Middle East

We spoke with a number of GCs operating in the Middle East. Unsurprisingly, given the diverse socio-political climate throughout the region, their opinions differed significantly regarding local politics, the social environment they were operating in, and how advanced the laws they operated under. Nevertheless, what stands out after speaking with GCs in the Middle East is how similar their experiences have been with GCs around the globe. Under our modern-day neoliberal economic system and in response to the pressures imposed on legal teams by the corporate side in response to covid, in-house counsel have seen a significant increase in both volume and complexity of work, as well as breadth of matters.

Their experiences bear strong resemblances to the experiences shared with us by GCs and in-house counsel around the globe, and when read in parallel with our article covering advances in legal tech in Africa, it’s clear that while different countries within the Middle East may differ considerably from one another in their priorities, as well as from African countries, in-house counsel globally face the same problems – and are currently trying to solve them both by shifting the internal structure of in-house legal teams to become Jacks-of-all-trades (and masters of everything), but, more importantly, alleviating many of the difficulties they face by adopting the most current advancements in legal tech. That’s why we have emphasised how GCs and in-house counsel are united in experiencing the same increased pressures from corporate, no matter where they are working and under different legal regimes.

Since these are still early days in developments in legal tech, it may help to consider, just for a second, a counterfactual, which makes it clear how in-house legal teams have changed in the past few decades: imagine a core piece of legal software you use every day… did not work. How could you manage in your day-to-day tasks? You probably couldn’t. Or, if you did manage, you’d be operating at a snail’s pace, and immediately fall behind on other tasks. This, naturally, holds true for almost any current profession that interfaces regularly with technology. Lacking the tools you are accustomed to will lead to a less polished product, inefficiencies, and general slowdown. Add to this how much more complex the work you now do compared to GCs 20 years ago, and you can see how over and over there have been significant increases in efficiency that track developments in legal tech – and, more importantly, how this is a general trend that maps on to the legal profession.

Now consider the everyday life of a GC 10 years from now: you don’t have to know the details about what forms of legal tech they will be using to see how in fields that rely on, in part, advancements in technology can be understood as operating under a meta-induction: throughout the history of in-house legal teams, the trends all go in one direction, and therefore (probably, almost definitely) we can expect these trends to continue into the future, unless confounding changes in the profession push in the opposite direction. They are as follows: the type of work becomes broader, more complex, and increases in volume. Alongside this growth in volume, breadth and complexity, legal teams rarely (if ever) see comparable increases in the size of their teams and available budget. However, what often does develop alongside the increased burdens comes advances in technology that alleviate the increased additional strains put on in-house legal teams. Thus, in a way, this meta-induction is optimistic, rather than pessimistic – so long as there are no major paradigm shifts or legal tech hits a major stumbling block that throw a spanner in the works.

GCs in Jordan

2009 was itself a paradigm shift for Jordan, which saw the Arab Spring, border closures with Iraq and Syria, and a major refugee influx. Nevertheless, it remains an important commercial hub in the Middle East, connecting Europe and Asia. It is often described as the business capital of the Levant. What it lacks in oil and gas reserves, especially compared to its neighbours, it makes up for in major manufacturing, finance and banking. As Jordan became more entrenched in the global market, it also saw a major increase in exporting manufactured goods like pharmaceuticals and renewable energy. Currently, its main exports include textiles, phosphates, fertilizers, potassium, and pharmaceuticals, often to export partners that include the US, India, and Saudi Arabia. Of note, Jordan is the leading pharmaceuticals manufacturer in the MENA region, and the Government of Jordan considers pharmaceuticals a core part of its economy.

What is of particular interest to international investors is, as Jordan moved towards integrating itself into the global market, the Jordan Investment Commission was formed in 2014 to combat any corruption that could face potential foreign investors. Additionally, the Jordanian government aimed to push for 10% of all energy in Jordan sourced from renewables by 2020, outlined in the National Energy Strategy. BloombergNEF Climatescope 2018 Index placed Jordan as third most attractive investment destination for renewable energy out of 103 countries.

