Fatima Muhammad
Saudi Gazette
JEDDAH — Saudi law and consultancy firms will soon launch a joint initiative to train fresh law graduates and provide free legal services to the needy people.
Majed Qaroub, chairman of the Saudi Law Training Center, which will train the law graduates, said they plan to provide free consultations for family and labor cases, which account for 60 percent of all legal litigations in the Kingdom.
Some 1,000 fresh law graduates will be trained under the specially tailored program over a 10-year period and the trainees will provide about a million hours of free consultation once they start working, Garoub said.
The training will start in Riyadh and Jeddah and will be later expanded to other cities. About 100 graduates will be trained each year.
Among the strategic partners of the initiative is the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF), which will look for employment opportunities for the fresh law graduates and provide incentives to private law firms that are ready to recruit these graduates.
Garoub explained that fresh graduates hired by law firms would receive 240 hours of intensive training by legal experts, which will be provided on weekends.
After the completion of the training period, each lawyer will be required to volunteer 1,000 hours of free service, Garoub said.
The total value of the free consultations to be provided through various charity organizations will reach up to SR1 billion, stated Garoub.
Prince Majed Bin Abdulaziz Society for Development and Social Services, which is another strategic partner of the initiative, will train the lawyers on how to successfully complete their volunteering hours. The society will coordinate with various charity organizations to receive deserving cases and pass them on to the volunteer lawyers.
The initiative will mostly benefit charity organizations and welfare groups working with families, women and children, and stranded laborers.
The initiative will also make trained Saudi lawyers available to private law firms.
The law firms that recruit the trainees will be responsible for providing 1,000 free hours of consultation for each lawyer enrolled in this program. The firms will be given awards for extending this service as part of their commitment to social responsibility, Garoub said.
If a firm fails to provide the free service as agreed upon, it will be obliged to pay back an amount of SR200,000 on behalf of each lawyer, he added.
The HRDF will pay a monthly stipend of SR500 to each trainee. When the trainee is hired by a law firm, the fund will pay a monthly incentive of SR1,500 during the first year of employment. This amount will increase to SR2,000 if a firm continues to hire fresh graduates for three consecutive years.
In addition to the HRDF and Prince Majed Society, partners who support the initiative include King Khalid Foundation, the Law Firm of Majed Garoub, Nesma Training Center, and many other law and consultancy firms.
