The Red Velvet Lawyer

How to be the Best  . . .   and Learn from the Worst Doha does not have a deep collection of print books for sale.  I was at Doha Festival City twice last week.  After touring the entire mall, I found a book I did not expect to see in Doha. It's Robert I Sutton 's Good Boss, Bad Boss .  The book builds on his research that supported an earlier book called The No Asshole Rule .  I read the earlier book, several years ago, when I served on a law school's hiring committee.  We tried to use the advice in the book.  Overall, we built a small faculty of dedicated teachers.  Sadly, we did hire a few jerks along the way, and frankly, the institution paid for it. Amazon  describes the new book in this way:   If you are a boss who wants to do great work, what can you do about it? Good Boss, Bad Boss is devoted to answering that question. Stanford Professor Robert Sutton weaves together the best psychological and management research with compelling stories and cas

One Way the Blockade Effects  People and not Just Governments I am writing several book chapters for an upcoming book on the blockade of Qatar. In one chapter I described attacks on the media by the countries starting the blockade – Saudi Arabia, U.A.E., Bahrain, and Egypt. Among other things, the countries blocked Al Jazeera broadcasts and other media originating from Qatar. I stated that the media blockade serve at least two purposes. It keeps an opposing narrative about Qatar from reaching people in the blockading countries. It also limits access to programming popular with conservative Muslim audiences. In that chapter, I also described the Saudis relationship with sport broadcaster beIn Sports: Saudi Arabia also blocked access to the ubiquitous and highly popular, Qatar-financed, beIN Sports on June 13, 2018. The station has about 5,000 staffers working in 43 countries. The U.A.E blocked access for six weeks before restoring it on July 22, 2018. Police had ejected

A Big Thanks to the People Who Read this Blog! On March 17, 2013, I posted my first blog post.  I called it: "Make art.  Think like an artist."  I read it again this morning, and time has been kind to it.  It still resonates.  Since then, I have created nearly 400 posts.   If I were Seth Godin, I'd turn them into a book or two.  When I started this blog, I hoped to regain a voice I had had when I wrote a column every other month for the newspaper of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis ( BAMSL ).  The newspaper had about 7,000 readers.  My column was called from "Conflict to Collaboration" and discussed dispute resolution theory, techniques, ethics, and use.  When I began teaching, I quit writing the column. As an academic, I lost my first-person, more colloquial voice in my law review writing.  The academy prefers the conceit that the words, and any analysis they reflect, appear on the page without a particular author's help or pers

Still Working on that Glass Ceiling When I made partner in the mid-1990s, only sixteen percent of all partners in the U.S. were women. A NAWL 2014 report shows little progress since then: In its eighth year, the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL®) and The NAWL Foundation’s® annual Survey on Retention and Promotion of Women in Law Firms reveals not much has changed in its findings of compensation, leadership roles, rainmaking, and equity partnership at the nation’s largest 200 firms. The data this year revealed the same trend as in previous years: the greatest percentage of women (64 percent) occupy the lowest positions in firms (staff attorneys) and the highest positions in firms (equity partners) are occupied by the lowest percentage of women (17 percent). In comparison, the 2012 survey reported 15 percent equity partners were women and 70 percent staff attorneys were women. “This year’s results reinforce that women in private practice continue to face barrie

It's Easy: Set Up a Monthly Donation This morning, my Facebook feed is blowing up over a Huffington Post article about the immigrant kids being separated from their parents at ages as young as 53 months.  For additional information about the situation see here  (agency that lost 1500 kids says it is not "legally responsible" for finding them),  here (history of policy), here  (Trump blames Democrats for the lost kids), and here  (SWOPE's fact check: True). Many people want to know how they can help support resistance to this and other Trump administration policies affecting civil, human, and environmental rights. I put together a list of charity groups that support gun law reform.  I post it after every mass or school shooting,  So, in the same vein and with the same purpose,  I am creating this list of organizations that work to protect civil, human, and environmental rights.  If I need to add an organization to the list, please let me know.  Please dona

More Modern Arbitration Laws for the Arab Gulf GAR reports that the United Arab Emirates has issued its long-awaited self-standing arbitration law, based on the UNCITRAL Model Law.  The Arabic version of the the law is found  here .  In this post, I am reproducing the GAR story with a few edits. His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the UAE, issued Federal Law No. 6 of 2018 yesterday, after it was approved by his cabinet of ministers in February. It repeals and replaces the previous UAE arbitration law, contained within a chapter of the UAE Civil Procedures Law No. 11 of 1992. The new law will apply to all arbitral proceedings, including both domestic and international proceedings.  Its 61 articles include: articulation of the principles of separability and competence-competence;  power for arbitral tribunals and courts to order interim and conservatory measures relating to ongoing or potential arbitrations, with no waiver of the right to

Political Stability or a New Wave of Change? On April 28-29, 2018, Al Jazeera held its 12th Forum providing an opportunity for leading scholars and other experts to discuss a variety of topics affecting the Arab world.  The website for the forum,  @aljazeeraform , provides additional information and links to the videos of each session.  You can follow the Twitter coverage at  #AJForum . As I noted in my  first post  in this series, I am working from my notes, so I apologize in advance if I incorrectly paraphrase the remarks of any speaker. I was also reliant on the quality of the translation services and their audibility. Therefore, I am happy to make any needed edits to this summary. For summaries of the other sessions see: Opening Session Session 1: The Gulf Crisis Session 2: Iran and the Gulf Session 3: Change in the Region? Session 4: Changing Alliances in the Arab World Session 5: Palestine and the "Deal of the Century" Session 6: The Media During Times