QU’s College of Law win award at Global Legal Skills Conference

Qatar University (QU) College of Law (LAWC) win Law School Award for furthering Global Legal Skills Education at the recent 13th Global Legal Skills Conference held in Melbourne, Australia.

QU’s LAWC and the legal skills department was recognized for its leading contributions to global legal skills, and in particular the development of legal skills education in the MENA region. Dr. Conrad Sturm and Dr. Melissa Deehring accepted the award on LAWC’s behalf at the opening plenary of the conference, which hosted over 120 participants from law schools around the world.

Legal Skills Department Head, Dr. Mohamed Mattar said, “The award speaks to the dedication that the College of Law Dean, Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, the department’s faculty and law faculty and administrators have shown to advancing legal skills education at QU and in the region.” Former director of the program, Dr. Conrad Sturm, said: “I believe the law school is most deserving of the award.  In the face of many challenges over the years, the College of Law stuck with its vision and maintained its unwavering support for legal skills education in Qatar and the region.”

Since the inception of the Lawyering Skills Program (LSP) in 2010, LAWC has incorporated legal skills courses and active learning into the curriculum in order to produce more competitive, skillful and bilingual legal practitioners. When the college unveiled its current program in 2011, it established the first comprehensive program in the MENA region in legal writing, research, reasoning and advocacy as part of its LL.B. degree studies. The program added legal skills courses in English and Arabic to complement the various Arabic taught courses. In February 2018, the LSP program was merged with the Law Clinic and Externship program to become the Legal Skills Department.

Since LSP’s creation, QU’s LAWC has provided extensive support to its faculty and students. It invested heavily in a leading legal skills faculty in the region and has been very supportive of travel for students to moot court and negotiation competitions. Because of its support, LSP Moot Court students have won 13 awards since the program’s inception in 2011. Moreover, the college has supported regional and global legal skills gatherings. It has hosted international moot court competitions, such as the Vis Middle East International Commercial Arbitration Pre-Moot, and in 2013, it created an Arabic Moot Court Competition, now the leading regional moot court competition that rotates amongst law school hosts. LAWC also recently hosted the International Association of Law Schools Annual Meeting and Conference in November that focused on legal skills.