As a first step on the long road leading to Saudi women being able to obtain a license to practice law, law firms are giving female graduates the opportunity to have legal training. Recently, law firms have appointed Saudi women to ‘paralegal' positions which means that they can do just about all of the work on a legal case but cannot present the case in front of judges in a courtroom. Women are not allowed to represent a client in a courtroom because the Ministry of Justice is still studying the matter of issuing law licenses to females. “The legal work that takes place outside of the courtroom represents more than 90 percent of the work on a case. This is very important work which can be done by women in law firms,” said Dr. Majed M. Garoub, President of Saudi law training and head of the National Committee of Lawyers in the Council of Saudi Chambers of Commerce. Recently many law offices have created separate female sections to train women and to increase female participation in the handling of law cases. Garoub said, “I have a separate women's section in my law office. Women lawyers can be trained and engage in legal work until such a time as law licenses are issued to women in the Kingdom.” Mais Khalid Abu-Dalbouh, one of the first Saudi female legal consultants, started working at the Ahmed Zaki Yamani law firm, the first to open a women's department, in March 2003. She writes company contracts, studies cases, and gives legal consultation, but she cannot defend her client in front of a judge inside a Saudi courtroom. “Hopefully, we will be granted this right soon; it hurts when you do all the work but can't follow your case when it heads to the courtroom,” she said. She noted that women clients are more comfortable speaking with a female lawyer because there could be some intimate details that a female client would be embarrassed to tell a male lawyer, and these small details could make the difference between winning or losing the case. The idea of having female colleagues in law firms has not met with any resistance from male lawyers. “We welcome Saudi women in our law offices if they have the required abilities and are able to do the work,” said Tarek Al-Shami, a member of the committee of lawyers who has his own law firm. I think that women are more than able to stand up in court and represent their clients, and female lawyers should demand their right to have a law license, said Al-Shami. Saudi female students studying law and new law graduates are worried about the future they will face after they finish their studies, he said. Sarah Ali a law student at King Abdulaziz University is calling for law licenses to be granted to women so that they can practice what they have learned in the university. “Why are they letting us study law courses in college when we are not allowed to practice what we have learned and be lawyers in the real world. I am glad that we can work in law firms, but we want more than that; for instance, I want to have my own law office,” she said. According to Al-Shami, female law graduates tend to work in different sectors, such as, banks, hospitals and government offices. “They should work in their specialized fields. Many women have proved their effectiveness as lawyers. In some cases, clients have sensitive issues for which they need a female lawyer and a woman's opinion,” Al
