Male Student Club in collaboration with Female Student Club at the College of Law: Practising International Commercial Arbitration

The student club at the college of law finished its third Meeting event entitled: Practising International Commercial Arbitration, which was delivered by Nadia Smahi, a Swiss-qualified attorney-at-law at Bär & Karrer, Switzerland. The event was chaired by Dareen Abdulkareem, a PSU law student and former participant in the Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot. Professor Zlatan Meškić, the mooting coach at the college of law, also participated in the event as a commentator. The event lasted for one hour, and was well attended by students, faculty, and lawyers. Nadia started by elaborating on the typical international commercial arbitration proceedings from the perspectives of both the counsel and arbitrator. She concluded by saying students should keep learning about arbitration because it’s a fascinating and evolving area of law and truly international. Professor Zlatan thanked Nadia for her lecture, and asked her how can commercial arbitration, which is relatively new in the Saudi legal market, be promoted as a practice and a law subject? She said, citing her home country Switzerland as an example, that any country who wishes to develop a regional hub for arbitration first needs to ensure that it has the required legal structures and rules for arbitration to thrive. For the students, she said “get informed, participate in mooting, student club, contact practitioners to learn about arbitration, and more importantly be proud to talk about your country, and practise arbitration”. The club is arranging another meeting next week with a Saudi lawyer from an international consultancy firm, which promises to be another practice-oriented highly-informative students-organised event.