write from there, let everything run through us and grab as much as we can of it with a pen and paper. This is all about a loss of control." Janoff then asks her students to do the timed writing exercise.  She may in

Vomiting on the Page The timed writing exercise can help a writer jump start the creative writing process.  Pam Jenoff, in her article :  The Self-Assessed Writer: Harnessing Fiction-Writing Process to Understand Ourselves as Legal Writers and Maximize Legal Writing Productivity,  10  JALWD  (Fall 2013) describes the technique: Keep your hand moving. Frequently, a writer pens a sentence, then stops to consider it and edit, losing the flow of the idea. This exercise requires the writer to commit to writing without stopping for a specific period of time.  Lose control. Write without fear that the work is not good enough — a common problem that can stop writers mid-project. This underscores the idea, which many of us already teach in both legal and fiction writing, to “get it out there” and then fix it up later.   Be specific. Even on the first draft, look for language that gets to the heart of what you are trying to say and that captures the essence of the idea.

Recognizing the Source of Writer's Block A plodder is the type of writer who creates an outline or a well-established story structure before he or she ever begins writing.  A pantser -- as the name indicates -- flies by the seat of his or her pants. A pantser writes first, then organizes later. So says, Pam Jenoff, in her article : The Self-Assessed Writer: Harnessing Fiction-Writing Process to Understand Ourselves as Legal Writers and Maximize Legal Writing Productivity,  10 JALWD (Fall 2013).  Jenoff also suggests that each writer is both plodder and pantser depending on a number of factors, including: The nature of the project Size Subject matter Etc. Whether one is co-authoring. Whether one is required to submit an outline in advance of publication. Each type of writer faces different challenges when it comes to the next stage of writing.   The free-writing pantser often can't get the material she's written properly organized.The plodder, in

Non-Fiction Storytelling Advice for Lawyers Lawyers tell persuasive non-fiction stories in letters, briefs, motions, negotiations, transactional representation, and oral arguments. The Fall 2013 issue of the JALWD, the journal for Association of Legal Writing Directors , suggests two books that will make lawyers even more effective at describing the situations of the clients they represent. The reviewer of the first book, Jack Hart's Story Craft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction (U. Chi. Press 2011), notes that people learn best when they receive information through story. Neurobiologists have watched fMRI images of people thinking in story structure. Hart explains: [S]tory is story. The same underlying principles apply regardless of where you tell your tale . . . . Successful nonfiction storytelling requires a basic understanding of fundamental story theory and story structures the theory suggests. Ignore them, and you’ll fight a losing battle wi