Dr. Osama Siddique was one of the primary visionaries, project coordinator through its initial formative stages, the first Chair, and also the first Associate Professor of the program of Law & Policy at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He was at the forefront of negotiating the setting up of the pioneering joint five-year B.A-LL.B Program in the country with the national legal education regulators. This Program has since then served as a template for replication in various public and private law schools in the country. In its early years the Program pursued the establishment of a full-time faculty, a commitment to research, knowledge production and policy engagement, integration of essential grounding in social sciences with legal education, and the employment of multiple modern pedagogical techniques which led the way for other institutions.  Maryam S. Khan served as the first Program Coordinator and an Assistant Professor in the program and played an integral role in the pursuit and consolidation of the aforementioned institutional goals.

The Network members, Dr. Osama Siddique and Maryam S. Khan, played a pioneering and leadership role in developing the hitherto most forward-looking inter-disciplinary legal education curriculum in the country. Focusing both on contextual requirements as well as the latest trends in international legal education, the curriculum introduced new substantive and procedural subjects, clinical courses, cutting-edge electives and co-taught courses by faculty with different disciplinary expertise.

Dr. Osama Siddique has been involved in the development and teaching of new interdisciplinary themes to a select international group of young scholars and policy practitioners through his association with Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law & Policy (IGLP) – most recently as Senior Faculty – for its annual Workshop. Dr. Siddique has also been closely involved with curricular thinking for advanced trainings for judges, police officials and prosecutors in Pakistan.

The Network members have been at the forefront of introducing clinical legal education in Pakistani law schools. Clinical courses were introduced for the first time in the LUMS B.A-LLB Program. Maryam S. Khan also designed, managed and co-taught the first legal aid clinic based at a Pakistani law school in collaboration with the Open Society Foundation (OSF).

Dr. Osama Siddique has designed and taught ‘Advocacy and Negotiations’ and helped design other clinical courses. He often speaks on the theme of Continuing Legal Education at the university and bar levels and has also advised the Continuing Legal Education Institute of Pakistan (CLEIP).

Dr. Osama Siddique has served over the years on various government committees on legal education reform, starting in 2005 with the Governor of Punjab’s Committee for reform of Punjab University Law College. His most recent appointments are as a member of Chief Minister of Punjab’s Committee on regulatory reforms for legal education in Punjab as well as a Special Committee for the establishment of a high level center of law and criminal justice. Dr. Siddique has also served as an advisor to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) and to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for proposing and designing legal education reforms and establishing new law schools, in both a pro bono advisory capacity and as a consultant. Dr. Siddique has also conducted an extensive study on the governance frameworks of public and private sector universities all over Pakistan and their various challenges in view of international best practices for university governance.

The Network members, Dr. Osama Siddique and Maryam S. Khan, have extensive teaching, mentoring and academic counseling experiences and have guided multiple students to prestigious graduate programs as well as to exciting careers in local and international markets. Both members are frequent speakers and discussants at seminars and colloquia on higher education in general and legal education in particular.

Dr. Siddique has served for three years on the Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee for Pakistan. Maryam S. Khan has served as a regional representation for the Cornell Alumni Admissions Ambassador Network for almost a decade.

The Network members work closely with senior administrators and police officers with extensive experience of the justice sector in Pakistan. The Network members have also developed and fostered, and work with, extensive international academic networks and international research collaborative links that include faculty members at several leading international universities as well as research and policy networks. These include Harvard Law School’s Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP); Harvard University South Asia Institute (SAI); Law and Social Sciences Network (LASSNet), Jawaharlal Nehru University, India; Asian Law Institute (ASLI), National University of Singapore; Institute for Development and Economic Alternatives (IDEAS), Pakistan; International Growth Center (IGC), London School of Economics; Association for American Law Schools (AALS); and Center for South Asia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.