The film and television industry is also a significant part of Jordan’s economy. Arab Telemedia Group remains one of the most popular production companies in the Middle East. Established in 1983, Arab Telemedia Group produces award-winning Arabic TV series and films. Professor Kamal Alawamleh, legal counsel for Arab Telemedia, took the time to speak with us regarding a broad range of topics that have affected in-house counsel and GCs over the past few years, especially regarding legal tech and its relation to the sudden increase of work dealt by in-house legal teams in response to the covid pandemic. He says, ‘The pandemic forced different GCs and in-house lawyers to work from home. As a result, this has led to them dealing more with modern technology rather than traditional means. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other virtual meeting platforms have been a daily necessity for us since that time, even when dealing with local issues. Moreover, different parts of our cases before various courts have undergone major changes, lead by this electronic transformation.’

The changes that GCs have faced by covid aren’t limited to dealing with working remotely, however. Alawamleh continues: ‘different laws especially that relate to employment and employees have undergone a very broad series of change in order to cope with the different changes that we have all seen. Our responsibilities as in-house counsel have expanded as a result. We used to begin and end work at specific times and during workdays, yet this is not the case anymore. We have to get used to working at any time, any day, whether a workday or when we’re on holiday.’

This experience of increased pressure is a universal response from GCs and in-house counsel we spoke with, all pointing to internal pressures from the corporate side to take up more duties relating to obligations to employees, ESG compliance, and other roles – all with minimal efforts to supply them with increased powers to secure requisite funding for projects as necessary, or at least help alleviate the pressure on in-house teams by going on a hiring bonanza.

When thinking about how the in-house legal team of the future will be organised, Alawamleh provides one perspective, saying: ‘I imagine that, in the future, we’re going to see lawyers and other members of in-house teams with a different skill set appointed to deal with specific aspects of different laws and in response to novel corporate needs. This is to say, companies will seek contracts with freelancers, part-time lawyers, and consultants to cover their diverse needs, regardless of whether they work from an office or at home’, which is a unique prediction not made by other GCs we spoke with.

However, that potential future remains open, and does reflect general trends in other fields, for example, the casualisation of faculty at universities or contract work from taxicab companies to Uber and Lyft. Seen in this light, this potential future may not appeal to some GCs who see what was promised as offering flexibility to workers ultimately lead to a lack of job security, increased pressure and workload, and increased competition amongst in-house counsel to produce short-term returns. The question is, if that future remains an open possibility, would it work so well for GCs (rather than for corporate), has it been tried effectively before, and is it something that GCs would embrace or avoid like the plague?

Alawamleh continues, saying, ‘The industry is relying more on legal technologies to improve efficiency, and no lawyer can now work without a laptop or without access to a legal data website that provides them with different legislations, legal precedents, jurisprudence and other primary and secondary legal sources.’ Gone are the offices full of legal texts lining the walls; these days, all that is needed is the appropriate software, a laptop, and legal acumen. Perhaps Alawamleh is on to something with the idea that in the future, there may be a shift away from the traditional in-house counsel model towards a greater dependence on a freelancer or consultant-focused model, especially since with the general shift towards homeworking over the past few years.

On this point there does appear one salient difference between in-house counsel and Uber drivers or an university professor, however – a lawyer’s reputation. You may be personally willing to have a sub-par experience in an Uber or Lyft once in a while and the turn to casualisation of faculty may be due to weighing economic incentives higher than securing a regular set of faculty, but a corporation is not going to risk it all on in-house counsel they don’t trust. Corporations may simply be unwilling to make these risks.

When it comes to legal experience that there’s also been a noticeable shift, with many GCs reporting desiring future in-house lawyers with either MBAs or other business experience, or else the appropriate soft skills to easily take on the broad range of duties in-house counsel face. Thankfully, some in-house legal teams have been able to secure promising young lawyers that appear different from the old cohort. As Alawamleh says, ‘we in our company offered different jobs for different internal and external lawyers and counsels in order to duly cover our different needs. Without this taken place I would say that we would not achieve what we aim to achieve at all. Different young and new lawyers have been given different posts and they are doing well.’

