Sands, an English lawyer who has done some work on behalf of UK detainees at Guantánamo Bay, makes his case in his just-published book Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. The memo in question, which authorised a range of aggressive interrogation techniques, was signed by the former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on 2 December, 2002. It was retracted two months later.

William Haynes, then-general counsel of the Defense department, authored the memo. According to Sands, four other Government lawyers played a key role in its development: Douglas Feith, then an undersecretary of Defense; Jay Bybee and John Yoo, former Justice officials who co-authored a controversial August 2002 opinion on interrogation procedures; and David Addington, then-counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Sands takes violations of international law seriously - the field is his specialty both as a lawyer and as an academic. A founding member of Matrix Chambers, one of London's best-known barristers chambers, he also taught at New York University School of Law for 12 years. He visited the US last week to talk about Torture Team to several audiences - the most prominent being the House Judiciary Committee, which has been investigating the Government's interrogation policy.

Sands also found time to talk to AmericanLawyer.com. The following is an edited version of their conversation.

American Lawyer: This book's focus is very narrow - it's literally just about a single memo.

Philipe Sands: A single, one-page memo that authorises 15 techniques of interrogation and leaves open the possibility of using three others, including waterboarding. I traced back every single person who'd been involved in the decision-making process. And I interviewed, face to face, as many of them as I could, to get the story of where that memo had emanated from.

AL: Is there any one individual in particular you think bears the most responsibility?

PS: The person who comes out as the leader is David Addington. I've got a lot of people talking about his role and his fingerprints are all over this. But Haynes was most directly involved. It was he who crafted the memorandum that was put in front of Rumsfeld.

AL: You write that these interrogation procedures were used primarily on Mohammed al-Qahtani and a second detainee at Guantánamo.

(Note: The Government claims that al-Qahtani is the '20th hijacker' and one of the masterminds of the 9-11 attacks. Al-Qahtani, who has been held at Guantánamo for more than six years, was charged with murder and war crimes in February. Those charges were dismissed late last week: a report appears in The Am Law Daily.)

PS: I don't think they were used on anyone else - although they are the same techniques that have been used by the CIA in extraordinary rendition proceedings and they have also been used at Kandahar and Bagram in Afghanistan. But I haven't focused on that. I don't believe there has been systematic torture at Guantánamo. I think Guantánamo is not a good place; I think Guantánamo is lawless in many respects; but I don't think there has been systematic torture.

AL: Let's pull back for a moment, for people who may not be keeping up with the torture debate. Why did the administration's lawyers have to weigh in on the interrogation policy in the first place?

PS: Because US law and international law define torture reasonably clearly and establish an unambiguous prohibition against torture from which there is no exception, under any circumstance. Faced with this, the Bush administration recognised that if it was to act lawfully, it had to find a way to get around those definitions and those constraints. The lawyers were invoked to provide that necessary service.

AL: Do lawyers have the capability to define torture?

PS: Not on their own. I don't think a lawyer can determine whether someone has been tortured without technical assistance. I found a clinical psychiatrist who's probably one of the leading experts in the UK on torture - Abigail Seltzer, who's treated torture victims from Iran and Egypt. I gave her the interrogation log for al-Qahtani and I asked her, "Does this match torture?"

(Note: The log describes the response of al-Qahtani to the interrogation procedures - including extreme sleep deprivation, aggravating noise and humiliation techniques- that were used on him during a 51-day period in late 2002 and early 2003.)

She was very careful in what she said. In her view, there isn't a medical definition of torture. Ultimately, it's a legal definition. She was looking for "indicators of distress" to determine whether al-Qahtani had suffered severe mental pain and suffering. And she concluded that he had. From a medical perspective, there were indicators of distress that would allow the conclusion to be made by another person - a lawyer or a judge - that he had been tortured.

AL: A lot of sincere people disagree about what constitutes torture. Some will allow procedures that others find abhorrent. Is there an objective way to determine what crosses the line and what doesn't?

PS: There's no more an objective way of making that determination than other determinations that judges and lawyers have to make every day: is a defendant insane? Is he mentally fit to stand trial? We have to make judgement-calls every day on these kinds of issues and this issue is no different.

AL: So you think there's a good case to be made that the lawyers who contributed to the Haynes memo violated international laws against torture?

