With increasing economic diversification in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia in particular spearheaded by Vision 2030, global businesses are looking to make greater inward investment into the Kingdom. Demand for a highly skilled workforce to support Vision 2030 is accelerating, and the legal profession is no different. There is a need to prepare the lawyers of tomorrow—today—and develop a legal practice course for Saudi Arabia in particular and the Middle East in general.
The traditional law degree equips a budding lawyer with theories, concepts, laws, rules and regulations—rarely one is taught how to apply theoretical knowledge in a practical setting.
Fresh law graduates seeking to enter the job market and corporates, with their sights perennially fixed on ‘top line’, ‘bottom line’, ‘value for money’, ‘return on investment’, are rightly looking for graduates to add value and carry out meaningful work. Failure to equip law graduates with practical skills, such as drafting, research, interviewing, negotiation, advocacy, and hands-on experience of legal work, significantly reduces their employability.
Under the English legal system, in the recent past to qualify as a lawyer, it was a requirement that a prospective lawyer would complete a law degree followed by the Legal Practice Course commonly referred to as the LPC, now replaced by the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), followed by two years of training under the supervision of a training principal with a Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA)-accredited firm, or in-house legal department.
Personally, the LPC was akin to a crash course on how to become a solicitor in England & Wales in the setting of a classroom. Under the supervision of qualified and experienced practitioners, law graduates would get into the nitty-gritty of the work of a solicitor. We learnt, albeit to a varying degree, how to draft basic legal documents such as a statement of claim or contract, as well as how to communicate with clients, the art of negotiation and advocacy.
As a graduate of the course and indeed many graduates feel the intense training prepares them well and gives them a head start in their legal careers.
They are equipped with the basics of legal practice, supplementing the theoretical knowledge of their law degrees and multitude of relevant skills learnt and practised under the supervision of experienced, mostly practising or formerly practising lawyers, ready to enter the legal profession with some degree of confidence. The graduate is able to hit the ground running, again to a varying degree, in law firms, and in-house legal departments across the public and private sectors.
The employer is able to build on the theoretical legal skills of the law graduate with practical work, by training and supervising the legal work and advice. It would mean a trainee is adding value from the outset and would be given and would receive legal tasks which start to build the legal practice, which would be much more difficult or there would be a much steeper learning curve for the graduate with simply an undergraduate degree.
For the many reasons mentioned above and the fact that legal practice is very much a skills-based profession embellishing legal theory and knowledge, a greater focus on direct practical legal skills would enhance and provide a great platform for law graduates in the Middle East to thrive in the legal profession.
Indeed, the development of a highly skilled legal talent pool with foundations built on critical employment skills will fuel and support the Vision 2030 and beyond. Equally, an investment in the local economy would be appreciated by all those interested in developing local talent.
A handful of law firms in the Middle East have established or are beginning to establish in-house training academies to address this issue, however it may not make economic sense for smaller firms, or in-house legal departments, to create such academies. A tailored legal practice course addresses this issue. Questions of funding and operating models are outside the scope of this article.
With the drive towards economic diversification and knowledge-based economies, comes the need for a strong workforce, in all fields. The legal practice course will allow the transfer of knowledge and skills to take place, it will allow the future legal minds of the Middle East to be devoted to the legal profession and not be lost to other professions. It will provide greater competition for graduates and a strong selection mechanism to allow the very best of legal talent to enter, thrive, and lead the legal profession.
Mohammed Jamil is group general counsel at Petromin Corporation. He is an England & Wales qualified solicitor (non-practising) with over 20 years of experience across jurisdictions including England, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia. Prior to Petromin, he worked at large family conglomerates including TRW Automotive, Kuwait Finance House, Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), Yusuf bin Ahmed Kanoo.
