Tim Elliot: Welcome to Lawgical. It’s the U.A.E.’s first and only regular weekly legal podcast. We’re also live on TikTok as well. Welcome. My name’s Tim Elliot. Lawgical is recorded at the Dubai-based legal firm, HPL Yamalova & Plewka. As ever, the Managing Partner is Ludmila Yamalova. It’s nice to see you.
Ludmila Yamalova: Good to be here with you, Tim, as always.
Tim Elliot: I’ll tell you what, this is a different episode. I’ve got no questions for you. I’m just going to completely fire off the top of my head because I guess this is how most people would search for a lawyer. Most of us don’t know every lawyer in town, know what every specialty is, or what everybody is there to help with. Hopefully we can get a reasonably helpful guide here. Who knows? How do you find a lawyer here in the U.A.E.?, is the question. How do find the best lawyer, the top lawyer, the best Russian speaking lawyer, which is something that you offer, Ludmila. The best English speaking, whatever it is that you need, how do you find the best lawyer in the U.A.E.? From my side, I found you. End of episode.
Ludmila Yamalova: Voila. Done. (Laughing). Leave it up to me.
Tim Elliot: There’s a bit more to it. Where on earth do you start?
Ludmila Yamalova: It’s an interesting question to be posed to a practicing lawyer because obviously it will be a little difficult to take away the bias of asking a lawyer to recommend or weigh the finding other lawyers. But we will try to be as objective as we can, or I will try to be as objective as I can.
The reason for this discussion came from someone else who recently crossed our path and he was just saying he had a lot of friends in Saudi and in the region and a lot of people are moving to the U.A.E. now as well, and they all want to figure out a way to find a lawyer and they don’t know where to go. Wouldn’t it be great to have a guide? That’s is how this particular topic made it onto our list of podcasts and topics for discussion in general. I am not here to promote myself, but rather truly it is meant to hopefully provide some kind of a guide in terms of some of the factors and considerations one should look at in identifying the right lawyer to go to.
Tim Elliot: This is the thing. What happens with Lawgical, for anybody that doesn’t know, I get sent a topic, and then make some notes. We formulate questions and we talk and that forms the basis of the podcast. With this one, how do you find a lawyer in the U.A.E., I thought, why would you do that because you’re sending people away from your business? I sat and thought about it, and I realized that different people have different needs, different lawyers have different specialties. There are lots of different facets, languages, cultural boundaries to cross, whatever it is, that allow you to feel comfortable with a person who represents you legally, because whatever you think and however you see lawyers, and lawyers are almost mythical creatures to most of us.
Ludmila Yamalova: Scary creatures.
Tim Elliot: You are. But you’re going to have to get to know your lawyer pretty well. You’ve got to get comfortable. It’s got to be somebody that you trust, you like, you think has legal expertise, and is professional. That’s a lot to ask.
Ludmila Yamalova: Indeed. You mentioned a few factors, one in particular that stood out. You have to feel comfortable with a lawyer. That is in addition to all the other perhaps more standard criteria, such as education, qualifications, practice areas, experience. Then you have cost obviously as a factor. In addition to all of that, who do you feel comfortable with representing your needs? Let’s face it, as you rightfully said, people don’t really like dealing with lawyers because lawyers are traditionally associated with trouble. People come to lawyers when they have trouble. Now it does not always have to be that way. In fact, I would advocate, and I often advocate the opposite. You should come to lawyers to avoid troubles. But in particular in this region, people don’t think that way. At a very basic level, and if I were to be honest with myself, I wouldn’t want to go see a lawyer myself because it gives you that feeling of unease, even if it is to obtain some kind of formality, in and of itself. It just makes us all cringe. Because the ecosystem or environment that brings people to lawyers, we don’t necessarily invoke very positive or happy feelings when people think of lawyers. It is perhaps very different from, let me go see my yoga instructor or my therapist.
It is confluence of factors. As you said, all of these factors would ultimately determine who is the right lawyer for you and who you should really go to. In the West, in the U.S., which is where I’m licensed, the concept of co-counsel is very prevalent, and it is very common. You can have multiple lawyers. In fact, when I practiced law in the U.S., I was in-house, an associate general counsel for a publicly traded company, and we actually aimed to have as many different lawyers for different practice areas, even sometimes for similar matters, as many different lawyers as possible, different counsel from different law firms. The idea there is that you want to try to capture some of the best talent across the country or in the world, for that matter. This was very typical.