PS: There's definitely a good case to be made and if the US doesn't sort this out through some appropriate factual inquiry or other means, that will signficantly increase the likelihood of investigation and possible prosecution abroad. I fall short of issuing a call for any sort of prosecution. I rely on a conversation I had with a European judge and prosecutor who were pretty astonished when they saw all of my material. And they formed a pretty clear view: "We don't care if it's just the torture of one person, if that's what it was. One person is sufficient to impose upon us a responsibility to investigate."

Part two of this interview will appear later this week on Legal Village and AmerianLawyer.com.

We figured the firm would be happy to talk about the new hire and share some details on Johnston's charge going forward. When we reached presiding partner Evan Chesler by phone, he dismissed our interest in the comings and goings of what he calls “administrative people”. Johnston is "a very nice guy", says Chesler, though he didn't recall his new strategist's title.

"This is just a support job to help us out in our work," says Chesler, who explained that a group of nine Cravath partners, which he chairs, will continue to formulate firm strategy. "The strategy is entirely set by the partners of the firm," he insists.

Johnston, reached at his new office, declined to comment. His immediate boss at Cravath, executive director Steven Speiss, did not respond to phone calls.

So what does Cravath need with a director of strategic planning, anyway? After all, the famed 'Cravath system' has kept profits so high and its partner gene-pool so pure that the rare lateral hire sets legal heads clucking nationwide. The firm’s partnership inspires fear in opposing counsel and associates alike and its profits per partner have been among the highest in the nation since The American Lawyer began its rankings nearly 25 years ago.

"[Johnston will be] gathering information, doing the staff work, the kind of stuff that any committee would have a person doing the staff work for," says Chesler. "We have a very busy administrative staff [and] people were simply overburdened by trying to do that in their spare time."

Despite the addition, Chesler says Cravath's strategy is the same as it has always been: to remain the country's best law firm.

"That was the strategy, by the way, when I got here 33 years ago," Chesler adds. "So I don’t want to see a headline that says that we just came up with that idea."

Bill Johnston, we imagine, has already been briefed.

By David Bario, The Am Law Daily

Some of you may think I am blunt and cut-throat and not 'nice'. Yet the workplace is not a 'nice' place - harden up, softies! Who gives a toss whether you are nice or not? As long as you perform, that's all that matters. Performance - and not how nice you are - is rewarded by respect. If anything, being nice is a sign of weakness. With that out of the way, let's turn to the subject matter of this blog entry: misguided trainees.

There was a thread posted by a prospective trainee solicitor that wanted to choose seats that offered good client contact and work life balance. I'm sorry but this is just the wrong attitude. This is all graduate recruitment-speak and we all know that anyone working in graduate recruitment/HR are either cop-outs or couldn't hack it in law (or elsewhere) so whatever they have to say shouldn't be relied on. Stop being delusional; the real world doesn't work this way.

Incidentally, it just makes me cringe to see GR/HR devise all these nonsensical questions/exercises to justify their pay-cheque, using ridiculous questions on applications to assess potential candidates, and it makes me depressed when I see trainees actually buying into that. Check out the video profiles on the graduate recruitment website of Wragge & Co for a few examples.

In my opinion, using your connections and/or the Slaughters way is still the best. The last time I checked, Slaughters just tell people to send in their CV - that to me speaks more about a candidate than their ability to recall 'the last time they made a difference to a team project'. Laughable junk, really.

Anyway, back to the topic. At the end of the day, what fee earners are looking for in trainees is a willingness to do the work they don't want to do. Sure, it's crap work, but you weren't hired to advise a senior partner how to do his/her work. Trainees need to just go with the flow and stop being so concerned with client contact or work-life balance. To answer the former, it will come in due time, and as for the latter, now is the time to work your pants off, not to leave work on time to catch Deal Or No Deal.

Any law firm offering client contact and a work-life balance to trainees should raise alarm bells for an ambitious lawyer. I spent my entire traineeship proof-reading and doing V-notes, which was a sign I was at a proper law firm. In the end I quit my law firm because I believed I was bigger than the law firm and all the individuals in it, but that's a blog for next time. Nowadays, at the bank the only occasions I speak to trainees over the phone is when they need to confirm the address to send documents to (or if I have met them over client drinks and she was attractive, to check her availability for that evening).

