The Commercially Savvy Lawyer: On Integrity

A few weeks ago, I sent a small wish to the universe that I would have the opportunity to write a LinkedIn newsletter. I was delighted to learn that I had gotten access to this wonderful opportunity to share my knowledge, thoughts, and experiences as a lawyer who has studied Arabic and Law in London and worked in Bahrain and Qatar. This newsletter will be predominantly about commercially savvy lawyering.

I have been writing about what constitutes a commercially savvy lawyer for several months now on my own page and there is still quite a lot to say on the topic. Today, I will talk about the importance of being in your integrity as a lawyer (and as a human being) and not being afraid to use your voice, even if you use it to express an unpopular opinion or you perceive yourself as not having the right to speak. Integrity, my younger sister Laura used to say, takes a lifetime to build and can be destroyed irrevocably in an instant. Integrity is one of your most valuable "possessions" and underpins your character and everything you do (or can't be moved to do) in life. Integrity is what stops you from following the crowds blindly without question and binds you to your core values.

Lawyers - like other professionals - are obliged to follow a professional code of conduct that governs lawyers' behavior both in and out of the profession. It's not easy to be guided by integrity and having too high or too low a level of integrity can get you into trouble. In my Al Jazeera days in Doha, my integrity was higher than those around me and I sometimes found myself in trouble. In one situation, I recall that I was tasked with creating a list of "hot" issues that needed to be cleaned up inside Al Jazeera. The project was incredibly sensitive as some of the issues were extremely serious. We were tasked by the highest power in the country and I was excited about the possibility of finally plugging the holes in the sinking ship (at least the back office seemed to be plagued by shenanigans, fraud, malfeasance, and, sadly, corruption.) On one row in relation to certain financial transactions, I suggested we bring in forensic accountants to ensure that monies that had gone missing were retrieved.

When I presented my work to the General Counsel, a slippery Sudanese imposter (he was not a real lawyer, it turns out), he deleted the suggestion that we bring in forensic accountants and said, "Oh no, there's no fraud here." I was shocked. Because this was at the beginning of the eight years in Doha (years during which I earned my "Ph.D. in Street Smarts"), I simply did not know how to play this particularly dangerous game. I had no idea how far, wide, and deep the shenanigans ran until I was walked out the door a few years later for putting my finger on the pulse of corruption and scaring the perpetrators into terminating my services, despite the fact that I was doing the lion's share of the work and working really hard to turn the Al Jazeera Legal Department into a well-oiled machine.

This was one instance where my integrity and my sense of a mission got me into a lot of trouble. I often wonder if I should have ignored the shenanigans - would I have been able to live with myself had I turned a blind eye? Certainly, I would not have endured the threats from my immediate supervisor to assassinate me and the gaslighting and alienation that ultimately preceded my termination. Sadly, the skills I had gained as a lawyer helped me to shine in the company as an efficient problem-solver also got me turned out because my need for everything to "make sense" caused me to ask too many uncomfortable questions.

Indeed, knowing what to do when faced with shady circumstances is one of the most difficult exercises a lawyer, especially a naive lawyer like I was back in the day, can face. It can be difficult to know whom to trust, whether you can trust what you see with your own eyes, and whether it's worth it to expose the shenanigans. Should you ever find yourself in such a precarious situation, think carefully, take loads of notes and copies, and keep your own counsel unless you have an incorruptible confidant. I learned the hard way that exposing corruption is a very dangerous game indeed.

Even though my high level of integrity got me into a lot of hot water, the lessons I learned from my Al Jazeera experience and its aftermath were priceless and informed who I am as a person and as a lawyer today. The shock of being terminated from Al Jazeera without warning and for no reason other than I posed a threat to an illicit element, caused me to blindly take another job with a shady start-up that I later had to sue for five months' salary, an event that led to my "Marco Polo years" in Doha when I could not leave for nearly two years because - at the time in Doha - litigants without a "sponsor" could not leave the country. I ultimately got back on track, having emerged from the two-year-long proverbial sandstorm of extremely unfair events, evaded damage to my person and psyche, and developed a whole other set of skills that I did not get at Dalton, the ritzy Manhattan private school where I went to high school. These scary and unpredictable experiences were a gift in that I got what no prestigious or Ivy League law school or prestigious law firm could give me: Doha street smarts. That's worth a lot more to me than a Harvard Law Degree. This was my own personal "hero's journey." In 2017, at the conclusion of this terrifying chapter in my Arabian adventure, I was certainly not the same Sonya who had arrived in Doha at the start of the Arab Spring in February 2011.

During that time, no matter how hard I tried, I could not get a job. The gang at Al Jazeera had ostensibly painted me with a tarred brush. I didn't get the one job I could have done with my eyes closed - at a satellite company - because the guy didn't want to work with a woman. The process of transferring my sponsorship was extremely difficult in any event. I was lucky, though, I did get a consultancy gig through an old colleague that lasted 10 months. For the rest, I just had to be patient. I was never once tempted to drop out of my integrity. I knew what I had to do to get out of the predicament, I faced it head-on, and I just did it. Grown men older than me told me, "You are very brave" to which I always respond, "I have no choice." I won my lawsuit and my missing salary in the Civil Court of Qatar, but I also learned the invaluable sense that I will always be OK no matter what, the power of daily prayer and faith in God, I learned who my fairweather friends were, that I can face anything (calmly) no matter how daunting, and I lived the lesson that staying in your integrity is extremely hard, but the alternative is simply not worth it and akin to losing your soul. I found my voice and a level of confidence that I only started to get at boarding school in Rome in the last semester of high school and later at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and SOAS in London where I completed my higher education. Needless to say, dealing with these unexpected crises made me a tougher, calmer, more acutely aware, and commercially savvy lawyer.

Finally, I never appreciated the God-given freedoms we have in America more than after that character-building experience.

Nota Bene: Attorney advertising. I am a New York-qualified attorney with a small but mighty law practice. If you have contracts, complex high-value projects, or GCC-related work that I can help you with, I would be more than happy to assist.

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