In the U.A.E., for some reason, people just think you only see lawyers when you have trouble. They don’t think of lawyers as preemptively in the sense of avoiding trouble or to make sure they are doing things right. They don’t think of lawyers in that sense. It is more like, oh my gosh, I have gotten into some trouble and I need help from a lawyer. There is that.
They also don’t trust lawyers here, and in general there is a belief that somehow you cannot work with multiple lawyers or somehow the other lawyers will take it personal and be offended. It doesn’t need to be that way. I would argue it is the opposite. The more lawyers, the more different people you have, the broader the base of making sure of competency and experience.
How do you find the best lawyer in Dubai? It really depends, first of all, on what your needs are. I would say start first with what it is that you want.
Let me take a step back here and set up the general framework for how the legal profession in the U.A.E., in relevant terms, is set. We have two different types of lawyers or legal practitioners, if you will. You have what are called local advocates and then you have legal consultants.
Often people ask, if you are not an Emirati, how could you be a practicing lawyer? That is because of these two concepts. The local advocates in the U.A.E. are the U.A.E. nationals, for the most part. There are a few exceptions because in the past, it was actually possible for other Arab nationals, as long as they spoke Arabic, to also be practicing lawyers, and then the rules changed somewhat so there were some non-Emirati lawyers that have been grandfathered in as local advocates, and they have a local advocacy license, but even then, the Court of Cassation, which is the highest court, it has to be an Emirati advocate in order to actual have the right of audience before the local courts. That is for the local advocates. Local advocates are the legal practitioners who ultimately have the right to appear before the judges, before the local courts, the ones who have the right to plead cases before courts, in short. They are registered as local advocates and they have certain access to the court systems. They are subject to different regulations and so on and so forth. They are the local advocates.
Then you have legal consultants. Legal consultants are practicing lawyers who have law degrees and/or qualified in a particular legal jurisdiction. On the back of their qualifications, from wherever it is they either studied or they have their legal certificates, they will be admitted in the U.A.E. as legal consultants.
Then on top of that, you have different emirates, and the different emirates have their own systems as well. For example, in Dubai in the U.A.E., we have what is called the Legal Affairs Department (LAD), the Ruler’s Court, or (9:32) D1. There are different terms for this. Legal practitioners in Dubai, advocates, and legal consultants have to be registered with the Ruler’s Court basically. To be registered with the Ruler’s Court, in turn, you need to be attached to a law firm, either a local advocacy or a legal consultancy.
For example, if you just wanted to go and practice, even if I wanted to do it on my own, I cannot just independently go and register myself. We don’t have what is called The Bar here yet. For legal consultants, for lawyers to actually practice and to present themselves out to the world as lawyers, legal consultants, or local advocates, in Dubai in particular, they have to be registered with the Ruler’s Court.
In other emirates, it is not the same. They don’t have an equivalent Ruler’s Court. Depending on the emirate, they have different systems, but overall, the lawyers are local advocates, and local advocates are only Emiratis, but that is because traditionally that is how it used to be. That is how you have a lot of these foreign law firms, the big heavy lifters like Clifford Chance, DLA Piper and Allen & Overy, and so on and so forth, which are obviously not Emirati law firms, and yet they are practicing lawyers. That is because they are legal consultants or legal consultancies, and then you have local advocates.
It is important to keep that in mind. Therefore, as you are deciding who to go to and which lawyer to hire, you need to know what it is that you need. For example, if you need representation in court, then obviously then a local advocate is ultimately who you will want to hire. It’s important in that case. If you have real estate dispute, a divorce dispute, any other kind of partnership dispute, or anything else that would require going to court, you want to find a local advocate to represent you.
On the other hand, let’s say it is for drafting a contract or guidance with obtaining a residence visa, or receiving advice about how to structure your employment practices, or the drafting of a will, or any kind of review of an agreement, or helping with settlement discussions with a business partner or a personal matter, such as a family dispute. There you could rely on a legal consultant. You can choose from legal consultants.
