Saudi Arabia has registered its first female trainee advocate, paving the way for women to practise as lawyers in the kingdom, an activist said yesterday. “The road is open now to women to receive permits to practise as lawyers, after the registration of Arwa al-Hujaili as the first trainee lawyer,” rights activist Walid Abulkhair told AFP. Abulkhair posted on his Twitter account a copy of the justice ministry’s certificate of Hujaili’s registration. “The (trainee) lawyer should be contracted by a lawyer who has been in service for more than five years... and should train for no less than three years,” he said. A trainee lawyer is allowed to practise, he said.