I have never dealt with a lawyer below three years' PQE on legal/commercial points (then again, I can only speak for my current employer as a global investment bank and the law firms that we use, which are magic circle/top 10 firms, but the principle is universal).

So my message to junior lawyers: know your place in the law firm and the sooner you realise you are no more important to the law firm than the messenger, the quicker you'll become a fine lawyer.

There were trumpeters, a loving cup and we were clapped in (and clapped out!) to music. David Lewis, the Lord Mayor, is also the Company’s junior warden. The Egyptian Hall looked magical as the daylight faded and the chandeliers glowed. Our principal guest, Sir David Clementi, said: "If this is the Junior Warden’s house I would like to see the house of the Senior Warden."

I spoke about 50 years of peace and the immense expansion it had brought to the City profession; the Lord Mayor wondered why we made things so difficult for ourselves with non-dom taxation and the restrictions on foreign lawyers; and Sir David cautioned us against rapid structural change. The trumpeters trumpeted and the guests enjoyed themselves. The dress code was white tie and decorations and the wife of the director-general of the CBI wore her bronze life-saving star.

My sister in law, who lives in New York, asked me subsequently what I wore. "Fur robes and a chain," says I. "Very ghetto," says she.

It was a success. We had to throw the remaining guests out when the Mansion House closed for the night. One of the former senior partners said to me afterwards that there are not many slap-up occasions to celebrate our profession. I am very glad I had the honour of presiding over one of them.

Waiting around for something to happen (or not happen) in Iraq can be incredibly frustrating, but I’ve also found it's a great opportunity to strike up chance conversations with those stuck in the same boat. Last night, for example, while waiting for the bus to take me to the airport, I talked with a Navy SEAL who was retiring after 22 years in the service. He had spent the past nine months training Iraqi army forces.

I’ve heard no shortage of complaining about everything since I’ve been here but I’ve also noticed that most people, after venting, end on a positive note. The most popular analogy floating around today is that American freedom wasn’t won easily, either — see wars Revolutionary and Civil — and that we shouldn’t expect miracles overnight. Or even after five years. The Navy officer was different.

“This was a war about oil,” he bluntly stated. “And now it’s all about money.” He pointed to the KBR private security people who run the shuttle to the airport and so much else in Iraq.

I had read about the outsourcing of functions once handled by the Army (from cooking to convoy security) but I never appreciated to what extent the military is reliant on independent contractors until I got here. KBR, in particular, seems like a fifth branch of the armed services.

KBR workers are everywhere, and they make far more (in some cases) than their military counterparts. A convoy driver, I’m told, is paid between $6,000 and $8,000 a month. The officer told me the SEALs had to dramatically boost their re-enlistment bonus to staunch defections to the private side.

At the other end of the spectrum, a Peruvian guard, also employed by KBR, told me he makes about $1,200 a month. The guard told me he is leaving soon, after two years in Baghdad.

“Baghdad, too much muerte,” he told me, pantomiming a rocket flying into the Green Zone. Iraqi army soldiers are also paid far less than senior KBR and US military personnel. My conclusion: there is an inverse relationship here between a guard/soldier’s exposure to danger and his salary.

On my last afternoon in Baghdad, another reporter and I tried to get into the monument to the fallen soldier. Two lonely Iraqi army soldiers at the gate apologised and said it was closed. Then they asked for water. I told the Navy SEAL about this and he said Iraqi soldiers are issued one bottle a day, never mind that it was easily 95 degrees. (Our escort, a National Guard soldier from the media unit, bought the two Iraqis some water.)

Tonight is my last one in military custody. Tomorrow I’m picking up my passport and heading to Kuwait City for a night in a hotel before flying back to New York on Thursday. Some final thoughts before I resign my post as editor in chief and senior correspondent of The American Lawyer’s Baghdad bureau.

