Two arrivals at one Dubai office lead this week.
Eversheds Sutherland has moved Jonathan Douglas, its head of construction, from London to Dubai. He keeps the title and runs the construction and engineering practice from here. In the same announcement Mohamed Khanaty returns to the Dubai office as a legal director, after more than eight years in Freshfields' international arbitration group and, before that, almost five years at Eversheds in Dubai. The firm also named partners in Paris and Munich.
My reading: moving the head of a practice is a bigger step than adding a partner, and it puts the person who runs the firm's construction work in the same time zone as the Gulf projects. The return is the better signal: lawyers do not come back to an office after eight years unless the work is there.
White & Case has promoted 47 lawyers to partner from 1 January 2027, two of them local partners in the Gulf: Reem AlBakr in Riyadh, in M&A, and Yannick Whorms in Dubai, in investment funds. Winston Taylor has made Abdullah Mutawi co-chair of its global emerging companies and venture capital practice; he already chairs the firm's transactional practice in MENA and leads a team of 12.
A quiet fortnight for appointments. Etihad Airways announced on 15 October that Malek Al Rabadi has joined as a legal advisor from Dentons, where he spent more than six years; the post dates from July. No general counsel, chief legal officer or head of legal appointment at a Gulf employer appeared on any page I read between 10 and 23 October. Our third-quarter report logged six general counsel and head-of-legal appointments across the Gulf in the whole quarter, two of them in Oman and none in Saudi Arabia, against 171 advertised Saudi in-house vacancies.
Hiring is busier, by LinkedIn's own counts. Sukoon Insurance's Head of Legal Advisory and Contracts seat in Dubai is past 200 applicants after a week. ADIB's Senior Counsel seat in Abu Dhabi passed 200 in three days. Standard Chartered's capital markets counsel role in Dubai reached 100 in two days.
Abu Dhabi's Judicial Department has launched the first phase of its Judicial AI Platform, Middle East AI News reports. The Judicial Assistant helps prosecutors and criminal court judges analyse cases, suggests decisions and drafts judgments that cite legislation and precedent; the recommendations are not binding and the final decision stays with the judge.
DIFC Courts now issue court orders and hearing records with a credential anyone can verify: a fingerprint of the file is linked to a public blockchain, and the document itself is not stored there. Justice Omar Al Mheiri, the director of the courts: "Confidence in the authenticity of a court document should not depend on geography." Mishcon de Reya's Bushra Ahmed called the benefit "practical rather than transformative".
Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Commerce counted more than 24,000 AI-related commercial registrations at the end of the third quarter, up 31 percent on a year earlier.
The DIFC Court of Appeal has held a litigant to a one million euro settlement she said she signed under pressure. The court said someone who signs "with a gun to their head" will not be held to a provision, but found no identifiable threat: she had access to lawyers and negotiated actively. Non-reliance and entire agreement clauses barred her misrepresentation case.
The DFSA fined the DIFC business of Hayman-Woodward, an immigration firm, 454,367 dollars for acting as a company formation agent and registered office provider for 71 clients over more than six years without registering as a designated non-financial business. The fine carried a 30 percent discount for settling. If an outside provider does your DIFC company secretarial work, it is worth confirming that it is registered.
Advent, the private equity firm with 109 billion dollars under management, opened in ADGM on 21 October, a week after Pretium, which manages about 70 billion. ADGM now has 49,027 professionals, up 34 percent in a year, The National reports. My reading: more regulated firms means more work for lawyers who know the FSRA rulebook.
King Khalid International Airport reopened on Sunday 18 October after the attacks on it; most scheduled flights were cancelled that week, Lufthansa has suspended flights until 18 November and Cathay Pacific until the end of January. Law.com reported on 12 October that the city, home to more than 30 global law firms, was still operating.
Dubai Investments is selling 20 percent of DIP Holding, the landlord of Dubai Investments Park, in the UAE's first IPO of 2026. Subscriptions open on 27 October and the shares are expected to trade on 11 November. There were three UAE IPOs in all of 2025.
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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.