Attorney-at-law and university lecturer, Chevy A. Devonish, has been selected by multinational firm Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP to take part in its ‘Foreign Attorney Program’, a release from the Attorney General’s Chambers said yesterday.
It stated that Devonish is the first Guyanese to be selected for this programme, which is not a government initiative. Recruitment and vetting are handled exclusively by the firm.
Arnold & Porter is a multinational firm employing almost 1000 attorneys practising in approximately 40 areas in 14 offices across the globe. Practice areas include international corporate law, international financing and international arbitration. The release said that it is expected that Devonish will be an active member of the firm’s international corporate, financing and, time permitting, international arbitration practices at the firm’s Washington, D.C. office until July 2023. Since Devonish is not licensed to practice law in the United States, he will not function as an attorney-at-law during the programme, but will, among other things, actively observe and participate in cases along with Arnold & Porter attorneys.
“These are areas of increasing relevance and importance, due to the unprecedented commercial growth prompted by oil and gas exploration and development in Guyana. I look forward to learning from Arnold & Porter, and returning to leverage that knowledge to assist Guyana’s development. Arnold & Porter is an ideal place to develop these skills as the Firm routinely represents sovereign states in these areas,” Devonish said in the release.
Arnold & Porter’s Foreign Attorney Program is designed to allow foreign attorneys to understand, firsthand, the variety of services the firm provides for its clients. Foreign attorneys observe and participate in US law firm practice, and learn about various legal proceedings.
Both the Attorney General’s Chambers and the University of Guyana are immensely proud of Devonish as he proceeds on this endeavour, the release added.
Devonish graduated as valedictorian of the Hugh Wooding Law School’s graduating class of 2019, and was admitted to the Bar in Guyana in November 2019. He was then appointed State Counsel at the Attorney General’s Chambers and Ministry of Legal Affairs in February 2020 where the release said that he has since performed with distinction, being appointed to various cases of national significance, including Election Petitions 88 and 99 of 2020.
Since being admitted to the Bar in Guyana, Devonish has also lectured and or tutored in Public International Law, Jurisprudence, Administrative Law, Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, Real Property, and Politics at the University of Guyana.
