K&L Gates

K&L Gates is an integrated, international law firm with more than 45 offices located on five continents. Through our global network of offices and practice areas, we assist our clients with their most complex issues, offering local market knowledge and access to both national and international capabilities.

The Doha office, established in 2011, presents solutions to clients’ most complex legal challenges in the Middle East, as well as supports the legal needs of regional clients abroad. Lawyers in our Doha office work across the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and beyond, on mandates for Qatari, regional, and international clients. We provide a full-service offering from our office, making us the leading law firm in Qatar. Our team has a bilingual offering and is able to seamlessly advise clients across both English and Arabic languages (as well as many more).

Our Doha office advises on all aspects of corporate, commercial, and banking activities in the state of Qatar and within the Gulf. We act for construction and infrastructure sector clients on legal issues at every stage of the construction process, from procurement and tendering; through contract drafting; to arbitration, litigation, and alternative dispute resolution. We assist on engineering, procurement, and construction contracts, as well as public procurement matters. We also have many years of experience advising on Islamic finance and investment funds, regulatory (including financial services regulatory), real estate, employment and labor law, and intellectual property matters.

Areas of practice
Finance and Islamic finance: Our Doha-based banking and finance practice lawyers handle our clients’ most important, strategic transactions, regulatory issues, and operational matters. We represent lenders, borrowers, servicers, trustees, and other participants in an array of financing transactions, including some of the most complex regional workouts involving complicated cross-border and Shari’ah issues.

Our Doha office is one of the centers of excellence for our global Islamic Finance group. Our Doha team advises on the full range of Shari'ah-compliant structures and transactions within Qatar and across the globe, including Turkey, Indonesia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Our lawyers have vast experience assisting clients in navigating the regulatory, policy, and business issues surrounding the fintech space. We have a progressive approach to fintech, which means we are able to provide our clients with legal advice that is in line with the cutting-edge advancements typically seen in the industry.

Corporate: Members of our Qatar-based corporate and commercial practice provide clients with a full range of legal services, from general business planning to highly specialized and business-critical matters. We serve as trusted advisors to Fortune Global 500, middle market, and emerging businesses, as well as their investors and their boards, and are at the forefront of the strategic, commercial, and governance issues affecting these clients across all of our key industries. We support our clients on the full life cycle of corporate work for high-value critical and routine issues. Our lawyers have extensive experience advising on all aspects of domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions transactions, private equity, venture capital, general corporate, licensing and restructuring matters, and commercial contracts.

Regulatory, financial regulatory, and compliance: Our regulatory practice is known for providing top-tier advice to Middle East and Levant region government entities and regulators on reviews of legislation and the drafting of new legislative frameworks. In the Gulf Cooperation Council, our lawyers have advised ministries and central banks on policy-making issues in connection with foreign direct investments. We also advise a range of private sector clients facing regulatory compliance with local laws and regulations, governance, and risk management matters. K&L Gates is one of very few firms that have the expertise to advise on the full risk spectrum, from the detail of compliance with technical requirements under regulatory and industry body rules, through to investigations and, in extreme cases, to criminal liability.

We offer an in-depth understanding of Qatar law, and our lawyers have considerable expertise in a range of regulatory-related services, including complex overview of regulatory and compliance requirements affecting corporate transactions, financial services regulation, business establishment licensing, listing rules, competition, takeover rules, internal policies, standards, and procedures.

Litigation and dispute resolution: Litigation and dispute resolution team members routinely carry out advocacy in arbitration and the Qatar Financial Centre Courts, delivering our clients a full-service dispute resolution offering. They regularly advise local and international clients on litigation, arbitration, mediation, and, in particular, dispute avoidance and alternative dispute resolution, while being also known for their significant experience in complex construction disputes.

We have an impressive track record of cases in the local Qatari courts, in which we work closely alongside leading local counsel as our clients’ advocates. Our litigation and dispute resolution partners in the region often sit as arbitrators managing cases in all major arbitral forums.

