Saeed Al-Suraihi
Regulations in the Kingdom allow unlicensed individuals to practice the legal profession, giving a chance for impersonators to exploit the situation and make material gains.
It is quite surprising that when all other laws in the country are difficult to break, the legal practice provides loopholes for those who want to violate the law.
The law has specified the conditions and qualifications a lawyer must fulfill to practice the profession and defend cases of individuals and companies at Saudi courts.
But the same law allows unlicensed individuals to take up cases at courts as long as they do not represent more than three clients, as if the license is based on the number of clients.
Imagine the Health Ministry allows unlicensed doctors and medical practitioners to treat patients on condition that they should not treat more than three patients or should not conduct surgical operation on more than three patients. How dangerous and ridiculous will be this proposition.
If the law allows unlicensed individuals to defend clients in Saudi courts, we need not wonder about the report that 90 individuals were caught impersonating as lawyers in the past two years and their cases had been transferred to judicial authorities.
In a report carried by Makkah daily, experts pointed out that the actual number of fake legal practitioners in the country would be double that number. If the law allows unlicensed individuals to represent clients in courts then there is no point in leveling charges of impersonation against these people, unless they had forged licenses or incurred losses to their clients because of their ignorance of the law.