However, now that the major structural problems facing legal teams both globally and in the Middle East have been briefly sketched out, it’s worth addressing if there are any available solutions. On this point, GCs we surveyed are unanimous that legal tech has provided some respite from the drudgery of paperwork. Alawamleh elaborates on this shift towards adopting legal tech, particularly regarding compliance and keeping up-to-date on legislation, saying, ‘I have increased my reliance on technology in recent years. In almost everything I do, when I have to rely on specific data, I now go to a different website to check compliance or to find the legal data that I need. Personally, I mainly use Qistas, a website that focuses on different legal texts in Jordan and some other Arabic countries. I find this website very informative, helpful, and user-friendly. It contains all sorts of different legal data that, without it, I cannot carry on any task that is assigned to me.’

When thinking about the future of legal tech, Alawamleh expresses a shared desire for a truly global search engine for GCs. In the future, he expects the development of ‘a huge data engine that offers different legal texts and data with different languages. We do need this. Even with modern software, we still face different problems when trying to find a specific legal information pertaining to certain jurisdictions.’

On the subject of legal tech and improved efficiency, it’s clear that legal tech has already helped alleviate much of the strain that has been placed on in-house teams. Alawamleh elaborates on the effectiveness of legal tech, saying: ‘technology have absolutely saved costs and improved efficiency. For example, Microsoft Power BI has given us the opportunity to quickly summarise all our activities in charts and diagrams in one or two pages. By looking at these pages that are generated, you can tell where you are, how much you have paid, how much you will pay, how much you have saved, how much you have earned and will earn, and so on. This is very informative, and even the company’s management and shareholders have loved this feature.’

Measurement of KPIs remains an important aspect of legal tech; otherwise, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine its effectiveness outside prima facie impressions. Concrete metrics – the abstraction of experiences away from the particular to the universal – remain one of the few ways to make this comparison. Alawamleh expresses how helpful this is, noting, ‘I do measure the effectiveness of new legal tech we’ve adopted by the outcomes that we can directly experience. Some tasks were taking hours and hours of work, but are now carried out by minutes. By clicking a button that automates the process, you can now carry out tasks that were consuming far too much money, time, and effort.’

However, with abstraction, there is the loss of the specific and particular what-it-is-like-ness that is wiped away when abstracting away into a series of numbers measuring seconds, minutes, and hours in order to measure efficiency. It is with that focus on increasing efficiency that one can lose out on how, with the turn towards relying on legal tech to automate work, the day-to-day experience of in-house counsel has already shifted, alongside an increase in efficiency.

This shift towards automation of repetitive tasks has, perhaps, been the biggest boon for in-house legal teams. Without this software, most GCs would be left without their modern-day tools of the trade, no different than carpenters without their hammer and hacksaw.

With all the legal tech solutions on the market nowadays, GCs and in-house lawyers have numerous ways to benchmark legal tech providers and products. The GCs we spoke with provided some insight into how they approach this difficult task. Alawamleh explains his approach, stating, ‘We usually seek our peers’ advice as per their own experience with different providers and products. We are also usually approached by different providers with different calls and emails regarding their products and services and if we find it suitable for our different requirements, we make use of such products.’ However, other in-house teams expressed frustration and difficulties in knowing beforehand without intense research as to which legal tech would be best suited for their workplace or how to differentiate between competing products.

Additionally, with the growing importance of ESG and its evaluation falling in the remits of in-house legal departments, we face the question of whether technology and digital solutions can play a role in improving a company’s ESG rating. Some QCs we spoke with talked about their personal experiences and country-specific mandates regarding ESG. Alawamleh, for example, says, ‘I believe that in Jordan we are still in need of more time to fully follow and implement ESG. Both Jordan and the company that I work for do take ESG seriously and are always eager to follow and go beyond the minimal ESG criteria. As it relates to legal technology in this regard, of course I would say that the latter plays a very fruitful role in achieving and enhancing our ESG rating.’