• I had hoped to do more blogging about rule of law issues while I was here. This is my first experience blogging while reporting a story at the same time — my first time blogging, in fact — and I didn’t appreciate that the two aims of reporting and blogging can be at odds. I chose to withhold most of what I learned about rule of law here for the simple reason that I didn’t want to undermine my own story. I tried to make up for the lack of reporting substance with regular personal hygiene updates. Speaking of which...
• I’m not saying I need to wash my clothes, but my socks just created their own rudimentary digestive system.
• If you were supposed to manage my fantasy baseball team while I was away and for some bizarre reason failed to start Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte on what would be his best day of the season, and this contributed to my crushing defeat, you are dead to me.
• Buying one of those U-shaped neck pillows at JFK before I left was one of the best decisions I made on the entire trip. Another good buy: a Skype plug-in headset at the PX in Baghdad, which allowed me to make cheap calls over the internet. And, of course, one needs a good book. I finished Den of Thieves by James Stewart on the plane today. I know I’m nearly 20 years late to this book but I was surprised at how relevant the subject matter is to today’s market. The story, essentially, is that of the invention of the mortgage-backed security market in the US by a group of larger-than-life bond traders at Salomon Brothers. If you want to know more about collateralised loan obligations (and who doesn’t?), add this to your reading list.
• Finally, I want to thank friends, family and colleagues who wrote to offer their support. Your emails were great.

Thanks for reading.

James Geoghegan, the public affairs officer at the complex, told me how to distinguish a car-bomb from a mortar. A mortar, he says, sounds like a crash, like someone dropped a trailer from the sky. A car bomb explosion has a deeper timbre, a throbbing boom that you feel in your chest. These are the kinds of impromptu conversations one has here.

I went to Rusafa in the back of an armoured vehicle. I had to tell the gunner my blood type before we set out — it wasn’t your typical taxi ride. (Rusafa, by the way, is the part of Baghdad on the eastern side of the Euphrates. Karkh is the western half. It’s confusing because both are also the names of specific neighborhoods. The Green Zone is on the Karkh side of the river and also in the Karkh neighbourhood.) The criminal court in Rusafa processes Iraqi-held prisoners, while the criminal court I visited yesterday processes coalition-held prisoners.

Rusafa is also the site of a new lawyers defense clinic, paid for by the US Government, which should be up and running in a few weeks. While there, I talked to JAG officers and the civilian administrators about some of their projects. They assist Iraqi authorities in investigating major crimes. (For example, someone in Basra has killed about 100 women for dressing immodestly.) The investigative teams partner with the Iraqis, but stay out of the courtrooms.

One rule of law topic that I’ve been meaning to bring up is the Iraqi amnesty law, which was passed in February. This is a big deal here. Any Iraqi-held prisoner - and there are officially about 30,000 - qualifies for amnesty unless he is accused of one of a handful of what Americans would call capital crimes, such as murder and rape. Also, if a detainee has been held for six months without seeing an investigative judge, or 12 months without seeing a trial judge, he qualifies. (Many Iraqi detainees have been held for years without seeing a judge.)

The amnesty law seems cut-and-dried, but implementation is another matter. On my return trip from Rusafa, I sat in the back of an armoured vehicle with a US Department of Justice official who is charged with helping the Iraqis implement the law. A few hundred prisoners have been released under the law, he said, but there are challenges. To apply, a prisoner, family member or lawyer needs to fill out the proper paperwork. An early problem - police were either selling the forms or simply refusing to distribute them.

There are also sectarian concerns — a Shiite prisoner might receive preferential treatment over a Sunni or vice versa. An Iraqi review committee is currently looking at thousands of applications and case files to determine who qualifies. Meanwhile, the trial courts have ground to practically a stop.

The structure was built to commemorate the Arab Summit of 1980 and was later used to hold all the booty Saddam Hussein received as gifts from other leaders. During the US invasion, the clock and the building were badly damaged and the building was looted. It was renovated several years ago and now handles coalition-held detainees and political corruption cases. Though technically in the Red Zone, one entrance to the courthouse is a short walk from a metal door in the T-wall that lines an expressway heading out of Baghdad. I visited it this morning with the rule of law team.

This was my first encounter with Iraqi detainees. I was told that Iraqi prisoners are docile, like to be together and don’t like furniture in their cells. (From first appearances, this seems to be correct — though I didn’t ask the dozen or so quiet men in red jumpsuits sitting on the floors of two holding cells.)

