Building capacity of East African government lawyers
Justice Seymour Simon award winnerFor the past ten years, New Perimeter has teamed with the East African Development Bank (EADB) to deliver a series of regional workshops for government lawyers from Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda. To date, New Perimeter has delivered 12 separate trainings for more than 300 East African public sector lawyers with an overriding objective of building regional capacity to negotiate natural resources agreements that will benefit the host countries and local populations. The interactive trainings focus on negotiating international transactions and drafting related agreements.
Since the start of the project, the firm has sent more than 50 DLA Piper lawyers from more than a dozen countries to deliver the trainings and donated more than 5,000 pro bono hours to this endeavor. Recently, teams from DLA Piper and a local group firm, IKM, were joined by in-house counsel from an international pharmaceutical company client. Our training program includes a combination of interactive lectures, panel discussions, and simulated negotiations focused on handling complex and interrelated agreements typically encountered in transactions between African countries and multinational corporations.
This training has had a profound impact on hundreds of East African lawyers who range in experience from 2 to 20-plus years of practice. We are proud of our commitment to building the capacity of public sector lawyers to negotiate better agreements for their governments and people.
“This training has become a critical part of capacity-building efforts in the East Africa region and is an important part of efforts to build skills to negotiate fair deals that will benefit the host countries,” said Vivenne Yeda, Director General of EADB.
“It was wonderful being back in East Africa to deliver this impactful training in person. We were able to address a broad set of negotiation skills through presentations and experiential learning that will enable the participants to pursue better-negotiated agreements on behalf of their countries,”
– Jay Finkelstein, Of Counsel, Reston