And yet, while legal tech can certainly cut down on the production of unnecessary paperwork and streamline efficiency, there is also the difficulty for in-house legal teams of taking on the additional responsibilities for ESG compliance. It is here that it’s clear that the additional responsibilities placed on in-house legal teams and legal tech are interrelated in complex and ever-evolving ways. 50 years ago, it’s hard to imagine in-house legal teams being able to handle the workload that is routinely placed on modern-day in-house teams.

This workload isn’t shouldered entirely by legal teams, however. Modern corporations also staff their own in-house tech support. Legal teams frequently rely on tech support to a significant degree, and it shouldn’t be overlooked how the additional pressures placed on legal teams are also shared by tech support.

GCs in Lebanon

Lebanon is located in the Levant, with its West coast on the Mediterranean Sea, and seated squarely between Syria to the North and Israel to the South. Its population of approximately six million is noted for its high literacy rate, while international corporates know it primarily for its low operating costs when compared to other Middle East countries and its excellent geographic location as a strategic hub for shipping and air transport.

Beirut is the capital of Lebanon, with its port connecting Lebanon to Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, and the rest of the world. Shipping is important in Lebanon, with its major port in Beirut connecting Syria to the global supply chain. Connecting Beirut and the consequences of the Belt and Road initiative by China. Lebanon formally joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2017, due to China expressing a desire to establish commercial ties with Lebanon and placing it as a prominent role within China’s attempt at expanding its soft economic power, unlikely to be replaced by any other country in the Middle East.

However, there remains a relatively small legal market in Lebanon. The Lebanese legal market is smaller than other Middle Eastern countries; consequently, the in-house legal sector is also smaller when compared to its neighbours. Nevertheless, in-house counsel are often high quality, having to deal with numerous regional and global jurisdictions. Coupled with the difficulties for Lebanese corporates and subsidaries in routinely seeking advice from Lebanese private practice, this places in-house counsel as being jacks-of-all-trades and masters of all, able to handle a large swathe of legal matters.

Contrasted to Professor Kamal Alawamleh’s experiences in Jordan, we spoke with Robert Habchi, senior claims and legal manager at Nasco Re Holding in Lebanon, catching up on his thoughts since he sat for an interview for GC magazine in 2019. Nasco Re Holding remains the biggest reinsurance broker in the MENA region and is perfectly placed to discuss the changes that have occurred in recent years in Lebanon, particularly the shift towards compliance.

This shift towards compliance is due to a broader shift in priorities. That’s because in Lebanon the insurance and reinsurance industries remain a significant part of its major attraction to international corporates. In 2019 the market was ranked as 70th largest market in the world, penetration rate of 2.36%, since Lebanon is only 112th in terms of size. Habchi explains the complexities the reinsurance industry faces, and how both the corporate and legal sides of the reinsurance market have attempted to stay at the forefront of technological developments, saying, ‘in the reinsurance field, we now have more and more reliable on tools to treat huge databases, as well as to be able to automatically check compliance of clients/partners with international rules. This is about time efficiency, mainly, when you have some tools allowing you to get the data/information in the quickest way. This can only benefit the team, especially regarding decision-making. Time is of the essence in our business. The most important matter for us when making decisions on which form of legal tech to adopt is the simplicity and ease of its use. I mean by it that we prefer any product that enables us in very few clicks to get the data/information needed for better decision-making definitely has an advantage over others.’

Habchi sees the current greatest hurdle for in-house counsel operating in Lebanon as handling the volume of data they must deal with, saying, ‘I see an automation of the processes, especially as to the control, and treatment of data, without mentioning that clear processes/with automatic trigger of sanctioned entities is more than necessary nowadays’.

As Habchi explains, in his experience in Lebanon, appropriate data collection remains paramount: ‘I would say that mainly tech products are tools designed either to use an internal database or to get data/information that is specific to some task or industry. For our purposes, we would love to see the release of a central platform that was able to compare and gather data of all these other platforms, and assist even further companies for decision-making, enabling more reliable comparison in data.’

It is on this point that Habchi’s experiences differ from Alawamleh’s, since the legal industry in Lebanon must spend a great deal of time and energy on sanctions compliance, contrasted to Jordan’s legal industry. This demands, above all, that GCs remain fully up-to-date not just on legal standards in place but all the facts on the ground.

Impact of Covid, economic crisis, Beirut explosion

Since 2019, Lebanon has suffered one crisis after another, significantly impacting Lebanese citizens, its economy, and, consequently, the legal market. Habchi explained the impact of Covid-19 on the Lebanese legal market, saying, ‘The pandemic slowed down our legal system in Lebanon, with a noticeable lack of efficiency. Compared to France, for example, which tried to adapt as much as possible to keep their economy running smoothly, there was a huge difference’.

While Covid-19 was raging throughout Lebanon in August 2020, another serious catastrophe occurred that literally shook the nation, causing a seismic event of magnitude 3.3 on the Richter scale. As Habchi noted, ‘a major event in the past few years was the Beirut explosion, which affected everyone and all sectors’ in Lebanon. This major shipping nexus was struck in the 4 August 2020 explosion of approximately 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that had been held in a warehouse at the port of Beirut for six years, after being confiscated by the Lebanese authorities from MV Rhosus. Videos of the explosion circulated internationally following the explosion, including images of falling glass and other debris hitting residents of Beirut. The blast wave was felt as far away as Turkey, Syria, and Israel and it is considered one of the most powerful accidental artificial explosions in history.

The fallout of the explosion was not just immediately felt by the population of Beirut, with the explosion causing at least 218 deaths and over 7,000 injuries, as well as leaving an estimated 300,000 citizens homeless, but a major hit to the economic and trade system in the nation’s capital, causing upwards of $15bn in property damage.

‘This is without even going into the fallout of the economic crisis in Lebanon,’ Habchi says, referring to how covid precipitated the Lebanese liquidity crisis, and the Beirut port explosion exacerbated the economic crisis. Ultimately, the economic hit from the global pandemic; a series of protests that began on 17 October 2019 in response to planned taxes, allegations of corruption within the government, and a stagnant economy; and the Beirut explosion ultimately led to Prime Minister Hassan Diab and the Lebanese cabinet resigning on 10 August 2020.

However, even in difficult economic circumstances that affect Lebanon’s people, there remains opportunities for Lebanon to rise out of its deep economic depression, and international corporates haven’t forgotten Lebanon’s continued importance in the international market.

GDPR, employee data protection, compliance

Even though Lebanon continues to struggle through major economic troubles, in-house counsel remain steadfast in advising corporations on legal compliance during the pandemic. GDPR was a significant introduction to the Lebanese market, since in-house counsel had to react to global trends in order to maintain compliance. GDPR came into force in 2018, so while it did not have a direct impact in the Middle East at the time of its introduction, over the past six years in-house counsel have had to ensure companies comply with it, so long as they plan on continuing operating in an increasingly interconnected and global economy, especially for Lebanese in-house counsel and data protection compliance.

Habchi explains, saying, ‘with the global pandemic, a review of the whole business channel in Lebanon was more than necessary, especially with the normalisation and expansion of employees working from home either full or part-time. As such, in my opinion, in-house lawyers’ responsibilities increased dramatically over the past two years, especially regarding matters such as data protection for employees who were working abroad.’

Additionally, in-house counsel in Lebanon over the past few years has seen a related pivot towards covering compliance, especially in some major global industries. The biggest difficulty back in 2019 was that there existed substantive differences in regulations between Lebanon and places like the UK. Since 2019 the region has moved towards introducing regulatory measures in commerce and other sectors. For example, transparency and compliance in banking and finance increased in Lebanon. For example, previously the central bank of Lebanon required banks and financial institutions to have a compliance department and a legal compliance division.

Hibachi continues, noting, ‘there have been other major global changes that accelerated the expansion of in-house lawyer responsibilities as well, with recent unfortunate events worldwide such as the war in Ukraine. I’d say that the role of compliance officers in day-to-day business is more than compulsory.’ He elaborates on this point, saying, ‘with a world more and more globalised and very cautious about sanctions, it is more than essential that legal specialists support and give accurate advice to their management in order that they expand in the safest way without forgetting the prior mission of each company, which is to optimise their profit’.

GCs in the United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates remains one of the world’s most attractive business destinations. Having matured far quicker than its neighbours, there is commercial certainty in the market and a strong legal system in place, with mature arbitration and mediation forums. The UAE made a concerted effort to develop business and legal infrastructure for foreign corporates to set up in the country and formed a highly regulated market, set in place in the 1980s with UAE’s labour laws coming into effect. Additionally, the past few years saw the introduction of regulations covering anti-discrimination and other policies, which projects an image abroad that the UAE is tolerant.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) legal systems are mostly based on Egyptian systems of law. When developing these systems, they hired English law professors to help draft these legal systems. However, the legal system quickly overtook Egypt in its complexity and keeping up-to-date with global development. UAE’s constitution is based on civil law – with two sources of law, one being the local level of individual emirates that make up the UAE, the other at the federal, passed by the federal government. Notably, this rigidity of civil law and adopting the form of Egypt’s legislation would not first appear to foster international business; however, it’s the UAE’s willingness to modernise that kicked it all off.

UAE’s innovations include e-courts and e-filing systems. These innovations increase speed of court cases but come at a cost – litigation is oftentimes more expensive. This deters frivolous litigation, to an extent, and funnels disputes into alternative dispute resolution and other modes of dispute resolution seeking compromise outside of courts. But on top of that, businesses tend to avoid disputes in an attempt to preserve longstanding relationships in the market. It is this long-term thinking and aiming to save face within the community by resolving deputes amicably that has developed UAE’s reputation of a market with players that are willing to compromise.

Of particular interest to international investors is the City of Dubai’s work on the Dubai International Financial Centre in 2004 as a special economic zone. The independent jurisdiction has its own civil and commercial laws, codified in English and defaulting to English law in any uncertainty.

The new pressures on UAE GCs

CITI’s head of legal and general counsel Fauzia Kehar provides some insight into how the market’s response to the pandemic placed additional burdens on GCs operating in the UAE, noting, ‘there is an increased focus on “live, virtual interactions” via Zoom. Most organisations encourage people to keep their cameras on. Meetings are entering into the private space of your homes, rooms and surroundings. The camera doesn’t sleep and one cannot switch it off. Back-to-back, non-stop Zoom meetings can induce a sense of “Zoom fatigue”. The pre-pandemic days of meetings with an out-of-conference room interactions, watercooler conversations, fireside chats, and so on, are reducing.’

Building off of Kehar’s experience, Dubai-based Shaun Johnson, Group General Counsel at BEEAH Group, provides some more insight into his own experience: ‘The volume of work grows with business expansion but the breadth of issues that a GC needs to cover also expands as the business evolves. Indeed, Covid has played a part in the expansion of a GC’s role within most businesses. On the one hand, there was a “back to basics” exercise of contract reviews amongst all businesses because the whole legal profession started checking contracts to determine how force majeure provisions actually work in practice. In reality, a significant portion of force majeure clauses had never been invoked prior to this point. This led to amendments such as including explicit references to “pandemic” in the definition of force majeure or the introduction of a new definition called a “Covid Event” in many agreements. The real expansion of a GC’s role during Covid was having to prioritise and quantify “business and operational risks”, working alongside COOs, CFO’s and Audit functions. I was working in Saudi during the first lockdown of Covid and every week we were briefing the CEO and C-suite with risk assessments of the business. I’ve now seen this approach become institutionalised where operational risk is reported first and on a regular basis at management briefings.’

