legal technology journal november 2008

Issue 11 Legal Technology Journal 43

Legal services in the Middle East

Operating in the rapidly changingenvironment of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) poses newchallenges for multinational legal services organisations. Withover 120 lawyers spread across five offices (and more to comeover the next few months), DLA Piper’s focus has shifted toequipping our lawyers with a set of industry standard tools andidentifying ways to differentiate our service offering from thatof competing firms. Online technology initiatives have played akey role in this process.

Due to their scale and complexity many UAE projects createa mass of documentation. DLA Piper has teamed up with high-value document management specialists Affinitext to provideonline libraries for clients’ major projects and transactions,enabling clients and their venture partners to quickly find andunderstand vital information buried in high-value documents.

This online delivery tool makes it possible to capture criticalknowledge over the life of a project or major transaction. It

allows for the easy addition of private and public annotationsand dynamic integration of new project knowledge includinglegal opinions and venture partner queries, which are cross-linked at the point of relevance for online reference at the clickof a link. Users can search, annotate and resolve complex issuesacross thousands of pages in minutes to simplify decision mak-ing and reduce risk. The head of DLA Piper’s finance andprojects practice in the Middle East, Damian McNair, was themain proponent behind the firm’s decision to change the wayin which complex project documents were being delivered toclients. ‘Effective communication is a key deliverable for anylaw firm,’ he says. ‘However, the traditional approach of pro-ducing a suite of finance and project documents of manyhundreds or even thousands of pages can be at odds with thatobjective. We had to find a better way.’

This service has provided the firm with a unique point of dif-ferentiation in the local legal market and has contributed to the

Land of opportunityby Leo Dyson Illustration: iStockphoto

To help meet burgeoning demand for legal services in the Middle East,DLA Piper has introduced ground-breaking technology that is provingto be a powerful differentiator for its practice in the UAE

42 Legal Technology Journal Issue 11


4. Alerts and updatesThere had to be the provision for clients to be continuallyupdated on changed or new legislation in their areas of interest,with the ability for the client to choose the nature of the alertsfrom time to time.

5. Embedded knowledge and legal opinionsThe system had to provide the ability for a client, in viewing anyparticular paragraph or article of the legislation, to view anyrelated DLA Piper update notes, as well as any relevant legalopinions provided to the client on a group/user secured basis.

Practical first steps to gathering laws of the local jurisdictionOnce the need had been identified, the challenge became howto solve it. It was quickly apparent that:

• There was neither a single source of UAE law in the officialArabic version, nor a single source of (reliable) Englishtranslations.

• This gave rise not only to the very real regional difficulty ofbeing able to advise on the law – if I can’t find the law, howam I going to advise on it? – but also to being able to under-stand the law once located. Many lawyers working in theregion do not read or write in Arabic, so reliable translationsof the law are critical.

So the first step was to physically locate all the relevant UAElegislation and associated documents. This in itself was a bigchallenge involving a lengthy process of going through the var-ious publications and communications of numerous UAEGovernment Ministries and cross-checking against every pub-lished law gazette produced in the region. This meticulouscross referencing enabled DLA Piper to check that all docu-





firm being appointed to advise on a number of the largest andmost prestigious UAE development projects.

Having adopted the Affinitext format for a number of clients’major projects, DLA Piper soon identified a unique applicationfor this technology to solve a persistent challenge facing allfirm’s practising in the UAE. All UAE legislation is in Arabic.Until now, there has been no central repository of UAE lawseither in hard copy or electronic form. This made it challengingto find and understand relevant UAE law and to advise clientsappropriately. Jim Delkousis, DLA Piper’s head of litigation andregulatory in the Middle East, took on the responsibility forknowledge management in the region shortly after joining thefirm in July 2007. ‘We didn’t think it was good enough to acceptthat accessing the law in the UAE and Middle East was difficultand that was simply a fact of life,’ he explains. ‘Our clients andthe lawyers that we recruit deserve much better.’

Very soon after DLA Piper established itself in the UAE, it tookthe decision to apply the necessary legal and technical resources totackle the difficulty in accessing UAE laws. DLA Piper took the viewthat in order to provide fully informed, consistent and efficient legaladvice to clients, access to a complete database of all legislation,coupled with intuitive search and navigation would be critical.

Working with Affinitext, DLA Piper has developed a compre-hensive online UAE legislation library for its lawyers andselected clients. The result is unique. By September 2008, thelegislation library contained more than 1,200 UAE laws, withthe remainder to be incorporated by the end of 2008.