On top of that, legal consultants have authority to represent clients in certain courts. For example, in the U.A.E., we have two courts in addition to the local courts, and they are called the DIFC Court, the Dubai International Centre Court, and the ADGM, which is the Abu Dhabi Global Markets in Abu Dhabi. Both of these courts are common law courts and based on common law jurisdiction. In short, they have their own laws and they are also English-based courts. In those courts, legal consultants can also represent clients directly, not just local advocates. To do that, a lawyer would need to be registered in particular with the DIFC as a DIFC lawyer. For example, I am a registered practitioner with the DIFC Courts. My firm is registered with the DIFC Courts, and equally so, I am registered with the DIFC Courts as a DIFC lawyer and that is on the basis of my qualification as a lawyer licensed in California. Additionally, legal consultants have the ability to represent clients in the DIFC Courts. I can represent clients in the DIFC Courts.
Furthermore, there are arbitration forums. Arbitration is a form of dispute resolution and an alternative to courts. Once again, in arbitration, your lawyer does not need to be a local advocate to represent clients and in most cases legal consultants can represent clients in arbitration.
Again, here, it depends on what your needs are. If you have a dispute and need local courts, the local lawyers are what you want to focus on in terms of deciding which counsel to retain.
If you want arbitration, then there are specific law firms and lawyers that specialize in arbitration.
If you want a corporate lawyer, you can choose from legal consultants.
Also, with criminal law, the local advocates are basically the best ones to deal with any kind of criminal matters because once again, any kind of criminal complaints do require an appearance before local judges or local courts, and for that, you do need a local advocate.
There is a whole series of questions you go through before you decide how to find the best lawyer in the U.A.E. or in a particular emirate. That too is important. If you are coming from abroad, and you think you want to find the best lawyer in the U.A.E., really it depends on where you are going to either open a business, or live, or if you are going into a business partnership. Let’s say, I’m the best lawyer in Dubai. I might be of very limited utility for somebody who wants to do a partnership in Fujairah or in Ras Al Khaimah, the other emirates. The geographical location is important, although for the most part, we have a federal system and the federal laws will apply across all emirates. But there are still some laws that are more emirate specific.
You want to ultimately go through the list and consider the main factors that are important and based on that decide which categories of lawyers I should start looking at. To recap before we move to the next level, you have local advocates if you want any local court work, or you can go to legal consultants if you want any kind of agreement, corporate structuring, or corporate advisory work, and then obviously within that group arbitration is separate specialty. That is perhaps the initial layer of vetting that you need to go through.
After that, it depends on the actual matter that you need help with. For a lot of people – and in other countries this might be less relevant, but here we are in the Middle East and Arabic is a very prevalent language. If you are coming from the Arab world, even if you don’t necessarily need a local advocate, but you want to communicate with somebody in your language, in Arabic, you would also look for legal consultants that speak Arabic. Language is an important element.
But equally so, if you want to deal in a different language, for example, I speak Russian and Ukrainian, if you are looking to hire a lawyer who speaks your language, in particular now, historically the U.A.E., and Dubai in particular, has been very popular with Russian speakers. Just like many other cultures, Russian speakers prefer to speak in their own language. If you were looking for a Russian-speaking lawyer in the U.A.E., that is what you would look for. Somebody else may want a Chinese-speaking lawyer, or Mandarin rather. That would basically be another criterion.
Let’s say you decided to focus on legal consultants because you just need help non court work. Then you consider what you really want. For example, if you are a big corporation and you are looking for some big scale work like project finance or even if you are looking for litigation in the DIFC Courts, such as a big ticket litigation matter that requires a lot of hands on deck, that would require a large law firm. Maybe a firm like mine, in human terms, would just not be sufficient because you need many hands and many brains, so you would look for a big firm. Consider if you need a big firm or a small firm.
Then within that, what is the area of expertise? Let’s say I want employment. Who is good in employment? But also, even within employment, there are so many different segments. There is employment litigation and you want someone to counsel on how to litigate a dispute. There are also employment agreements, just the drafting of agreements. That is also important. There might be someone who just wants guidance on employment practices and how to devise or structure employment and HR practices. Then there are those that want employment settlement or mediation because there are disputes going on. Even within employment itself, there is quite a bit of nuance. Then on top of that, what if you are based in the DIFC or ADGM, those two jurisdictions have their own employment laws and therefore you would want to go to a lawyer who knows about the DIFC employment laws or the ADGM employment laws. Those are the other factors.
A lot of disputes we are seeing these days are personal matters such as divorces, custody to an extent, even marriages and birth certificates, births out of wedlock, and these kinds of cases might eventually get to the point where you need to go to court, but they do not all go to court right away, and maybe they should not even go to court. But even before they go to court, there is a lot more that needs to be addressed.
You can go to a legal consultant, and then you want to know who is the most effective. Let’s say you have a potential divorce. It’s not a certain divorce case, but it’s a potential divorce case. You don’t necessarily want to go to a local advocate because they are there to file a court case, to file a divorce. They can file a divorce for you, and this is what we will claim. But maybe you don’t necessarily want that. You may want a little more therapy or some counseling because you are not really wanting to go to court yet. I am not even sure I want to get a divorce. If I were to get a divorce, what are some things I need to think about? Then you would look at the firms that could help mediate my dispute, not escalate, but mediate. That is also important.
Basically, you go through the practice areas and ultimately you consider reputation and expertise. Now the question will be, how do you find out who does what and who is who?
Tim Elliot: This is the thing. Let me just jump in for a second because my mind is spinning, and I’m looking at you quizzically. It’s almost like you need somebody like you. You clearly know other lawyers. You have friends who are lawyers. You deal with other lawyers. You’re in the industry, the legal industry. You almost need a consultant to farm you out to the right person. You need someone to tell you who’s great, don’t you? It’s really difficult, even if you narrow it down. I need a very specific mediation for a divorce in a specific realm, exactly what you need to do, you’ve still got a huge choice of people that you go to, and then you have things like reputation and then you have expertise, and then you have friends’ recommendations, people who have been through it, all these kinds of things. It’s still a minefield even then, isn’t it?
Ludmila Yamalova: For sure. That’s to be expected because there are so many different people with so many different needs. Certain people, for example, have had lawyers representing them in one capacity or another on most of their matters in life, but all of a sudden, they have another legal matter and they don’t want to go to those lawyers for that very reason, not because those lawyers have door poorly, but because their matter should almost not be known by the other lawyers. There are so many nuances. Then in the end, as you said earlier, I think it’s really important to have that connection because there are so many factors and you have so much choice. People are recommending and you read their websites and read their qualifications, and they sound so exciting and interesting and important, but at the end, my personal position in terms of legal counsel and lawyers is that you go to a lawyer when you are already in a very difficult situation, whether you have a dispute or you want to avoid a dispute, but you are ultimately going to them for help. If you are going to them for help, you need to feel comfortable with them, and you need to feel they can actually help you.
Tim Elliot: That’s really interesting to me. We’ve got lots of questions and want to come to them in a minute, but there was one more point that I think is coming from this that we need to reinforce. There will be people listening to this that will think, I just want the lawyer, the attack dog, because I want to win. But actually, it’s about this person who understands what you need in terms of legal representation, who is on the same page as you, maybe the same age, maybe the same nationality. Who cares? It doesn’t matter. It’s that person on the same page, whether they’re an attack dog or not, and that all equates to comfort, understanding, and the realization that this is the right person who is going to look after my interests.
Ludmila Yamalova: Absolutely. I will tell you, I have many, many stories to share, but I’ll give a few recent examples. We have a client who we have been counseling on different matters, but he is a very intelligent, very erudite, very cognitive, and fairly young client, a young man, and because of his business and such, he uses different legal counsel, which I find is a bit of a badge of honor for me because it gives you that sense of comfort. He comes to me for specific matters that he knows that I am good at and that he wants to rely on my counsel for. For some other matters, he goes to other counsel. I think that keeps us all motivated, and I think it is healthy competition. It keeps us all honest and on our toes. That is all part of healthy professional development. For me personally, I feel that when he comes to me it is because he is coming for my particular expertise. I have been counseling him for a number of years now, but this time he came to me for a review of intellectual property agreements. He and his partners had actually gone to a different law firm, a very large law firm, an international and very reputable firm here, because they had worked with this firm in other countries as well, and they had a long history and this was their business law firm of choice, so they went and used that firm here as well on drafting the intellectual property agreement. They charged them, as a big international firm in a case like this would do, in dollars and it was a pretty heavy price tag. I’m not a cheap law firm by any stretch of the imagination either, but their price tag was fairly significant. That is fine and they agreed. They are intelligent and experienced businessmen, and so they chose them and agreed to the price, but what they were disappointed about was when the so-called finished product – but it was not a finished product – when they were given the draft intellectual property agreement, it was not at all what they were looking for. It was more of a template or a version they had used as a law firm over and over again with different clients with different matters. This was a small, although