First Judiciary Conference Concludes in Syria

Law offices should develop their procedures by utilizing Information Technology ? Abu-Ghazaleh

DAMASCUS July 9, 2008 The first judiciary conference concluded its activities in the Syrian capital yesterday. The two-day event which was organized by the British-Syrian Society in collaboration with the Law Society of England and Wales along with the American Bar Association, took place under the patronage of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. It was attended by judges and attorneys in addition to Arab and foreign legal experts.

Chairman of the Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization and Vice-Chair of the UN Global Compact Mr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh spoke at the event. His speech focused on the new model followed by his law firm Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Legal (TAG-LEGAL) which lies on the principle that internal lawyers do not present cases in court, but rather their assignment is limited to preparing the case file and act as consultants for external lawyers.

He called on law offices to develop their procedures, and administer their activities and professional services by utilizing IT, while also stating that the law community worldwide should implement some sort of a ?judiciary system? on the internet since the only protection currently available online is for domain names.

Mr. Abu-Ghazaleh also discussed the role of TAG-LEGAL in capacity-building in the legal field in cooperation with the Arab Society for Intellectual Property, through training judges and solicitors, providing consultations to develop judiciary systems and collaborating with law faculties in Arab universities to hold moot court competitions in order to train potential graduates on intellectual property cases.

After the conference, President Bashar Al-Assad received heads of various conference delegations among whom was Mr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh.