Amna Al-Qoch

Amna Al-Qoch on coaching law students for the William C. Vis competition, and becoming an international pianist and lawyer

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Amna Al-Qoch’s main goals are two, to become an international lawyer and a pianist. She is currently on the journey of achieving her first goal but has yet to start her piano lessons. She said “I want to be a pianist lawyer, like imagine winning a big case and then going to play the piano in celebration…” definitely the ultimate dream. 

Amna made sure to start this interview with a few words of her own to set the tone: “If it is hard, it is not impossible. It is just hard. And if it is hard it is still achievable” this is the main thing she learned from her journey of working since she was 19 years old. While also making sure to point out that while working towards achieving your goal is great, it also should not affect your mental health. 

When Amna was still a kid she always dreamed of going to harvard. I think we all have had that ivy league phase in our lives until we grew up, matured and understood where we are, what our challenges are, and how we can seek that education on our own. In Amna's Ivy league phase she used to carry her mother’s big bag around as if she was going to harvard. As for me, it was Yale. Now we understand that building ourselves from the ground up to the clouds would require more than just the daydreams of fancy schools and aesthetically pleasing coffee shops around the corner. 

How did your journey start?

‘I have been working since I was 19 years old, my first job was opening a library for someone back when libraries were merely in Al-Mutanabbi street. Soon Iraqi Bookish became very successful and it skyrocketed. I mean who doesn’t want to be a part time librarian?

I then went to study economics abroad in Cape Town, South Africa for one year. I definitely fell in love with economics, how it affects the world and how it leads the country. but i went in and chose law because besides the reasons why it became my dream. It was my dream. 

At the same time, I knew that law is not a career you go to when you are a girl and you want to bloom, especially in Iraq. So I knew I had to do the extra work to be extraordinary.’

Achieving the extraordinary was not merely for Amna’s ego but because it became a passion of hers due to the injustice she had seen when she was a child. At the same time, who didn’t go through something as a kid in Iraq? We all did.  Therefore making it her journey to be someone who is adding value to society not merely existing in it… 

Amna started a journey of self-restriction, which means she knew that if she wanted to do the hard work she would not set a To-Do list in the heat of the moment to forget about it a week later when the fire is out. She put in the work for those 4 years she spent in law school, sacrificing a lot of her free time and dates with friends in order to reach her goals. while also navigating through maintaining her mental health. 

In her first year of college, she simultaneously started a part-time job in a consultancy office. her schedule became this: going to university, afterward she goes to her part-time job, then coming home around 10 pm sometimes till midnight. 

The reason Amna started working immediately is that she allocated the gap between university life and practical life to be separated in Iraq when it comes to law. She worked for 2 years then the covid-19 pandemic hit the world, so she spent more time on improving herself and scaling up her skills while trying to keep in mind that her main goal is not just to be a better lawyer, but to be an international one.

‘One day I stumbled upon this international competition called (the William C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot). It is a competition for  Law students from around the globe to compete in solving  a case focusing on the ICA law (international commercial arbitration) which is an alternative method of resolving disputes between private parties, to avoid going to national courts. The benefits of this law are efficient, flexible,  simple, private, less expensive, and impartial (choosing the judge). This law is applied in Iraq however, it lacked the  enforcement power of decisions, until 2021, Iraq ratified the New York Convention, enabling the enforcement of international arbitration decisions in iraq, this will attract foreign investors, because it allows foreign companies to have the security needed to work in Iraq without the complications that lead to court, leading to a prosperous economy, making it the new exciting field in iraq.

I was in Al-Mansour university college and this competition only accepted public university students but because I worked hard, they saw my potential and put me with the students of Al-Iraqia University

I, then, started training for this competition with a coach named Haider who then became a colleague of mine. We trained and worked hard for this competition. That year it was the first time they created a national competition alongside the international one. The topic was really important because it deals with imports and exports, and Iraq exports a large amount of oil, while also facing conflicts regarding those exports. This law would benefit Iraq in solving some of these issues. The best part about this is that I am lucky that I got to work on developing this new law from the beginning and not like I came after it was already founded. Long story short, the competition took time between October to April. We won in the first year in the national competition in Iraq and our international world ranking was 305 out of 385.’

While Amna was talking about the hard work she put in, I got a boost of motivation and inspiration to be brave enough to take the steps needed to be my own extraordinary self. It is certainly amazing seeing women doing incredible things. 

How was your experience with other law students?

‘Most Iraqi students don’t have the necessary skills to excel in this competition. So the second year I started coaching alongside Haider, the new candidates for the competition. We started the training in June instead of October so basically, we spent 10-11 months training students because we had to start from the bottom and work our way up. It was a nice but long experience. Haider and I are a great team, we might hate each other at times but we definitely work very well together.’

Amna went on about the application process and how in the year she started coaching, about 182 students applied and 35 got accepted from Al-Iraqiya university. She was limited by only 10 students and a coach, wishing for those students who enter this training to have the training that will take them to the next level because she kept thinking about when she was younger, what type of training and skills she wished someone taught her, putting all these wishes into coaching her students. 