intelligent, young group of professionals, but it was a small and fairly nuanced business, and for them, what they needed was something very tailored to their business. To do that, you need to sit down with them and understand the business. By the way, it is a cryptocurrency business, so it’s not an old fashioned or well-established industry, but these businesspeople are very analytical, and they know exactly what they want. In order to draft an agreement that’s palatable to them, you need to sit down with them and discuss what they wanted and understand their needs. You also need to know quite well the practical applications of certain aspects of business in the U.A.E. because whatever you are going to put in the agreement, it should have those practical applications. You can have this very fancy document full of legalese and long paragraphs and phrases and many, many pages, but ultimately you are drafting this agreement so that it can be enforced where? If it’s in the U.A.E., it needs to be drafted with that in mind so that the agreement can actually be given effect in the country where you want to give it effect. If you are going to use a 60 to 70 page agreement that deals with intellectual property and licensing and copyright and cryptocurrency and algorithms and all that, and if you think that you can try to enforce this agreement in local courts, you are mistaken because this is not the right approach if you want to convince a local judge. By the way, this agreement will also have to be translated into Arabic if it were to be litigated in the local courts. These kinds of aspects must be considered. Ultimately, in that case the client was not happy. They paid the fees, and that asked me what they should do. We are afraid they will come after us. I said, listen, if you agreed to pay a certain price, it is easier to cut your losses, pay for what you have committed to, and then ultimately look for different counsel or finish up the agreement yourself on the basis of what they have given you. There is an example. They have come to me and I am counseling them and part of it they are working on themselves.
We had another case recently as well, a client that came to us, a foreign corporation based in Europe, and they were looking for a lawyer in the U.A.E. They also had gone to one of the big international law firms and had the same sort of a deal. It was a firm that they had used before. They were new to the U.A.E. and they don’t know how things work here, so they really needed somebody that is available to them, that can respond quickly to their queries and hold their hand and guide them. They didn’t get that from the big international firm either. They were quick to give them an engagement agreement, and all these KYC’s in place. But at the end, they weren’t available to them on a need basis. They went the old-fashioned way on Google to see who is a responsive law firm in Dubai, and this was how they found us.
These are examples that differentiate people and firms, but equally so, I might be recommended to someone and they come to me and look at my team and decide we are not big enough for them, too expensive for me, or they want more heavy lifting, more experienced lawyers , with impressive resumes, and you’re just not that, or I need more gray haired men, and by the way, people do look for that.
Tim Elliot: Is that true? I was going to ask you that. Is it the man in the gray pin-striped suit?
Ludmila Yamalova: That still exists. Yes. Obviously, I am not for everyone. There are some people who look for very specific expertise, let’s say project finance, which I don’t really have, or securities, on which I have some knowledge, but not in depth. Equally so, somebody could recommend me and my firm, but for what they need, I am just not the right one. These are examples of the factors that people look at and how they end up going to one place or another.
Tim Elliot: We have so many questions. I want to jump into them. But I take your first example to heart there. It would be really disappointing to engage a big firm, pay the big fee, and get an agreement where they’d forgotten to cut and paste the date, or they have got the wrong name. That, to me, it is about picking the right lawyer. We are trying to get to how you do that. However, we have lots of questions in. Can you have a lawyer from your country represent you in the U.A.E.? The first question.
Ludmila Yamalova: It depends. Yes, in short, because there are different ways of representation. If you are in the DIFC, for example, and your lawyer is in the U.K., the DIFC, and the ADGM as well, a lot of the British barristers have the right of audience before these courts, so they could be there. By the way, in the DIFC right now, a lot of the barristers are not all based in Dubai. They are all in England and they just appear for the hearings online or they will fly in for the hearing. There is that.
Now also if you want even the local courts, if you have a lawyer in your own country, they could work with a local advocate here. The local advocate would be the counsel on paper, of record, but they could be working together with the lawyer in your country. That is another way of doing it.
A third way is if you are representing yourself and then your lawyer in your own country is helping you to structure and draft.
It is all possible. You just need to bear in mind that you are still in a different jurisdiction and if you ask me to go and litigate, for example, or represent somebody in France or Australia, I would not be the best choice. I would not recommend that, and I think it would be a disservice to a client if they hired me to represent them in Australia or France or some jurisdiction where I am not practicing. But certainly, it’s possible and even in practical terms it’s been done before, and it can work.