The prisoners who come through this complex are typically held at one of the three large American-run detention facilities in Iraq. They come in a few at a time for hearings before an investigative judge and, if necessary, a trial before a three-judge tribunal. I briefly observed a trial but was told by a guard outside that the Iraqis we were with wouldn’t be allowed to translate the proceedings for me, so we moved on to a much more interesting section of the courthouse - more interesting to someone looking for opinions on legal affairs in Iraq, at least.

The lawyers’ room is easily the most happening place in the courthouse. It is exactly as it sounds: a room filled with lawyers. Smoking, chatting, laughing. In one corner, a woman in a black chador serves lunch and sodas. Upon entering, two little girls latched on to Sergeant Angel Storm, my military escort. (Storm is a spritely 22-year-old. Good with kids and idiot civilian journalists. Later, out in the open in the Green Zone, the incoming fire clarion sounded and she quickly guided me to the nearest shelter.)

I’ll save the details of the conversations I had with the lawyers for the story I’m writing — blogging, after all, is only my night job — but overall it was an enlightening trip.

Tomorrow I’m headed to another courthouse in Rusafa, a neighborhood across the river. I should have time when I return for one last blog entry from the Green Zone.

I’ve spent the last three days interviewing American officials, including, most recently, Phil Lynch, the rule of law coordinator at the US embassy. Lynch is an assistant US attorney in Seattle and in a unique position — he’s a US Department of Justice guy running a State Department programme. His purview, mostly, is the Iraqi High Tribunal and the major criminal courts in Baghdad. He also reports directly to the US ambassador to Iraq on rule of law issues and coordinates with the military. Previously, he advised the Iraqi High Tribunal during the Saddam Hussein trial.

Lynch told me that one of the challenges he faces is defending the provincial reconstruction teams to the congressional bean-counters. I’m still working on getting budget figures but the cost of supporting independent teams in far-flung corners of the country is extremely expensive. Security alone costs thousands of dollars per mission. And benchmarking progress is almost impossible, he says.

For example, the team in Basra hasn’t left the Army base in six months. Does it make sense to continue to pay to support the team? Maybe, Lynch says, a place like Basra is where the US needs a rule of law team most of all. Whatever the answer, Lynch says: “I don’t think you can impact, on a provincial level, rule of law activities from here.”

An interesting political note: Lynch told me that he has briefed all three remaining US presidential candidates in the past but none during the current campaign cycle. He says he hopes to brief a Barack Obama policy adviser — I’ll try to get his name — who is serving in Anbar Province as a Navy Reserve officer.

When to come: There’s never a good time to come to the Green Zone. There’s a war going on and someone will try to kill you.

How to get there: There’s no good way to get there. If you are a civilian, Royal Jordanian and Iraq Airways offer flights, starting at about $650 from Jordan. From Baghdad airport, you will probably want to hire a personal security detail, which starts at about $6,000 a day. I’m not sure how much just a round-trip ride to the Green Zone costs. You can also hire a local cab.

If you are an embedded journalist, you will fly to Kuwait, a small country in the Middle East most notable for the fact that it doesn’t allow anyone to buy beer. (If, like me, you grew up in Alabama, a state with a surprising number of dry counties, your first instinct will be to drive north to Tennessee. Don’t try this in Kuwait.) An Army team will meet you at the airport in Kuwait and drive you to the best-guarded parking lot in the world. You will spend 24 hours or more in the parking lot. You can’t buy beer here, either, though you can buy a watch or a Burger King Whopper.

You will fly “space available” from Kuwait to Baghdad International Airport. You can, and will, get bumped for someone with higher priority. (According to a journalist I met, reporters outrank Indian cooks and translators, but that’s it.) At the airport, you can try to catch a helicopter to the Green Zone. There’s a good chance you won’t, though, which means waiting until midnight or later for the “rhino” bus convoy. You will think the driver is trying to kill you because he will drive very, very fast. But he is actually trying to keep someone else from killing you.

What to see: There’s not much. Anything interesting, like the pub on the grounds of the British embassy, is hidden behind walls and barbed wire. If you try to get in without permission, someone will try to kill you. Ditto the Republican Palace, the home of the US embassy. But you’ve got a weekend, so here are a few options.

The Monument to the Unknown Soldier — the monument, which resembles the space ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind but with a spire, was inspired by the glorification of the martyr from the Iran-Iraq war. I was told that the guards may or may not let you inside.

