Three practice heads out of one firm since the end of August. That is the story this week, and the in-house market has been moving too.
James Burdett has joined Ashurst Perkins Coie in Abu Dhabi as a partner and head of investment funds for the Middle East and Africa. He led the Middle East and Africa funds group at Baker McKenzie. Announced on 1 October.
On 4 September I wrote about Osama Audi, Baker McKenzie's corporate head in Abu Dhabi, going to Linklaters, and Adil Hussain, its Middle East banking head, going to Hogan Lovells Cadwalader. Both started on 1 September. Corporate, banking, funds, five weeks. Baker McKenzie has a deep bench and will refill the seats. The point is that three rivals wanted a practice head who was already up and running, and went and got one.
Pinsent Masons has made William Reichert head of its Abu Dhabi office. He joined a year ago from Charles Russell Speechlys, where he ran corporate for the Middle East. Covington has made Marc Norman a partner in Dubai, project finance with a data centre bent, one of fifteen new partners across the firm.
Three September moves that deserved a mention and did not get one.
Siham Assir has joined Mistral AI in Dubai as senior corporate counsel and MENA lead, after five years at Salesforce. A French AI company putting a lawyer in Dubai tells you where it thinks its next customers are.
Sultan Al Farhan is now senior director, legal and GRC, at AlKhozama Investment in Riyadh. He was legal director at Boutique Group.
Shamsa Al-Lamki has been promoted to head of legal, corporate and operations, at Petroleum Development Oman, from senior legal counsel. Promoted from within, which is how Oman tends to do it.
The UAE Ministry of Justice showed five AI agents at the UN Crime Congress in Abu Dhabi. They sort the file, link the facts, find the law, lay out the options and draft a judgment the judge can bin. The judge keeps the last word. The same week the ministry put out an ethics code for AI in legal work, and its assistant undersecretary Dr Abdullah Al Hammadi gave the line worth keeping: "No decision that affects an individual can be made by AI alone."
Qatar's Ministry of Justice is launching Al-Meezan, an AI legal portal in Arabic and English, with the warning that its answers "do not replace the official legal texts".
Bahrain's MPs want up to five years in prison and a BD50,000 fine for deepfakes.
And a number for every GC with an AI policy sitting in a drawer. A Dataiku survey of 685 CIOs in eight countries found 62 per cent of UAE CIOs already run more than 50 AI agents, against 9 per cent worldwide, and only 5 per cent say they could find and stop a rogue agent within two hours. If your company is in the 62 per cent, someone should be able to answer the second question.
Ooredoo Group, Director, Corporate Legal, Doha. Banking and finance work for the Group, fifteen years asked for, 119 applicants in four days, marked for Qatari nationals.
ADGM, Senior Manager, Legal Affairs, Abu Dhabi. Eight to ten years, advising the Authority and its board, past 200 applicants in two weeks.
ACWA Power, Senior Legal Counsel, Legal BD, UAE. Five to eight years, operation and maintenance agreements against the power purchase agreement, 81 applicants in two days.
AD Ports Group has completed its Dh3.1 billion purchase of CLI, two agri-bulk terminals in Brazil. Gulf money buying abroad is the pattern of the year, and every one of those deals leaves an in-house team covering two continents. If that is your team, the hire you need is the one who has done the integration, not the deal.
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Nigel Byrne
Legal Route, Dubai
Nigel Byrne is Managing Director of Legal Route, a Gulf legal search and market intelligence firm in Dubai. Legal Route places general counsel, heads of legal, in-house counsel and law firm partners across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, and publishes the Gulf Legal Salary Guide (legal-route.com/answers), the Gulf legal moves tracker (legal-route.com/gulf-legal-moves) and this weekly brief.