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As the Commercial Bank of Dubai undergoes a series of ambitious changes to its operations, such as full digitalisation of its retail banking, the legal team has undergone its own changes, transforming from a support function to a critical part of the bank’s strategic direction. As part of this change, legal has been embedded into the bank’s Transformation Officer programme to ensure streamlining and compliance, an interaction that shows the extent to which interaction between legal and business teams is changing in the region. As general counsel Souhayel Tayeb comments, ‘We simply brought the legal function to the heart of the bank [to make it] the most appreciated between the support functions by business and management’. Falling oil prices and economic downturn in the region have also played a part in raising the legal team’s importance, with the bank increasingly looking to its lawyers to help find creative approaches to restructuring deals. Tayeb and his team now work together with the commercial colleagues supporting all functions from the early inception of deals and transactions. Over the last two years the legal division has grown in size while also adopting technology to help bring it into line with other business functions. For instance, the team has introduced the APP4Legal management tool, created by the INFOSYSTA Company, to allow internal clients to make requests and track progress while allowing the legal team to have 100% control over case management. Moreover, the app allows for a clear division of the work amongst the teams expertise while also displaying the legal departments statistics on an annual basis. To further the interaction between legal and business, the team launched a quarterly legal newsletter and put in place legal training sessions that have enabled a better understanding between the two functions. ‘We’ve tremendously enhanced the responsiveness and gained the trust of business functions as “helpers”’, says Tayeb. The Bank’s commercial activities have now accepted the legal department as a true partner conveyed through the legal division’s 86% Employee Engagement Score.