‘I detached my mind from all those unnecessary thoughts about how the government is not doing enough for students or that university is not this and that and I just made it happen for myself because you should know that you make it happen for yourself with your hard work, your passion, your drive, and dedication are the things that will take you wherever you want to go. I am gonna make them [her students] work, and make them number one’

Something I loved about this interview with Amna, is that she is a well-rounded person and has a beautiful mind. Everything she talked about in the interview was so poetically formed, it was all quotable.

How did you plan on making them reach number one? Tell me more about the teamwork. 

‘That will depend on my hard work. Haider and I taught them everything from how to write a legal document, grammar, and punctuation, how to use Microsoft Office, sentence building, how to make it poetic, body language, public speaking, gestures, eye contact, how you present yourself as a lawyer, and most importantly the power of control+F so you can find things quicker. Name it, we did it. 

And it wasn’t just me who did that, it was the understanding of each and every person I worked with as you wished you were understood. Because every single one of them would require a different type of advice than the others. Each has their own stories, their own personality, and their own style. 

I made it clear to them that if we are gonna act like a team, like a family, we should work together and be there for each other’s wins and losses because if you start competing with each other this won’t be a real team. God created every single person with something special inside them, and if we combine those special powers the team would be undefeated’

Let’s be honest, by now we all want Amna to coach us… this is what we need in Iraq, mentors who understand their students, help them take it to the next level, challenge themselves, and thrive in whatever they are achieving

Tell me more about the process of the competition.

‘There is a hypothetical case presented by Vienna talking about the challenges they are facing with applying the ICA law because each year they face new problems with it. So basically they created this competition as a global brainstorming where law students from around the world can brainstorm and come up with ways to solve these problems and get solutions to these cases. 

Normally, these hypothetical cases are more complicated than what they would face in real life, they do this so they can be prepared for any scenario. 

There are two sides to this competition, the first you have to be the plaintiff, and the second is the defendant, having to act as both sides and deliver both written and vocal pleadings, presenting in front of judges and professors from around the world. 

All the skills of a lawyer are tested in this competition. How to write, think, improvise, speak, and be professional, how to be a typical international lawyer, how to dress, move your hands, and how to make body language present in an understandable way to people on Zoom or in person. 

So we have to go through all of these skills in 11 months before the competition starts which is not enough time honestly to cover everything in detail. Haider and I gave the best we could to our students in those months. And I like to mention that the program I co-coached in, was sponsored by the Commercial law development program by the ministry of state of the United States with Ms. Mais Abousy.’

How was your coaching different from others, and what is the outcome you gained from this?

‘What we decided to be different about is that we made this community grow rather than just keeping myself as the one and only who is doing this. We made every single one of them special, optimising their skills and allowing them to thrive and grow. We look at them, understand their stories, and where they came from. I have two success stories of students of mine (Muhaymen and Raghad)

What i gained from coaching these students is that i learned how to create a healthy teamwork environment, i worked hard to know more about law, and i was able to find the gaps in my community to solve or assist in solving and filling those gaps’

How did it help your career?

‘Ok, we can agree that national and international law are different, even the attitude is different. The national experience added to me so much, the international experience gave me even more  in the end, the combination of these two allowed me to work in the company I am currently working at (Eversheds Sutherland). It’s a british legal company with over 100 lawyers in the UK and the Netherlands. It’s one of the best law firms internationally in Iraq.

When my manager read my CV, he was like, ok, she has international and national experiences while being a recent graduate. I think i’ll hire her… so now i work there’

Lastly, what advice would you like to give law students to take their next step to become extraordinary in their field?

‘There are many, but these are my top advice for law students and even for anyone who wants to be extraordinary. 

1. Study your degree, don’t be stupid like me. I didn't focus on my degree because I was doing extra stuff that helped me but studying would have given me a head start if I knew the things I was being taught in university. Because you might think the things you study are unrelated to your practical life when you actually start working but once you actually start and dive deep into your career you will find them very related to one another and it would be extremely helpful for you if you already know your stuff without having to go back to the roots and reading them all over again

2. Have a part-time job in law, work in anything literally anything even if your job at the law firm is to just print documents, do it. Cause the exposure to such documents alone will be very beneficial for your career and knowledge 

3. You need to know English, in law, there are a lot of investments in Iraq and these need someone with a good grasp of English to be on it. Graduate with good written and spoken English. 

4. Try and research what you love in law and what specialty in law your heart leans towards. Because there will come a time when you will feel lost and can’t choose because law is a sea. And to learn about what you're gonna be will lead you to many sleepless nights so for you not to be frustrated you need to enjoy it and look up the things that you enjoy.

5. Forget about goals. Create milestones. Easily achievable milestones. Goals are hard to achieve and sometimes it is frustrating if we don't achieve them. Milestones will do you the work 

6. Check out the job market, who is the best? What do they do? What companies do they work in? Know the field they are in, know your field so you can climb it better, you have to do the extra work and teach yourself how to be extraordinary.’

Written in English by : Athraa Al-asadi

Translated to Arabic by : Zainab Emad

Translate to Kurdish by : Sanaria Tahsin 

Poster design by: Zainab Barazan