Saudi women law students win Mideast moot court contest

Nine women from the Hekma School of Business and Law won first place in the Third Annual Middle East Vis Pre-Moot, a moot court contest.
This is in preparation for the 20th Willem C. Vis Annual Arbitration Moot competition in Vienna in March, which brings together law schools from all over the world. The contest is held to encourage study in commercial and arbitration laws.
The pre-moot was held in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from Feb. 11 to 14. Dar Al-Hekma’s team went head-to-head against Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, UAE University, University of Baghdad in Iraq, University of Bahrain, and the University of Jordan whose students secured second position.
The contest was preceded by three workshop days, in which the teams received training from the faculty of University of Pittsburg Center for International Legal Education (CILE).
Dar Al-Hekma’s team — Asmaa Al-Bakri, Badriya Modir, Daliya Sayed, Fatima Al-Kuhlani, Layan Al-Khouli, Noor Zahran, Reem Zahid, Sarah Abutaleb, and Yasmeen Al-Kathiri — competed against four teams in the general rounds, qualifying to the semi-finals, finals, and then winning the competition.
“It was an amazing opportunity for us to showcase not only our skills in writing legal documents, but also orally advocating our own cases,” said Al-Bakri.
“There is a general view that women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are not as qualified as other women around the world, so this was a great way to break that stereotype, to prove that we, too, can achieve something substantial at an international level. We hope that by winning this competition doubts about our learning capacity and educational system will diminish,” Al-Bakri added.
The team stated it was their passion, motivation and team spirit that inspired them. The team acknowledged that this was an exceptionally valuable learning experience because it gave them insight into how the legal system functions.
Al-Khouli, another Dar Al-Hekma winning team member, praised their coach Olga Nartova for their success. “Her flexible approach and willingness to let us learn from our own mistakes provided us with a certain level of independence.”
Nartova, the Legal Studies Program Director at Dar Al-Hekma, said the experience of the pre-moot was very rewarding for her not because the students won, but because she could see them put their learning into practice on a more challenging level.
The competition concluded with a dinner at Rotana Beach Hotel. The Dar Al-Hekma team took home nine individual awards, and a first place award for the college. Al-Khouli won the Best Oral Respondent award.