Oracle’s Middle East legal director Fady Zedan in Dubai also expresses how the increased workload as a knock-down effect of the pandemic has influenced his practice, saying ‘since the pandemic started, the in-house legal department was asked to look more and more in-depth into the business mechanisms and how it operates and try to identify issues and pain points caused by the pandemic and its aftermath. It is something that is being discussed within the community as well as a recurring topic in several legal conferences which I have attended following the lifting of the lockdowns.’

Zedan concurs with Johnson regarding seeing an increase in force majeure cases, saying, ‘the most obvious challenges that we had to deal with lately is concerning the definition of force majeure and its implications on contractual obligations. This is becoming problematic due to the fact that force majeure was not legally declared as a result of the pandemic in most of the Middle East countries and we have always highlighted the fact that the pandemic did not make performance of the obligations impossible in the Middle East but rather burdensome which would not call for activating the force majeure clauses in the contracts specially given that there was no official force majeure declaration by the governments in most Middle East countries.’

Kehar continues in her analysis of the additional pressures put on GCs and in-house counsel, explaining how this has affected the development of new talent within in-house teams: ‘What might be slightly concerning (depending on the nature of job or responsibilities assigned), is how we integrate newcomers into their roles. The initial stages when being in a new office setting, not being entirely familiar at that stage with the culture, expectations of the employee and workplace, and so on, whether adjusting would be more difficult or delayed. Managers and supervisors may find it difficult to handhold people through the initial stages of transitioning into their workplace, work ethics, and so on.’

Kehar does note that the dramatic changes due to covid and the overnight demand for technological development do have their upsides, noting, ‘the upside to this is that one is able to interact with colleagues sitting all around the world from literally any part of the world. The ability to work-from-home has resulted in greater flexibility for women and men alike, especially for people who are caregivers, parents with young children, and so on. The pandemic has taught the workforce a different way forward: gone are the days when employers have to see people in the office all the time. There is a greater sense of trust that employers are to now place in individuals when expecting assignments or workstreams to be managed in a setting where the employee is not monitored round-the-clock in a 9am to 5pm office setting.’ On all these points, both GCs and non-lawyer employees would likely universally agree has been a positive social change in the workplace.

Given all these changes in recent years for GCs and in-house legal teams, Johnson provides a succinct summary of what he believes to be the current state of play: ‘Taking a bird’s eye view, in addition to being the custodian for “all things legal” (which of course is very broad), I would say that the revised role of a GC in today’s environment now includes the role of an “influencer” in the following areas: to shape and influence a company’s approach to risk and crisis management; to influence and enforce codes of conduct for the business; to support the ESG agenda across the business (particularly in the supply chain); to ensure transparency in decision making (vis a vis conflicts and disclosures); and to consult on and shape the agenda for diversity and inclusion at Board/C-suite level.’ All these new roles and duties certainly put an additional strain on UAE GCs – and is a likely shared experience by GCs operating in similar markets.

The in-house legal team of the future

These major changes in the legal landscape for GCs allow for the opportunity to reassess the current social and technological structure of in-house teams. As covid demonstrated, these current structures are impermanent and conditional – things can and do change. The question is whether they change for the good or ill, and it is up for us to envision a future for in-house legal teams wherein there is a better workplace environment, then make that change a reality. But this utopianism does need to be tempered with realistic predictions about what to expect and prepare for these likely outcomes.

Kehar looks to the future of in-house counsel and sees a strong integration between tech and the types of issues they will be dealing with, saying, ‘I imagine an entire new set of opportunities opening up as we evolve to embrace the so-called new workplace regime. While some fields of legal work would perhaps be shifted to AI related outputs, I do not think that the growth, development, evolution of lawyers will stop. With so many new arenas at play, I envisage more opportunities for lawyers in fields related to ESG, cryptocurrency-related legalities, metaverse-focused detailing, governance-related focus, litigation, arbitration, mediation – the sky is the limit! As a result, I do feel organisations will bend towards hiring people trained and/or interested in exploring some of the fields that the “old guard” may be less familiar with.’

