For a very long time, the legal profession in the Kingdom has been the exclusive domain of men, until the recent introduction of a new law that gave women the right to act as barristers. The move has been hailed as an important step for justice.
Now that women have been allowed to practice the profession, open law offices and receive and defend legal cases, let us hope the process will not be confined to women dealing with cases relating to women and the personal law — marriage, divorce, the raising of children — although these are of extreme importance.
The big question is: How are the women lawyers going to work? I am assuming that a female lawyer will take up a case, review it from all angles, contact witnesses and seek access to any relevant information while working to ensure the interests of her client are well protected. After doing all this she would presumably hand over the case to a male lawyer who then stands before the judge and does the pleading.
This is a very frustrating situation and one that raises more question than answers. Instead of making matters easier, the new system would in fact create more complications. It seems one of our distinctive characteristics is the ability to create problems for ourselves.
While the world around us is racing ahead to progress by making things easier for people, we consume our energy in further complicating an already complicated matter and creating problems where none existed. It is as if we had so much time that we need to come up with new ways of consuming it. We spend the time discussing how many restrictions are needed for this or that issue and how many ifs and buts have to be addressed before the core problem is brought up.
How much time and effort, how many discussions and debates, did we expend on the need for women to have identity cards? This issue was handled as if women are alien creatures whom we suddenly discovered living among us. Logic says every citizen should have a register containing all the necessary information: birth, marriage, death, and so forth. Why then spend all this time and seek advise and consultation on a matter that should not have needed discussion in the first place?
