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Addis Ababa Law School Project
The Addis Ababa Law School project is a collaborative effort by New Perimeter, Northwestern University of Law, and consulting firm Accenture to assist the University of Addis Ababa Faculty of Law in Ethiopia. Although the premier law school in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa Law School currently faces challenging circumstances. It is severely hampered by aging facilities and a lack of financial resources that compromise the school’s ability to provide a solid legal education to its students—the future leaders of Ethiopia.
To carry out this project, New Perimeter has assembled a project team of DLA Piper lawyers from Europe, the United States and the Middle East. Attorneys from 16 DLA Piper offices around the globe are participating in the program. Nine teams of lawyers have traveled to Addis Ababa thus far to teach short courses to Ethiopian graduate law students in areas relating to business law. Course topics have included international business negotiations, international arbitration and international taxation. When in Addis, each teaching team also provides lectures to the Ethiopian Bar Association and reaches out to relevant local organizations and government ministries. The teams work closely with the Law School Dean and faculty and leave behind detailed teaching materials that can be used in the future.
The New Perimeter team also helped the Law School plan and host a conference on law and economic development in Addis Ababa in November 2008. Hosted by the Law School and sponsored by New Perimeter program and LexisNexis, the conference attracted 150 attendees, including legal practitioners, academics, Ethiopian government officials, delegates from non-governmental organizations, law students and representatives of the Ethiopian business community. Conference participants heard from panels of distinguished speakers on topics such as foreign investor protection, dispute resolution in the promotion of economic development and WTO accession.
In addition, the project partners have worked with the law school to expand both its hard volume and data-base library collection and to provide expanded opportunities for Addis Ababa law faculty to obtain further training in the US and elsewhere.
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Entrance to Addis Ababa University
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Dean Fikremarkos Merso and Sheldon Krantz in front of the law school
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A typical law school classroom
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The law school library
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Addis Ababa
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Addis Ababa street scene
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Partner Claudia Salomon teaching a course on international arbitration to LLM students
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Participants in the international arbitration course
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Partners Fredrik Lindblom and Jay Finkelstein and associates Olufemi Nicol, Anett Olsen and Ilya Prigogine teach a course on international negotiations
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Overseeing a simulated negotiation
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The end of a successful negotiation
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Associates Anett Olsen and Olufemi Nicol
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Addis Ababa Law School students
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