DAMMAM, 30 May 2007 — The Court of Grievances has ordered the Ministry of Labor to issue a lawyer’s visa for the recruitment of a foreign lawyer to work in the Kingdom at a law office in Dammam.
The court issued this directive to redress a complaint made by a Dammam-based lawyer against the Labor Ministry that it rejected his request for the recruitment of a lawyer from abroad to help him in his office.
Abdul Aziz Al-Houshani, the Saudi lawyer, filed the lawsuit at the court after the Labor Office in Dammam refused to issue the visa. Instead the office wanted to issue a visa for a “legal adviser” rather than what Al-Houshani would consider a full-fledged lawyer.
Al-Houshani pointed out in his complaint that he had every right to recruit a lawyer as the Saudi regulations pertaining to legal profession permitted the recruitment of foreign lawyers.
In its judgment, the court said that a legal adviser is a lawyer and therefore the Labor Ministry should issue a lawyer’s visa to the respondent. The judgment further explained that the first article in the Kingdom’s regulations governing legal profession states that the duty of a lawyer is to represent the case of a client in legal matters and giving him legal advice. In other words the lawyer’s profession also meant giving legal advice.
The court reminded the ministry that Article 41 of the same regulations permits a licensed Saudi lawyer to seek help of a non-Saudi lawyer if his office required it. The court warned the ministry that its refusal to issue lawyer’s visas to qualified foreign lawyers, who are licensed to practice law in their countries, would not be in the best interests of the profession in the Kingdom. This would be, argued Al-Houshani, damaging to the profession in the Kingdom because only less-skilled foreign lawyers would agree to such conditions and come here.
Houshani told Arab News that he pointed out in his complaint against the Ministry of Labor that legal advice was part of the profession of a lawyer as there is no separate profession called legal adviser other than a lawyer’s.
On the other hand, the lawyer’s profession involves advising his clients and representing cases in courts. “Further, the third article permits non-Saudis to practice the legal profession.” Anyone, Saudi or non-Saudi, who pursues the legal profession, should be called a lawyer, he argued.