The Swords of al-Qadisiyyah — built to commemorate the Arab triumph over the Persians in 636AD. Until recently, a giant cone of Iranian army helmets spilled out on to the street and then across the street, forming the world’s most macabre speed bump. But then the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government decided that the swords might be offensive and ordered them destroyed. Locals carried off most of the helmets and one section of the statue closest to the Green Zone was dismantled before the US Government intervened, suggesting the statue has some historical value.

CIPC — the press centre. Built under the parking garage next to the convention center. After the invasion, the Brits set up shop there and were derided for choosing such a gloomy place to live. Once the mortar and rocket attacks began, the British looked a bit smarter. You can’t buy or bring beer here, though there is an endless supply of Gatorade.

The al-Rashid — the only hotel in the Green Zone. It claims to be a five-star hotel. I claim to be the sole heir to the throne of Belgium. A good place to meet actual Iraqis, however, since it is next to an entrance to the Green Zone. No beer.

The PX — Don’t try to bring a bag or backpack in here or someone will try to kill you. A sampling of the wares from a recent visit: charcoal grills, Cheez-Its and cigarettes. No shampoo. You can’t buy beer here.

How to get around: You will need a badge to get almost anywhere. Different badges get you in to different places. You will probably not have the badge necessary to get where you want to go.

Dining: If you have a press badge, there’s free grub in the Army dining facility. This is a slightly better option than starving. Someone told me there are restaurants. I think that was a lie.

Entertainment: very limited. For best results, be sure to pack season two of HBO’s The Wire. I borrowed my copy from Quinn Emanuel associate Pat Curran. (Hey, Pat, I borrowed your DVDs.) If you are an American Lawyer reporter, don’t expect your company-issued laptop to play DVDs.

There is, however, a big-screen TV in the press center. Unfortunately, someone else might be watching it. Someone like an Iraqi journalist, say, who doesn’t speak English but is watching a movie called Dedication with the sound turned off. If this happens, you might try blogging instead.

Happy Friday.

This eastward shift in the world economy to China and neighbouring India is changing the focus of the Law Society. Our international department has grown and so too has its presence and leverage in the key Asian markets.

At home, in February we celebrated the opening of Indian firm Fox Mandall Little’s first office in London at Chancery Lane and next month Des Hudson, our chief executive, will address visiting members of the All Chinese Lawyers Association in Manchester.

The rapid growth of the burgeoning Asian behemoths is in stark contrast to the sluggish growth of the US and, to a lesser extent, here in the UK. Yet while firms solely dependent on business across the Pond are understandably jittery, those with links to emerging markets are more confident and more resilient.

The international pages of Legal Week underline that globalisation is changing the shape of our profession. Only two years ago, fewer than 2,000 of our solicitors worked overseas. Today, the figure stands at over 4,000, spread across over 75 countries worldwide.

International opportunities are not restricted to large firms with most prestigious Lower Manhattan zip-codes. In fact, with more and more high street firms capitalising on the steady stream of cross-border litigation work, many are realising that it doesn’t even require a change of postcode.

Our new International Division is going from strength to strength and is helping firms network and win new business. Last year’s London launch was such a success that we followed it up last month with a launch in Dubai and we will be running events in Manchester and Leeds in June.

Another dimension of our international strategy that I’m particularly excited about is our trade missions, supported by the Foreign Office and UKTI, the Government’s trade and investment arm. Later this year we are taking firms to China, to Ukraine and a match-making event in Russia and to the West Coast of the US.

Last month I headed our first-ever trade mission to Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa. By all accounts it was a great success and I’m sure new contacts will lead to new contracts.

The mission was timed to coincide with the Nigerian Bar Association’s (NBA's) Section on Business Law conference ‘Law and Development in a Globalised Economy’. Nigeria may be an investment destination of choice for many, but its legal market is still far from open and many of the NBA’s members are nervous, feeling that a strong dose of protectionism is essential for the health of their profession.

I was given the opportunity to speak at the conference and tackled the subject of globalisation head-on. I said that while I understood the strides they have made and that their profession has grown in both in size and sophistication, I still believe they can benefit from the experience and expertise of professionals from overseas – just as we (and London in particular) have done from the hundreds of foreign firms operating here.

