My Experiences in Kosovo, December 2006 - March 2007 Sara Andrews, Associate Walking through Pristina’s bustling city center, awash in new construction and outdoor cafes filled with fashionable 20-somethings, it is difficult to imagine that less than 10 years ago Kosovo and its capital city were rocked by a devastating war that resulted in thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of forced expulsions. It is a testament to the spirit of the Kosovar people that they are so quickly erasing all outward signs of war and racing at warp speed toward what they hope will be a better future. Although external signs of the recent conflict are nearly impossible to find in Pristina, a 15-minute conversation with almost any local serves as a sobering reminder of the atrocities that visited the region within the past decade. As a member of New Perimeter’s Kosovo Law Reform Project team, I spent four months in Pristina (December 2006 through April 2007) providing legal assistance to the local provisional government. The young lawyers I worked with, most in their early 20’s, have tales of hardship and sacrifice that most Western lawyers have only read about in novels or seen in movies. Yet, despite the tumultuous nature of the past decade, or perhaps because of it, there is an incredible energy in Kosovo’s capital city and a collective excitement at the prospect of creating a new future. It is a tremendously interesting time to spend time in Kosovo, as the U.N.-controlled province is on the verge of gaining independence from Serbia. The opportunity to witness and participate in the formation of a new state has been a uniquely challenging and rewarding professional experience. My extended stay “on the ground” enabled me to make personal connections with our Kosovar clients and to keep abreast of daily developments with DLA Piper’s ongoing projects in the region, enhancing the quality of the legal counsel that the firm was able to provide. My time in Kosovo not only enhanced the value of the product the DLA Piper team was able to deliver, but it provided me with an invaluable professional and personal experience that has positively impacted my lawyering skills and broadened my worldview. Substance of Work For the duration of my stay in Kosovo, I was located physically within the Department of Legal Affairs in the Kosovar Ministry of Justice (“Ministry”). Substantively, my work was primarily focused on two tasks: 1) providing legislative drafting and policy development assistance to Ministry legal officers on two major laws that create and regulate the judicial and prosecutorial systems in Kosovo (the Law on Judiciary (“LOJ”) and Law on Public Prosecution (“LOPP”)); and 2) providing formal legal training and informal mentoring to the Ministry legal officers. Law on Judiciary and Law on Public Prosecution In 2005 and 2006, DLA Piper was instrumental in organizing working groups of Kosovar judicial and prosecutorial experts and presenting formal policy papers to those groups on the major decisions that needed to be made when drafting laws creating judicial and prosecution systems. With the assistance of DLA Piper, drafts of these two major laws were created that reflected the consensus of both local experts and the international community. Since DLA Piper’s initial participation in the drafting of the two laws, the Ministry was created and granted a broad legal mandate over the development of legislation related to the justice sector. Consequently, at the time of my arrival in Kosovo, the Ministry had organized new working groups on the LOJ and LOPP for a secondary review of the laws. Progress on moving the laws forward, however, (with the ultimate goal of passing them on to the Prime Minister’s office and then the Assembly) had stagnated. When I arrived, the legal officers were in possession of lengthy comments provided by working group members on both the LOJ and LOPP that had yet to be analyzed or integrated into the laws. I compiled and combined the various comments, providing summaries of key policy recommendations. I then met with the legal officers and the First Political Advisor to the Minister of Justice to review the comments. Based on the directives of the Ministry, I incorporated the agreed-upon comments into the laws in redline form for distribution at the following working group meetings. This process was repeated a few times for each law. I also helped the legal officers organize a day-long working group session on the LOPP and assisted them with the agenda to ensure that the most important policy issues would be addressed in a systematic fashion. At the time I left the Ministry to return to the United States, the LOJ and LOPP were in the final stages of revision and nearly ready to be passed on to the next stage of governmental review. DLA Piper will continue to be involved in helping to shepherd these two important laws through to passage by the Kosovo Assembly. Training Sessions for Legal Officers Although the young lawyers I worked with in the Ministry were very hardworking and eager to learn, they were hampered by insufficient resources and handicapped by a lack of adequate basic legal education. Consequently, DLA Piper was asked by the Ministry to provide much-needed legal training to the Ministry legal officers. With the administrative support of USAID, I and other members of the DLA Piper Kosovo team developed and provided week-long training sessions to Ministry legal officers on the following topics: 1) legislative drafting; 2) legal ethics; and 3) written and oral advocacy and litigation. Each training session was led by one DLA Piper partner and two associates. Every session included a combination of lecture and hands-on practical training exercises. For example, during the legislative drafting sessions, we had the legal officers draft and review laws we had assigned to them. For the legal ethics training, we provided the legal officers with a hypothetical scenario regarding a legal officer involved in a professional ethical dilemma calling into play ethical rules and the current Civil Servant’s Code of Conduct. We had the legal officers engage in a moot court of sorts, taking on the roles of prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges in a mock disciplinary hearing. For the advocacy training, we created another hypothetical scenario which called for the legal officers to draft a persuasive letter to an outside attorney to attempt to prevent a breach of contract lawsuit being filed against the Government. Aside from the formal training DLA Piper provided, my placement within the Ministry allowed me to provide informal mentoring to the legal officers. I interacted with all of the officers on a regular basis and was able to discuss with them and provide advice on projects and legal issues they had questions about. Additional Projects In addition to my two main tasks, I provided assistance on some peripheral projects as well. I met on a regular basis with the Legal Advisor to the Prime Minister and assisted him with research related to his work on Kosovo’s transition. I also provided USAID contractors with research and assistance as needed, particularly on the Law on Police. Conclusion Devoting four months to providing legal assistance to a developing region through the auspices of a private law firm was a unique and thrilling experience and an opportunity for which I am extremely grateful. DLA Piper’s commitment of significant resources on a pro bono basis to areas of the world in great need of legal assistance is generally unheard of among U.S. law firms. DLA Piper’s international pro bono work benefits not only those needy communities being served, but also the associates and partners who get to embark on challenging and fulfilling legal projects that are truly experiences of a lifetime.