A Japanese firm that has worked in Dubai alongside a local firm for more than a decade is opening an office of its own. That is the move this week.
Nishimura & Asahi, the largest law firm in Japan by number of lawyers, will open a Dubai office in January 2027. Masao Morishita, a partner based in Dubai since 2013, will lead it. The firm opened a representative office in the city in 2016, saying at the time that it would not provide legal services directly; the new office will. The reports list energy and infrastructure, M&A, investment, manufacturing, real estate, regulatory compliance and international arbitration as its work, and say it will be staffed by "a mix of Japanese and locally qualified lawyers". None of them gives a headcount.
Law.com counted it as the third Japanese firm to announce an overseas expansion in a single week, after Miura & Partners and Mori Hamada.
Locally qualified lawyers are hired here, not sent from Tokyo. If the firm means what it says, it will be recruiting here next year, and a firm that has had lawyers alongside a local practice for more than a decade is not guessing at the market. My reading: Japanese clients in Gulf energy and infrastructure now want their own firm in the room.
Morgan Lewis has formed a 12-member leadership council for Europe, the Middle East and Asia and put Ayman Khaleq, its Middle East co-leader in Dubai, in charge of it.
Aysh-Ahmed Chaudhry has made partner at AS&H Clifford Chance in Riyadh, and Riccardo Denaro at BonelliErede in Dubai. Gowling WLG has hired Fiona Robertson as counsel to lead its media, entertainment and sports practice for the Middle East. She has more than 30 years in media and entertainment law, 18 of them in the Middle East and North Africa.
Sharjah's Judicial Council has approved a governance guide for AI in its courts, which Gulf News calls "a unified framework for the controlled and secure deployment of AI in judicial and administrative work". The UAE now has a Federal Authority for Artificial Intelligence and Data, bringing together the AI Office, the digital government side of the telecoms regulator and the Emirates Data Office. And The National reported on 10 October that Dubai Police finds deepfakes harder to detect, with the risk that "people may increasingly suspect genuine photographs, videos and audio". Anyone who relies on a recording in a dispute should read that twice.
Three senior in-house roles are open this week: EGA in Abu Dhabi, QatarEnergy in Doha and Microsoft in Riyadh. Each passed a hundred applicants inside a week.
A mother in the UAE has had ChatGPT written into a draft will. Expatriate Law's seven-page "Living Wishes Protocol" gives the AI "no legal authority over the child"; it is there as "an advisory tool to help human guardians" consider how her values might apply to situations she could not have anticipated. It has not yet been registered or approved by a court, and the firm says its legal treatment "remains to be determined". I would like to be in the room the day a court is asked.
Subscribe free at legal-route.com/subscribe. For a confidential read on your own pay or your market, ask at legal-route.com.
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.