I said that globalisation isn’t a zero-sum game. International firms benefit. Local firms and local lawyers benefit. And the local economy benefits. All are common beneficiaries of globalisation.

Our message went down well – and not only on the conference floor. I shared the platform with the Nigerian Attorney General, together with the frontrunner in the Ghanian Presidency elections, Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, both of whom supported what we are doing. Later in the week we secured a meeting with the Attorney General of Lagos State, Nigeria’s commercial hub. He too recognised that Nigeria had everything to gain from becoming more open in its dealing with the rest of the world.

With so many potential markets, there is much work to be done. Whether it be Africa, Asia or South America, we will keep promoting our message to ensure we maximise opportunities for our lawyers abroad.

Essentially, anyone who graduates from law school and pays his or her dues can hang a shingle and practise law. There’s no Bar exam and according to an Iraqi lawyer I spoke with today, virtually no practical training. The lawyer told me that Iraqi law students, for example, don’t read cases.

There are also no law firms or law partnerships as in the US. And there are no corporate lawyers - or specialist lawyers, really, of any kind. One lawyer might take on more property cases than another, say, but that is most likely because that lawyer is friendly with someone who works in a deeds office or with a judge who adjudicates these kinds of disputes. Needless to say, Iraqi lawyers are underprepared to handle basic contract disputes, much less serve as local counsel for an international company that wants to do business here.

Last year I interviewed Rick Johnston, a Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz lawyer in Washington DC. Johnston had lived in Iraq for about a year near the beginning of the US occupation. He told me that when it comes to civil disputes, there are no guarantees. Companies that want to do business here need local contacts with strong connections. A paper document, if not backed by the right parties, is meaningless, Johnston said. Contracts are only as good as the parties who agree to back them.

The Iraqi lawyer I spoke to today said much the same. Civil courts are open and handling cases. But cases drag on for years. And even when decided, there is no guarantee that the decision will be enforced. The police, he said, have higher priorities.

Criminal courts function somewhat better, to the extent that there are trials and judgments that are usually carried out — but they are hardly just. The Iraqi authorities regularly torture suspects until they confess and their justification is that the system for gathering evidence and presenting cases is in such a shambles that they wouldn’t win any cases otherwise.

Defense lawyers, meanwhile, are also undertrained. In Iraq there is no tradition of a lawyer serving as an advocate for their client. They don’t know how to cross-examine witnesses, how to challenge evidence at a trial and neither they nor the judge is accustomed to them playing an active role. Furthermore, they often meet their clients minutes before a trial is to begin.

There are at least 200 US Government lawyers in Iraq, according to a rough estimate I heard today. Many are trying to help. And there is certainly hope, at least based on my impressions of the Iraqi lawyers I’ve met. They are aware of the gaps in their education and training and at least some seem eager for whatever help they can get from the West.

Hopefully by the end of my stay here, I’ll have a better idea of whether the assistance is working.

The attorneys will work for one of the eight Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq, as liaisons to local judges, lawyers, and other community leaders.

Job tip: Wilson Myers, head of the Baghdad rule of law team, says interpersonal skills are more important than work experience. So if you are tired of your desk job (and, ideally, your friends and family) visit www.usajobs.com and search under “rule of law”.

So this morning I washed my hair with hand soap. My hair subsequently dried into weird shapes. It’s got a cubist vibe about it. Also, my clothes look like they were rolled into a ball and stuffed into a hot backpack for a week - which, of course, they were. And today, for the first time in my professional career, I conducted an office interview dressed in running shoes. I’m really letting myself go.

I’m staying at the Combined Press Information Center. My host is a Massachusetts National Guard unit. There’s a giant Red Sox 2007 World Series banner next to one of the entrances. So far, they’ve gone easy on me for being from New York, but I’m keeping my Yankees hat in my backpack. I don’t want to push my luck.

'Home' here, by the way, is a large room with a few computers, two couches, three bunk beds and a refrigerator stocked with all the Gatorade, soda and water the soldiers and reporters can drink. It is part of a large structure compartmentalised into a series of rooms and further divided by row after row of little trailers. Some contain offices, others bathroom facilities. There’s a radio station and a film-editing room here, as well as a place to hold press conferences. It was built under a parking garage, so there are several welcome feet of concrete above our heads.

