Measuring Against Oneself

Approximately seven thousand male and female students graduate annually from the University of Kuwait, with a similar number from private universities. Moreover, a comparable number graduates each year from local colleges and foreign universities. The total number of these graduates far exceeds the labor market’s capacity to absorb them, especially since the majority of their specializations are modest and the labor market is already saturated with them.

Among these graduates, about two thousand male and female students holding bachelor’s degrees in law and Sharia graduate annually from universities, institutes, and colleges inside and outside Kuwait. This number has also become excessive, leading some of them to work in professions unrelated to law to earn a living, while others close their offices and seek employment that provides a steady monthly income.

We have also witnessed the consequences of this oversaturation in the form of violations increasingly committed by some “law firms” to attract clients by any means, directly harming the profession and its serious practitioners. One recent example is an advertisement published by one individual who claimed, without specifying the entity that conducted the selection, that his office was chosen as the best law firm in the Middle East. Given that the concept of the Middle East encompasses approximately 18 countries and territories, and considering the difficulty of visiting all of them, we might select Iran, which has been engaged in a war with the United States for eight months, during which it has not ceased its aggression against us and our brothers, and which is under a land, sea, and air blockade. Who are the committee members who traveled there to assess the level and number of law firms, which number in the hundreds of thousands? Let alone law firms in Turkey, Cyprus, and, of course, Egypt, the mother of the world.

Previously, a decision was issued prohibiting Sharia graduates from working in the judiciary and the Public Prosecution, while allowing current practitioners to continue their work until the end of their service. A law regulating the legal profession will soon be issued, and it is highly likely to include a clause prohibiting Sharia graduates from practicing this profession. This would correct a legislative error committed by one of the previous councils under pressure from the Public Prosecution, and it is time to reverse it. The difference between the two specializations is clear, and they intersect only in very narrow areas.

Furthermore, allowing Sharia graduates, with due respect for them, to work in law has, over more than thirty years, flooded the market with them, making Kuwait the country with the highest number of lawyers per capita. This has led some serious practitioners to close their offices due to unfair competition, or to commit bizarre violations that forced the Lawyers Association to intervene and apply its disciplinary sanctions.

Then, some of these individuals, along with those who benefited from the chaos of previous eras and managed to obtain licenses for their institutions during that time, complain about the spread of various forms of corruption in the state during those past eras, and the transformation of the state into a lamentable situation characterized by educational decline and nepotism in employment. We wish these individuals would stop playing the same tune of corruption, of which they and their religious political party were an essential part. Some of them obtained colleges and universities for themselves, even though there was no real need for their graduates. When speaking of corruption, it would be appropriate for them to apply the jurisprudential principle: “Measuring oneself against oneself is the closest to justice.”

Ahmed Al-Sarraf