Subject Focus: Comparative Legal Ethics research and resources

One fascinating component of working in legal education in Qatar for me is to observe a country with blended legal systems. Qatar has civil, common, and sharia law depending on the subject and parties involved in a transaction or dispute. For example, a common law based court was created in Qatar for commercial litigation with authority to decide and enforce judgments. New tribunals like the Qatar International Court are bringing lawyers and major law firm offices to the region that collaborate with local bar members, so these ethics issues are becoming more important.  Law schools do not commonly have professional ethics courses in the region and bar associations are not engaged to encode or enforce. Accreditation practice visits identified this need and it is being responded to at QU.

At the recent Qatar Law Forum I met an international lawyer from the UK now based in Doha who described to me the practice of law here and really emphasized the difficulty of collaboration across jurisdictions and legal systems without a common code of legal ethics. For example, is it ok to coach a witness or how do you define a conflict of interest? The answers depend on the origins and professional ethics of the lawyers and any disagreement will probably result in a costly withdrawal from representation and impede successful collaboration.

Library resources at QU in this area are slim. There are two books on UK ethics in the library and no other local resources are collected. Westlaw International and LexisNexis Academic provide common law based material. Identifying this gap in our collection is an opportunity to add to the library’s ability to support interest in comparative legal ethics instruction and research. I am developing resources in this area based on resources at the International Association of Legal Ethics at Stanford,  the International Forum on Teaching Legal Ethics and Professionalism,  and conference materials from the International Legal Ethics Conferences.  Journals such as Legal Ethics will be added to the QU law collection over the next year. Fortunately, the International Bar Association has developed many ethical codes that are available in multiple languages.

Ending Ceremony spectacular - World Book Day

The ending ceremony for QU led World Book Day was today and over 300 young people participated and some got awards. The US and Japanese Ambassadors attended to present book prizes and donate to the Japanese and American Corners in the QU Library. A book swap and reception followed with the Qatari Minister of Culture, President and Vice President of QU.

April 23rd is World Book Day because many famous authors died on that day, including in the year 1616 Cervantes, Vega and Shakespeare. Many other authors were born on April 23rd, for example Nabokov.

Read books! This month I am reading The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj by James Onley, from our new books collection.

Here are some pictures from the World Book Day event:

Dr. Sheikha Abdulla Al-Misnad presenting a book prize

Qatari Minister of Culture (in white),
US Ambassador (in blue) and Japanese Ambassador (middle)

Katia Medawar, Head of Public Services

Externship Fair

QU Law Students: please attend today the first-ever law Externship Fair, Monday 8:30 - 1:30 in room C219. My LRW II are requested to go! I was an extern for a US Judge and highly recommend volunteering for an externship. This is a great opportunity. Thanks

QU Libraries improving and growing

As the year comes to an end I am proud of what the library team has achieved. Qatar University library services and collections grew significantly the academic year ending May 2012. Additionally, the move to a new facility helped improve average faculty satisfaction with library services and collection from 48.2% last year to 68.4% this year. The numbers for student satisfaction increased from just 31.1% to 61.6% in one year!  Here are some highlights I pulled from the Library Annual Report:

·         Staff includes four MLS-qualified professional librarians  and 14 staff with B Sc / BA- in library and other social sciences

·         Uploaded a total of 75,000 e-books and 1400 e-reference sources into the  library’s  online catalog (OPAC)  and made these resources accessible from on-and off-campus

·         Uploaded (4,500) Arabic records from Arabic Union catalog

·         Added an average of 2,610 new titles per month (including 155 law titles)

·         8 New Databases and Electronic Journals added

·         2,933 books catalogued

·         Now over 20 Lib Guides with  20,651 hits on the web from students and faculty. Many such  guides are in both Arabic and English.

·         Conducted 18 library tours of the new library for 277 participants

·         Answered 7426 reference questions

·         Books circulated 52,640

·         Gate count 84,993

·         Inter library loans 25

·         LexisNexis usage per month: 3,037

·         Westlaw International usage per month: 2,283

·         English print books: 55,420

·         Arabic print books: 45,296

A week on the job as QU law librarian with a Royal visit

How I spent my week: Teaching dominated the week with five one hour lab sessions of Legal Research and Writing. The classes use primarily Westlaw International to find US cases in tort subjects such as IIED and defamation required for the open memos - very similar to any law school legal writing program.  On Tuesday, Qatari Royalty was touring the new library and we had a spontaneous drop-in by Sheikha Moza in one of my classes. She joined us for a Westlaw session in the new instructional lab for about a minute. I was teaching IIED searches in cases and she seemed entertained. A TV crew was following her and I hope to get a clip. Also, the International Review of Law (IRL) and two law faculty asked for citation checking and sourcing for articles so I am working on this after teaching. We use ALWD here at the College of Law and I am liking this citation style more than I ever thought I would after years of working with ‘Bluebook’ law schools, journals and law reviews. The IRL is close to finalizing the first issue of the new journal so we are anticipating great things. Additionally, law students are asking right now for access to primary materials in English, particularly the Qatari copyright code and treaties relating to domestic violence protection from countries in the region including Jordon, Egypt and Turkey.  I am recommending Eastlaws and UNESCO databases for these research requests. QU law is in the process of drafting model legislation for domestic violence and I am glad to help as I can. Lastly, this weekend I will attend the Qatar Law Forum on the Rule of Law  (May 4-6^th, 2012).  This event is international in scope and law school Deans, Judges, Lawyers, and Government Officials are attendees/presenters. For example, the Prime Minister of Qatar is giving a plenary talk at the conference on Sunday. I look forward to seeing Lord Woolf again and meeting new people.

QU: World Book Day

QU library, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, is celebrating the World Book Day event (April 23rd and 24th) through a variety of activities and workshops.

The Instructional Services Department is conducting a workshop entitled "Differentiating between types of sources (popular versus scholarly)."

The workshop will take place in Ibn Khaldoon Hall as follows:

April 23 (10:00 -11:30) for female students 

April 24 (10:00 -11:30) for male students

You are highly encouraged to participate in this activity. If interested, kindly contact Mr. Nasser Al Saari at nasalsaari@qu.edu.qa

A certificate of attendance will be distributed.

We look forward to your participation!

Event's Details: http://bit.ly/Iog5WW

Ngorongoro Safari

My safari in Tanzania ended and the pictures capture some of the excitement. My family was fortunate to have good weather and our safari guide was fantastic. Here are some of my favorite scenes.