Yesterday a rocket landed close enough to make the building shake and pieces of shrapnel landed in the parking lot outside. I woke up from a nap when it hit but promptly fell back to sleep. I’m acclimatising, it seems. Once a round hits, there’s nothing much to do about it anyway.

The good news (knock on wood) is that incoming fire from Sadr City has diminished precipitously in the last few days. My newest roommate is a New York war artist named Steve Mumford. His most recent embed was last year, with the 28th Combat Support Hospital. He works with ink on a big sketch pad, documenting what he sees.

I spent the morning and afternoon at the headquarters of the Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), which is located in an office building near the US embassy. By way of orientation, the press centre is on the northern edge of the Green Zone, near the only hotel therein, the al-Rashid. (I went to the al-Rashid today, too, but I’ll save that for another post.)

Security in that part of the zone is even tighter than it is on my side and getting there means running a gauntlet of checkpoints. I’ve been hand-searched half a dozen times today. (An interesting side-note: like many functions here, security is run by private contractors. And every private guard I’ve seen in Baghdad is Peruvian.)

First, some background on the Baghdad PRT rule of law team. It advises 15 local, family and juvenile courts in Baghdad. About half of these are criminal courts and the other half civil. The team leader is Wilson Myers, a defense attorney from Bay Minette, Alabama.

For a government lawyer in Iraq, Myers is an anomaly. The overwhelming majority of the lawyers here are prosecutors of some kind and most of the other rule of law coordinators are assistant US attorneys. (There are eight permanent PRTs in Iraq and about a dozen other 'e-PRTs', smaller groups that are embedded with the military.)

Organisationally, the team operates under the auspices of the State Department, which provides "substantive guidance" on its activities, Myers told me. In practice, the team has wide latitude on which projects it chooses to pursue.

Aside from his job overseeing the most important rule of law team in Iraq, I became interested in Myers for his work with local legal professionals and for a focus on civil law and courts, which had been mostly ignored until recently. On a typical day, Myers and his team might visit a few courthouses and a police station, meet with the head of the Iraq Bar Association or visit the Baghdad School of Law.

But embassy security has locked them down until at least early next week. My timing, as it turns out, is terrible. So instead of visiting real Iraq tomorrow, I’m meeting with senior rule of law officials at the US embassy instead. My plan B, which was to visit the PRT in Tikrit, also fell through. Plan C is still in rough draft form.

Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr planned to mark the day with a “million-man” protest march in Baghdad. But after government forces began detaining young Shiite men on the way to the capital, Sadr abruptly called it off. Just a few minutes ago, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Malaki declared tomorrow a national holiday.

This marks the latest chapter in the confrontation between the Government and Sadr. It began with what appears to have been a poorly planned and executed Government assault on Basra, in southern Iraq. After that failed, Malaki ordered Sadr’s Madhi Army militia to disarm and disband and surround the Baghdad Shiite enclave of Sadr City (the source, I’m told, of the mortar and rocket fire last night). Sadr then pushed the question of whether to disband to senior clerics. If they say he should stand down, he will, he says.

Clearly there is a lot of posturing going on but this is a critical issue. If the two Shiite factions can resolve their differences, it would go a long way toward bringing Iraq back to the state of (relative) calm it enjoyed a few months ago. If not, expect the carnage of recent weeks to continue. This, at least, is the 10-cent analysis from the soldiers and journalists I’ve talked to over the past few days.

On a more personal note, what happens in the near-term affects my reporting. If things stay relatively quiet, I may still be able to travel outside the International Zone with the Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team. If not, I may try to catch a flight up to Tikrit, where things are calmer and a visit to local courts more likely. Tomorrow, by the way, I’m going to do some honest-to-God reporting. I’m spending the day at the US embassy.

Before I log off for the day, a quick shout-out to my roommates, a pair of journalists from CorpWatch. These guys are my heroes. This is their fourth trip to Iraq and for the past two days they’ve been out in the city on a trip arranged by a local 'fixer'.

Here I am, sweating the possibility of a mortar shell somehow penetrating the parking garage built on top of our quarters and they’re dining out at a pizza joint in Baghdad. Even better, they brought me back some. After four days of Army grub, it was heaven.