Energy, infrastructure, and resources (EIR): Lawyers in our Doha EIR practice work for some of the leading clients in the infrastructure and public-private partnership (PPP) space, putting forward their commercial experience, market knowledge, technical and regulatory experience, and project management skills. Their knowledge and understanding covers all aspects of a project’s life cycle, from the early stages of finance, development, and design, through implementation, construction, and closeout. Our EIR legal practitioners have extensive experience advising on projects across a wide range of sectors, including renewables, oil and gas, petrochemicals, water and waste, energy storage, network and rail, mining, airports, telecommunications, and many others.

We take pride in having one of the few specialist PPP lawyers operating in the Middle East, and consider our Doha office to be a true market leader when it comes to advising clients on front-end construction and infrastructure project tendering, contract drafting, and financing. Our clients include major private players in the utilities and construction market, major real estate developers, infrastructure funds, state entities and companies owned by the state, project funders, private energy companies, consultants, and leading family offices (including advising members of the royal family).

Asset management and investment funds (AMIF): Our AMIF practice in Doha is a member of the world’s largest and most experienced investment management legal teams in the world. Our AMIF lawyers represent a broad array of participants in the investment industry, including institutional investors (family offices, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, etc.), regulated funds (exchange-traded funds, mutual funds, etc.), alternative funds (private equity funds, hedge funds, etc.), and intermediaries (investment managers, banks, etc.), offering our clients a full range of services, including structuring, regulation, advisory, marketing and offering, litigation and enforcement, fundraising, and operations.

We work with a large number and wide range of small, medium-sized, and boutique managers, as well as funds, investment management, and professional investor communities. We also represent many institutional investors in Qatar and across the wider Middle East in connection with their fund investments.

Real estate: With expansive knowledge regarding key real estate and infrastructure issues associated with large-scale developments, our Doha-based real estate practice members are highly skilled in producing effective, practical documents that serve our real estate sector clients’ needs, and are consistent with international best practices. We deliver strategic advice on large and complex real estate matters spanning multiple Middle East jurisdictions, including Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Oman. Our work encompasses advising on acquisitions, developments, construction (contentious and non-contentious), planning, environmental, tax structures, transactions investment, and project financing within the real estate sector. Our real estate team assists clients with property management, leasing, servicing, and outsourcing matters, and handles enterprisewide leasing programs for our clients. We also work alongside our litigation and dispute resolution, and international arbitration practices, which have extensive experience in complex multiparty disputes and arbitrations pursuant to the rules of all the major arbitration institutions.

Intellectual property: Our intellectual property (IP) capability in Doha is a part of the global full-service IP practice. We work on a wide range of commercial, regulatory, data protection, privacy and security, technology transaction, and intellectual property matters, particularly in the health care, technology, retail, luxury, consumer products, and sports sectors. Our global practice has a market reputation for trademark, design, copyright, and licensing, with expertise in cross-border counselling, registration, clearance, portfolio management, licensing, enforcement (opposition and cancellation proceedings), and disputes. Our IP lawyers seamlessly assist our clients in protecting and enforcing patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and other rights to protect their IP as valuable business assets. We also advise on licensing and transactions, as well as IP due diligence.

Labor, employment, and workplace safety: We provide a one-stop, full-service labor and employment law practice in both contentious and non-contentious matters in the MENA region. We advise a wide range of private and public employers, from multinational companies with thousands of employees in numerous locations to companies with one site and relatively few employees. Our experience includes advising on compliance with the local employment regime, employment contracts, termination procedures, pension obligations, gratuity payments, and redundancy procedures. We also represent clients on contentious claims relating to breach of restrictive covenants, arbitrary dismissal, discrimination, and more.

Doha senior partner: Amjad Hussain

Offices
Europe: Berlin, Brussels, Dublin, Frankfurt, London, Luxembourg, Milan, Munich, Paris
Middle East: Doha, Dubai
United States: Austin, Boston, Charleston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Fort Worth, Harrisburg, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville,
New York, Newark, Orange County, Palo Alto, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh, Research Triangle Park, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC, Wilmington
South America: Sao Paulo
Asia: Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo
Australia: Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney.