The Red Velvet Lawyer

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 du...

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 "illustrati...

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 mos...

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 ...

The Week of Chester, the Parrot Students are still enrolling in the course. So, we continue to provide background information as everyone continues to settle in.  This week we covered some important topics, but mostly through lecture (my least favorite way to teach).   We cover: Primary versus secondary sources of law.  Binding versus persuasive precedent in the common law system. The Qatari legal system and the role of case law. The Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Center . Case briefing. The professional value of competence as a lawyer. What a partner or a judge expects from a lawyer's writing. Bracket use in quotations. Ellipses dot use in quotations. And, how to read and brief a case carefully. It's ambitious coverage, and I often wonder how much of it they really understand. Luckily, we cover it several times throughout this course and the required Legal Writing II course. We use Conti vs. ASPCA as the first case...

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...