Thanks to a new collaborative effort between Dr Fatou Baldeh, founder of the Gambian CSO Women in Liberation and Leadership (WILL), and Fulbright Specialist Fred Rooney, Gambian lawyers will soon benefit from the country’s first-ever legal incubator. Mr Rooney, a US attorney and global advocate for justice, is currently visiting The Gambia to work with WILL and other stakeholders on how best to launch a legal incubator program here.
Legal incubator programs are designed to give lawyers who eventually venture out on their own enhanced hands-on training to better function well in the courtroom and start and run their own law offices.
Rooney stressed to The Standard that a Gambian incubator would fully comply with any rules, regulations, or guidelines set forth by the Chief Justice, Ministry of Justice, and the Gambian Bar Association.
More importantly, strict compliance will be made to requirements promulgated by the General Legal Council (GLC) since the GLC governs lawyers by regulating admission to practice, professional conduct, and legal education within The Gambia.
After Rooney learned of the world-renowned work to enhance gender justice carried out by Dr Baldeh and WILL, he applied for a Fulbright Specialist grant to gain a deeper understanding of how WILL works and how he can be a catalyst in promoting the WILL model in his work around the world.
According to Rooney, “It is imperative to replicate WILL’s successful efforts to promote the wellbeing of women and girls in The Gambia in countries where violence against women and attacks on their reproductive health puts them in harm’s way.”
Incubators for lawyers address the growing need for affordable legal services, help increase access to justice for vulnerable groups and marginalised communities, and supplement traditional legal education. Law schools teach students how to practice law by training them in legal research and analysis, persuasive writing, an enhanced understanding of public policy, statutes, and legal remedies, and basic lawyering skills. However, students do not generally learn the business of law or how to start and run their own law office. Solo and small firm practice has long been the path of most private lawyers. Being a solo or a small firm practitioner is especially important to many law graduates who return to their communities to provide affordable, critical legal services to underprivileged groups. The planned lawyer incubator in The Gambia will help participants understand how community-based lawyers can use their privileged role to ensure more significant equity in access to justice.
Legal incubators help increase the number of lawyers in community-based practices and enhance the career satisfaction of lawyers authorised to launch solo or small-firm practices. In many ways, the mission of incubators is to help participants provide affordable and innovative services to fill the gap in access to justice for the working poor, middle class, and other excluded groups. One of the tools used to enhance career satisfaction is achieved by lawyers who give back to the incubator by offering a significant percentage of their services pro bono (free) to marginalised or vulnerable individuals. It has been shown that lawyers who provide either pro bono or reduced-fee services experience a more profound sense of career satisfaction.
Lawyer incubators generally try to achieve three goals. First, like all business incubators, they aim to assist new lawyers in developing their sustainable law practices. To accomplish that goal, programs provide an array of services and resources to improve participants’ lawyering skills, expand their understanding of diverse areas of the law, develop business acumen, and pay close adherence to the ethical issues that private practitioners face. Second, incubators help graduates become successful social entrepreneurs who can contribute to improving access to justice while simultaneously earning a comfortable living. Third, the ultimate goal of incubator programs is to graduate a diverse cohort of public interest lawyers who understand that “doing well” and “doing good” need not be mutually exclusive.
Participants in The Gambia will be introduced to their counterparts who participate in legal incubator programs in North America, the Caribbean, Asia, and Europe. For example, participants in the Gambia incubator will have direct access to the directors and participants of incubator programs in the US, Pakistan, Bulgaria, and the Palestinian Territories (the West Bank and Gaza Strip). The “best practices” that flow from Rooney’s work in the US and abroad will benefit the program primarily for women in The Gambia. Furthermore, Rooney hopes to leverage his strong connections to bar associations and law schools to enhance US support for incubator lawyers in The Gambia. Rooney’s groundbreaking work has been recognized globally and credited with improving access to justice for some of the most vulnerable people on the planet. In 2013, Rooney was recognised as the “Father of Legal Incubators” by the American Bar Journal.
“My mission is clear,” says Rooney. “Using Law in the Service of Human Needs, I am dedicated to continuing to make a difference in the world of social justice. I’ve always believed that my work is a testament to my unwavering dedication to social justice in the US and abroad. The pioneering legal incubator model I created in 2007 has been instrumental in providing countless individuals worldwide with access to compassionate lawyers who address their unmet legal needs.”
Since 2007, Fred Rooney has created dozens of legal incubators around the United States and in countries as diverse as Pakistan, Bulgaria, the Dominican Republic, and, before the war, in Gaza City. In collaboration with WILL and other stakeholders, he looks forward to getting the Gambian legal incubator up and running as soon as possible. “I am calling on all young Gambian lawyers, especially females interested in this opportunity, to contact WILL and fill out the application form.”
For additional information, please get in touch with Sirah Touray at [email protected].