Zedan concurs with Kehar about changes in the breadth of work will invariably influence the types of in-house counsel that will emerge in the future, saying, ‘surely new points of views and new blood is always a motivating and driving factor for innovation in any profession, and the legal profession doesn’t differ in that.’

However, Kehar gives some insight into the general attitudinal shift amongst in-house counsel: ‘Gone are the days where people expect managers/organisations alone to work miracles in offering career opportunities. Nowadays, each one of us is supported by peers and colleagues that act as “sponsors” rather than “mentors” (as was the previous expectation). You are your own brand name and you develop your brand image based on what you want to portray and what you feel your legacy should be.’

Zedan’s thoughts about the future of in-house counsel is more tempered, noting that no matter which types of work GCs are doing in light of advances in technology – or even if legal tech helps alleviate much of the drudgery, legal expertise will always play a core role, saying, ‘whilst technology plays a crucial part in the in-house counsel’s role these days, the legal acumen and strategic mind of the lawyer remains the main driver behind an efficiently performing legal department and hence, I disagree with people claiming the tech and AI may be replacing lawyers soon since the legal profession is one that requires human cunning and empathy to be able to do it efficiently and ethically’.

Legal tech and the market

When it comes to understanding the current uses of legal tech in the UAE, as the general global trend has gone, most of it has been aimed at increasing efficiency and alleviating the workload of GCs. Kehar says: ‘For me, the biggest change has been through use of technology relating to connectivity that has aided me increasing my network outreach and increased use of search engines and the ability to be informed on changes to the regulatory environment on a real-time basis.’

Elaborating on his own personal experience and planned developments in legal tech, Johnson says: ‘The BEEAH Group is a diversified organisation across multiple sectors, and so we will be using various legal technologies to make each one of BEEAH’s segments “self-sufficient”. By this I mean developing a standard suite of contracts for each of BEEAH’s businesses, using contract lifecycle management platforms infused with artificial intelligence to ask (through ‘chat bots’) the business user a series of questions which enables that business to produce initial drafts of contracts which are relevant to that particular part of the business. I see this being the way that the legal function within businesses evolve because it provides advantages for both sides: the commercial teams get to know and understand their contracts better and they receive their contract drafts quicker. The flipside is that this frees up the in-house lawyers to focus on the more bespoke/complex legal work which is what they are best placed to do.’

Kehar agrees with Johnson’s assessment, explaining that in the future, in-house teams will have a ‘greater focus on digitization. Even the notary regime is now changed to recognise this. There will be a lot of reliance and focus on bettering ways of improving client experience through, for example, introducing electronic submission of documentation (as opposed to hard copies or in person delivery), and electronic signature regimes coming into play.’

Contrasted with some GCs that believe the greatest paradigm shift in legal tech would be the unification of different legal tech products under a core set of legal tech providers, Johnson doesn’t see the current legal tech regime of a multitude of legal tech providers as particularly onerous, saying: ‘At present I am trialing technology providers for each area. I previously thought there could be one company that could cover all platforms, but my research has shown that I shouldn’t be afraid of utilising a “legal stack of technology”. So if I go down that route of using multiple technology providers, then my priority will be to ensure the integration of each provider so that they interface correctly with each other and the existing platforms within BEEAH’s business.’

Nevertheless, Johnson does acknowledge the difficulties in determining which forms of legal tech are appropriate, reiterating that same ‘paradox of choice’ that so many in-house counsel face when facing such a broad set of options, as well as the extra hurdle of determining if legal software will be compatible with already-existing software used elsewhere in the company. He says, ‘there is so much proliferation in the market of legal tech products that it is important to understand their functionality and their compatibility to ensure that what you’re buying is “fit-for-purpose” for the objectives you’ve set for your own legal function. The biggest concern I have (and that I believe other GC’s have) is “compatibility of interfaces”. I have come to the conclusion that no single provider can provide the “best in class” for all of the five areas I am looking at, so now that I’ve decided to use more than one provider, my biggest concern is “will all the platforms talk to each other” and a corollary of this is whether all the platforms will interface correctly with the existing technology within our organisation.’