I am from Jordan and I did my Master of Sociology in 1993.
I came to Onati on their second year of offering Sociology of Law simply because it was offering a unique master in law whereby each semester will have professors coming from different parts of the world to provide the students with their insights. It gave us an opportunity to mix with students from different parts of the European Union that was an amazing experience from a social, cultural and learning point of view.
The courses offered by Onati were useful and supplementing and complimenting each other. Although I do not remember any of the courses that I took 29 years ago, I am still in touch with some of the colleagues who studied with me and I still remember our social gatherings and the fun that we have had during weekends more than the courses.
I have been working with Al Tamimi & Company law firm for the past 26 years. I started as an associate, then senior associate, then partner, then head of banking and finance department, then deputy managing partner, then managing partner and now working as a senior partner. Al Tamimi and Company is a Middle Eastern law firm based in Dubai and when I started, we were 9 lawyers and now we are the largest non-affiliated law firm in the Middle East with 17 offices and 450 lawyers.
My advice to the students:
- Communication skills should be your number one priority and no matter how smart or intelligent or good you are at your specialty, if you do not know how to communicate the knowledge and how to share the experience then you will achieve very little in your life.
- One of the important things that students studying law or thinking of becoming a lawyer should know is to focus on how a business is run and not just focus on studying the law, courts, arbitration, system, process, etc. The universities should also teach students on how to run a law firm from a business perspective and not just from a legal perspective.
- If you want to become a lawyer, have an aim from day 1 to be the managing partner of the firm that you are going to join and have a road map in your mind of how you are going to achieve that.
