In 2010, the College of Law unveiled a comprehensive program in legal writing, research, reasoning, and advocacy as part of its LL.B. degree studies. A first for the region, the program added practical legal skills courses in English to complement the legal writing component of various Arabic-taught courses.
The legal writing practice labs that complement some Arabic-taught courses focus on local writing practices and court filings. Meanwhile, the lawyering skills courses and labs in English focus on writing and advocacy that students may do at international firms (in Qatar and abroad), before the Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre, before common law courts and arbitral tribunals, as well as at common law schools and institutions, particularly where a student intends to pursue further studies with an LL.M. and/or Ph.D.
The first mandatory course in the English program, Legal Writing I, introduces students to statutory and case law analysis in Qatar, as well as legal research in Qatar, while students write informative/office memoranda of law. Students focus on a analyzing and researching a Qatari client’s case in the pre-trial stages. Students in this course are also introduced to international case law and legal research.
Legal Writing II, the second mandatory course, focuses on persuasive writing while also offering more advanced international statutory and case law analysis and legal research. In this course, students focus on a client’s case in a common law jurisdiction in the post-trial/appellate stages. Legal Writing II places students in the role of an advocate and students are taught how to write persuasive courtroom briefs. Both courses are complemented with mandatory weekly Legal English labs.
What is Moot Court:
Moot court is a law school activity that provides students with an opportunity to develop their oral and written advocacy skills. Students take part in simulated court proceedings, which usually involve drafting memorials or memoranda, participating in oral arguments and arguing of cases in front of judges.
Moot Court Goals:
Moot Court has two main goals. One goal is to train students to serve as advocates in disputes that arise between governments and individuals that will be decided by the use of international law. Students will continue to develop their ability to read and analyze the law, as well as their persuasive writing skills, by preparing arguments for both sides of a legal issue as they participate in the writing of an appellate and appellee brief. They will also be introduced to the oral advocacy skills required to make a formal oral argument before an arbitral or judicial tribunal.
Another goal is to provide students with the unique skills that are necessary to participate in a Qatar University College of Law Moot or a regional or international Moot. Accordingly, deadlines for some assignments will be dictated by the requirements of a particular moot court competition and students will be expected to work on assignments throughout the semester. Top performing students may be invited to travel abroad to represent Qatar University at a moot court competition in the Spring semester.
Moot court and other legal skills competitions are a unique and important part of the legal education experience for several reasons. First, these types of extra-curricular activities encourage Qatar University students to engage in higher level critical thinking, problem solving, research, writing, editing, and oral advocacy. Second, they provide a platform for students to put their classroom learning to practical use. Finally, they provide students with an opportunity to develop their English-language skills at a higher level and in a professional context.
Students are required to engage problems that have strong and weak points on both sides. They have to do their own research, write their own drafts, assimilate professor comments, and revise their work based on those comments.
They have to look at both sides of an issue, and struggle with ambiguities arising from their research. They have to learn how to make a persuasive argument on one side, and then to make an equally persuasive argument on the other side.
They learn to draft an argument, and then they learn how to convey that argument orally via a question and answer model. Again, for oral argument it is not enough to memorize. They learn to think on their feet, and to answer new questions relying only on the expertise they have developed in their research and writing. And they learn to do all of this in a second language (English).
Professionally, students who have participated in these competitions are exposed to international commercial arbitration and negotiations. Many of our moot court and legal skills competition students have ended up going into international commercial law or have gone on to achieve arbitration certifications, based on their exposure through these programs.
Students who have successfully completed a moot court or legal skills competition experience also report being more attractive to potential employers. In Qatar at least, having the Vis or INC on your CV is shorthand for high English-language ability, good written and oral advocacy skills, and a stronger than average work ethic. Those things all make these students more employable.
About the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Competition:
The Vis Moot is one of the world’s largest and most prestigious international moot court competitions. Held annually since 1993, the Vis Moot draws students from approximately 300 law schools from more than 65 countries. Teams draft memoranda for both the claimant and respondent in a hypothetical commercial dispute between two parties in an international arbitration and then present oral arguments at hearings held in Vienna, Austria, in the Spring.
About the International Negotiation Competition
The International Negotiation Competition (INC) is a law student competition in which students negotiate international transactions or resolutions of disputes. The INC is conducted in English. Law students represent a client and either negotiate a business deal or resolve a dispute with a team from a different country.
The INC promotes the development of negotiation skills in the context of international transactions and disputes. Teams make connections with each other, as well as with academics, practitioners, and judges. As a result, students create valuable networks in the international legal community.
The College of Law’s Externship Program is a three-credit experiential course that has been specially designed to expose QU students to different models of legal skills related to specific areas of law, while allowing students to acquire greater insight into the process of lawyering, permitting students to develop a sense of professional development, and providing students with an opportunity to reflect on and learn from experiences in a supportive yet real-world environment.
The course provides a classroom component, during which students learn about professional skills related to the practice of law as well as an out-of-classroom component during which students work for academic credit and gain direct legal experience with practicing lawyers, judges or legal professionals in a supervised setting.
The out-of-classroom component requires the students to work for a minimum of 120 hours during 10 weeks of either the Fall or Spring semesters and requires the employers to assign real legal work to the students and provide real feedback on those assignments. Neither the students nor the employers are paid during this collaboration. Students work for free and earn experience and academic credit. Employers train for free and gain relationships with law students and can use the class as a form of direct recruitment for after graduation.
Advocacy Skills focuses on refining students’ reasoning and persuasive writing skills as well as building their oral advocacy skills. After many weeks of oral practice in this course, students present oral arguments to a panel of judges. This course is complemented with mandatory weekly Legal English labs.
Provides the future transactional lawyer with a foundation in drafting well-written contracts.
The legal labs are practical lectures in selected courses of the bachelor's program given in small groups of students and aimed at enhancing practical skills necessary to gain competence for practicing legal professions
The Bachelor of Law program consists of six laboratories, including three founding laboratories:
- Introduction to Law.
- Criminal Law.
- Commercial Law.
and three advanced laboratories:
- Criminal Procedures.
- Civil Commercial Procedures.
- Contracts: lease, sales,..
In the first stage, the foundation labs focus on teaching students the methods of acquiring legal knowledge and legal reasoning through training them to acquire the methodology of summarizing the legal texts, the methodology of solving the essay questions, the justification questions, the methodology of solving the practical cases, the methodology of commenting the Judgments.
In the advanced stage, legal laboratories teach the students the basic skills of [practicing legal professions such as contract drafting (Civil Contract lab), civil procedures skills in Qatari courts, drafting legal documents, legal notes, the civil trial procedures, civil and commercial pleadings). The labs also train the criminal proceedings, starting with the procedures of the Public Prosecution, then the criminal proceedings, the proceedings and the pleadings and finally the Qatari criminal courts.