The Red Velvet Lawyer

Pushing the Form I have now lived in Qatar for three fall seasons.  I teach at Qatar University College of Law, so I am perfectly positioned to see youthful fashion expressed in the abaya.   Many Westerners, when they see a photo of a group of Arab women wearing abayas, probably assume that the abayas they wear are the same in style, fabric, and embellishment.  Not true.  As the outward statement for these young women, you see many expressions of their personality and fashion sense in the abayas they choose to wear.  Some students, who view the abaya as a utilitarian piece of clothing, may wear the same abaya all semester.  Other women, more fashion conscious, may have four or five abayas that they rotate throughout the semester.   As a seamstress, I am fascinated at the thousands of interpretations of this basic form.  In Qatar, most abayas are cloaks with long sleeves that a woman wraps in front of her and holds with ...

The Future is so Bright, We Will have to Wear Shades One panel speaker, Assistant Professor Andrew Dahdal, had this to say about last week's ADR conference sponsored by Qatar University College of Law:     The conference was insightful in many respects. Given that some of my recent research has been looking at the relationship between financial centres and broader national jurisdictions, the discussion concerning the enforcement or arbitral awards in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) was especially interesting. The conference -- entitled,  The Future of Alternative Dispute Resolution -- A Qatari Perspective --  brought together lawyers, scholars, and ADR neutrals to discuss ADR in the Arab Gulf and MENA regions.  Most of the presentations focused on arbitration, which remains the dominant (and nearly exclusive) form of ADR in the region. The agenda included opening and keynote speeches by: Dr. Mohammed Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi, De...

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 ...

How I Conducted the Research Acknowledgments: First, I want to thank Qatar University College of Law and my Dean Dr. Mohammed A. Al-Khulaifi for their generous support of this research. I also appreciate the help of Dr. Yasser Khalaileh, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Dr. Faouzi Ahmed Belknani, Associate Dean of Research, Dr. Yassin El Shazly, Associate Dean of Outreach and Engagement, and Dr. Conrad Sturm. Finally, I want to thank the many faculty and ADR colleagues who gave me the opportunity to interview them. They generously gave of their time. The Interviews: The report reflects about 20 hours of interviews, including the interviews of several QU professors, ADR professionals, law firm attorneys, government attorneys, and a judge sitting on the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Center (QICDRC). At this point in the process, I have interviewed people who live and work in Qatar, but I have also interviewed two people living in Dubai. I...

Scaling Up.  Working at an International Level When I decided to move to Qatar, I had hoped to scale up my ADR teaching, training, and practice.  In the U.S., I held the state-wide leadership positions in the Virginia Mediation Network and positions on Virginia Supreme Court-sponsored mediation ethics committees and grievance boards .  I loved those opportunities to serve my community.   However, because of the financial constraints of my law school, I could not actively participate at a national level in leadership of the Section of Dispute Resolution of the ABA or of the Association for Conflict Resolution . Towards the end of my stay in the U.S., my law school was not even funding my attendance at the annual conferences of these organizations.  By moving to Qatar and joining the faculty of a well-funded university, I hoped to grow professionally and scale up to a more international ADR practice.   I was lucky, in hindsight, ...

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...