This unique legislative library is now accessible anywhere viaa secure internet connection. Users are able to navigate, inter-rogate and integrate information from documents andembedded advice, opinions or annotations, either on a selectedbasis or across the entire library. The relevant original Arabicversion is also available for reference at the click of a button.

Increasing access to and the understanding of the laws of local jurisdictionsOne of the things that any legal professional expects in anyjurisdiction or organisation is access to the laws of that juris-diction. After all, you need to find and understand the relevantlaw to be able to give advice on it. This is probably the keyknowledge management resource for any legal-service provider

One of the things that anylegal professional expects in any jurisdiction or organisation is access to thelaws of that jurisdiction.

in any given situation. In most jurisdictions this fundamentalrequirement is already well established through government orthird-party publishers; but this was not the case in the UAE.

DLA Piper believed it was an absolute requirement to giveeach of its lawyers in the region online access to resources theywere accustomed to from their previous jurisdiction, or thatthey would otherwise come to expect. The decision was alsotaken to utilise the best available technology, taking the advantage of choosing the best and latest solutions when creat-ing something new, a step beyond systems available outside ofthe UAE.

From an organisational standpoint, DLA Piper realised thatonline search with integration of proprietary analysis and opin-ions would also mean that critical practice knowledge would beheld in an explicit rather than tacit form, retained inside theorganisation for all to share. This would help to overcome thepotential of key knowledge just ‘walking out the door’.

The firm recognises the value of turning personal knowledgeinto corporate knowledge. DLA Piper believed this aspect alonewould see the firm’s investment in a comprehensive technologysolution increase in value over time for this practice region,contrasting starkly with traditional decreases in value for thefirm over time associated with individual-based research andknowledge development. It also recognises that ongoinginvestment in time and effort is required to ensure that thelibrary is always up to date.

Just as importantly, it recognised that finding the right tech-nology solution would enable the firm to provide a uniqueservice unmatched by competitors, which would not onlyuniquely differentiate DLA Piper in the local legal services mar-ket, but would also be a significant feature in attracting the bestlegal talent to the firm.

The service imperative for clientsIn defining requirements for the new technology solution, DLAPiper identified five central benefits that the new system neededto deliver to clients:

1. Direct online access to resources for clientsThe specified solution needed to enable clients to share accessto the new knowledge base. This was something that in-houselegal teams would not have the time or resources to construct.

2. Significant cost savingsThe specified solution needed to deliver efficiencies. Instead ofspending time sourcing (and translating) relevant legislation,the firm wanted access within a few clicks of the mouse and asearch term or two. This automation would save many hours ofchargeable time.

3. Consistency and quality of legal adviceThe specified solution needed to provide a central resource,carefully maintained, cross-referenced and researched, toensure that clients always received the most up-to-date and con-sistent advice, independent of the particular issue being advisedon or who they are dealing with inside the practice.

ments in the growing library agreed with each other withoutcontradictions or later replacements. The intellectual rigour ofthis careful process provided the foundation for the solution.

Next, once this material had been identified, it was impor-tant to translate it as accurately and sympathetically as possible.As no official translation exists for these laws, it was vital thatwhatever technical solution was used, reference back to theoriginal law in Arabic would be available before providing finaladvice to the client. Through this exhaustive translation projectDLA Piper established the first comprehensive and reliableEnglish translation of the local jurisdiction’s body of law.

Implementing a powerful technology solution for high-value documentation and legislationDLA Piper worked with Affinitext to implement a comprehen-sive solution and to apply this technology to build the firstcomprehensive online library of the laws of the UAE.

The English translations of the UAE body of law are convert-ed to the required format to be input into Affinitext’s platform.The conversion process takes the source documents in Word,PDF or other format and promptly converts them into therequired format. The conversion to this format makes it mucheasier to access, navigate, read and understand.

Our lawyers and key clientshave access to probably themost sophisticated and user-friendly online databaseof a country’s legislativeinstruments, in both Englishand Arabic.



Understanding interrelationships within and between laws iscritical to providing effective legal advice to clients. The legisla-tion library places the focus squarely on the value of the contentand understanding the knowledge buried within legislation andlegal opinions. Key features include:

Easy document selectionUsers can select which law or laws they want to review using the intuitive bookshelf interface, where it is easy to select multiple documents at once, combining information from several sources.

Intuitive navigation and content displayTime is saved with easy navigation across selected documentsusing intuitive navigation. Users can click through from linkedreferences to definitions/clauses/paragraphs to open the rele-vant law at the pin-point article or paragraph. The simplicity ofthe user interface means clients can start using it immediatelywithout training.

