[caption id="attachment_100100" align="alignleft" width="224"] Nasreen Al-Ghamdi [/caption]By Adnan Al-Shabrawi JEDDAH — Laila Mohammed Al-Qabi has become the first Saudi blind woman lawyer to be accredited in the Kingdom. The Ministry of Justice has accredited Qabi and registered her name in the registry of lawyers under training. It also gave her the certificate of trainee lawyer, which will enable her to practice law for a year starting this week. A number of lawyers, consultants and legal committees have welcomed Qabi to the tribe of lawyers and said her strong perseverance has helped her overcome her loss of vision. "I am happy to be recognized as a lawyer. I am exulted on completing my journey of a thousand miles that began with a single step," she said. Al-Qabi profusely thanked all those who had supported her and hoped that she would live up to their expectations. Free legal help The participants in the confluence on family cases will celebrate on Wednesday the graduation of the first batch of Takamul initiative for legal help, which consists of about 1,000 Saudi male and female lawyers. The initiative is aimed at providing legal help free of charge to poor people who are unable to pay the lawyers› fees. Under the initiate, legal defense will be provided by voluntary lawyers in the domestic and labor lawsuits free of charge. The young men and women who graduated from the law and Shariah colleges are now qualified to work in companies and the law offices. They spent about 200 hours of training and are capable of spending about a million hours in voluntary work over a period of 10 years, providing legal services to the poor and needy free of charge within the social responsibility of lawyers. Nasreen Al-Ghamdi, a female lawyer and a legal consultant, said she was proud to be part of the initiative to defend the poor and needy before the courts at no cost at all. Ghadah Al-Mansour, another female lawyer, said she was happy to be among the first batch of graduates of the Takamul initiative to train lawyers on practicing law and voluntary work. She advised her fellow women lawyers to join in the charity effort.