Powerful searchUsers can find information faster with split-screen viewing mak-ing it possible to select any entry from the index (or searchresults) in the contents pane to jump straight to the relevant lawin the viewing pane, at the exact article or paragraph of relevance.

Pop-up definitionsPaper is notoriously frustrating to read because of the constantneed, once you have found the English version of the law, to flipbackwards and forwards to find cross-referenced definitionsand related articles or laws. The hyperlinked format enables theuser to read straight through, with every definition appearing as a pop-up, including definitions within definitions and cross-linking from definitions to articles or other laws at thepoint of relevance.

Linking of laws and knowledgeUsers can understand and resolve complex issues faster and eas-ier due to the intelligent cross-linking across and betweenarticles and related laws. This style of linking means interrelatedlaws, articles, defined terms, annotations, legal opinions andother references are all a mouse click away. Users can drill downfrom primary laws and articles to definitions, to legal opinions,

to guidance notes and to the underlying original PDF or Wordsource documents. Further, at a mouse click a user can also seeall knowledge and opinions attached to any law or selection oflaws and also click through to access the Arabic version.

Jim Delkousis explains. ‘In a very short period of time wehave gone from practicing in a jurisdiction in which simplyfinding the law, let alone advising on it, was notoriously diffi-cult – not to mention the sleepless nights that caused me – to asituation where our lawyers and key clients have access to prob-ably the most sophisticated and user-friendly online database ofa country’s legislative instruments, in both English and Arabic.The advantages have been enormous, ranging from our abilityto advise in the UAE on a consistent and efficient basis, to theability to attract the best talent into the firm. But my favouritecontinues to be the consistent reaction of clients when theyhave their first demonstration of the library, particularly gener-al counsel that have experienced the past frustration ofproviding legal advice in the UAE. That reaction is priceless.’

The futureBased on initial success of the project, DLA Piper is alreadyworking with Affinitext on possible future enhancements to thelegislation library including:

• Extending the system’s powerful English search capabilities toalso enable direct search of the underlying Arabic content.

• Arabic localisation of the legislation library interface toenable users to not only click though from English contentto the corresponding Arabic document, which is currentlypossible, but also to be able, in the future, to switch thelibrary interface between English and Arabic at the click of abutton to enable users to interact with the library in theirlanguage of choice and navigate within and between Arabic documents using the system’s powerful cross-link-ing and onscreen navigation capabilities which are currentlyavailable in English.

• The legislation library presently contains not only UAE laws, buta selection of laws from other countries in the Middle East suchas Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The vision is for the library toultimately house the complete Arabic and English translationsof laws from these and other Middle East jurisdictions.

• Future licensing potential for DLA Piper to share the legisla-tion library with other organisations, given the regionalgrowth and the demonstrated benefits for business of accessto English translations of all the local jurisdiction body of law.

ConclusionThe legislation library has solved one of the major challengesfaced by the firm operating in the UAE region – lack of access tolocal jurisdiction law. DLA Piper has created a standard trans-lated set of UAE laws, held online and fully searchable usingAffinitext’s high-value document platform. This has broughtsignificant gains in addition to knowledge retention.Organisationally, the firm benefits from knowledge sharing –providing access to this information to anyone in the businesswho requires it. It has also created a distinct market differentia-tor in a highly competitive legal service market, enabling thefirm to remain ahead of the pack.

For the DLA Piper lawyer, the ease with which relevant law canbe found, without the need for extensive research and translation,has had a significant impact on working practices, enabling moreefficient working. Benefits to the client include cost savings,improved responsiveness, faster turnaround and more consistentadvice. Although the creation of this online legislation libraryrequired significant commitment from the firm, the return oninvestment can already be demonstrated. The firm is now advisinga number of the largest iconic projects in the region, attractingand retaining the region’s leading legal talent. The next step is to explore the business potential for targeted licensing of the legislation library to other organisations in the region.

Leo Dyson is a project leader at DLA Piper.



Through an exhaustive translation project, DLA Piper established the first comprehensive and reliableEnglish translation of the localjurisdiction’s body of law

Previous access to local laws

• Passive documents

• Limited access

• Designed for printing

• Difficult to search

• Not interlinked

• Increasing complexity

DLA Piper’s online UAE legislation library

• Intelligent, dynamic online format

• Distributed access anywhere, anytime

• On-screen readability

• Powerful searching and interrogation

• Easy navigation [100% hyperlinked]

• Increasing understanding

Ongoing capture of new laws and legal opinions

legal technology journal november 2008

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