Tim Elliot: That leads me to two questions. I’ll ask them both, but there are similarities. To what extent can you manage without a lawyer in the U.A.E. since so many of the systems are now based online? We have seen much of the legal system here go online in the last couple of years. Can I self-represent my case even if I have a lawyer? Is another question.
Ludmila Yamalova: Yes, but you definitely want to be in communication with your lawyer, especially if you have another lawyer and that lawyer is on record, then you certainly want to make sure that whatever it is that you do is communicated to the lawyer because they may not want you to be making submissions and making arguments while they are registered as your counsel of record and they have no say in it. There is that.
For example, if you have a lawyer, but not a registered lawyer with the courts, but a lawyer that you have used for counseling along the way, but not registered as your advocate for that particular case with the court, then you can register yourself. By the way, you can represent yourself these days, as you rightfully said, Tim, it is much easier because now for the most part all of us have access to the court website and not just the website, but our own case management and court database. It’s basically almost the same right and same access as lawyers get. In other words, now you can register with the courts and create your own login into the court portal, and then through that login, you basically access your entire court library. This is like a virtual courtroom and a virtual court library, if you will. Through this, you can see all the submissions that are being made in different cases. You might have multiple cases. It could be different cases and all the submissions by the other side, by your side, or by your lawyers, all the judges’ decisions, all the other statements or requests or comments made on the case, the hearings are also attended online, and all of the requests are made online. Basically, if you have access like that, you can absolutely make all your requests online. You don’t have to have a lawyer, by the way. That is also important to understand. In the Court of First Instance or the Court of Appeal, you don’t need to have a lawyer in the U.A.E., but before the Court of Cassation you will need to have an advocate to represent you. In the first two courts, you can be your own lawyer and your own party, but in that case, it is you who is listed as the party to the case, and you would be represented by yourself. Now you can have a lawyer counseling you along the way and recommending and drafting, but it will be your name and all of the submissions will be made by now. Now with having this digital access into the courtroom and the court library, you can basically make all requests and you can do everything on your own without having to have a lawyer.
Tim Elliot: Two questions. I think we’ve answered these really, but just for the purposes of being thorough, can expert lawyers litigate in the U.A.E.? And if you have a criminal case, can you consult a general practice law firm, or should you speak directly with a criminal lawyer?
Ludmila Yamalova: It’s interesting because we don’t really – I guess in certain countries, like in the West for sure, you have lawyers, law firms, and practices that are truly based on specific expertise and areas of practice, such as criminal lawyers. Criminal lawyers in the U.S., that is basically all they do is more or less criminal law, and in other countries as well. It is not so in the U.A.E. In the U.A.E. basically, as I mentioned earlier, in criminal cases you would need to have a representation before the authorities, so you will want to have a local advocate that ultimately is an Emirati national that has a license as a local advocate to represent you in court. You want that in criminal cases. You don’t have to always, but you want to. Therefore, all local advocates for the most part have experience in criminal matters. Not all like to necessarily practice in that area, but they all have the right and experience in criminal cases. Some may just opt to not practical criminal law. There are no specialized criminal lawyers, for example.
There is a lot of benefit and expertise that one can have as a lawyer in criminal law without actually being part of a local advocacy. For example, in many cases clients just need advice. For example, could there be a criminal case? Is this in violation of the criminal law? To know the U.A.E. criminal law, you don’t need to be a local advocate. Especially since the laws are changing here so much, we just had a new criminal law that was issued last year in 2022, and that is the U.A.E. crime and punishment law. That is a brand-new law. You don’t need to be an Arabic speaker to read and know the law. It is translated and available in English. Therefore, a lot of non advocates are also very much familiar with criminal law in the U.A.E. Plus, with the civil and criminal law in the U.A.E., there is a thin line between them. Therefore, a lot of civil lawyers, commercial lawyers, business lawyers in the U.A.E. ultimately also deal often with criminal matters just because the crossover is so frequent. For example, if somebody insulted, shouted at you in the middle of a supermarket, that is a criminal offense. Or, for example, someone defrauded online when doing some banking transactions. That is also a criminal offense. For things like this, you just want to go a lawyer that knows the law, knows how the system works, and also is able to guide you in terms of how this particular law will be applied in this instance. For that, you don’t need to be an advocate, but what you do need is experience in this country. Because a lot of these cases are very nuanced and very specific to the U.A.E., and they are also changing.
For example, until just recently, as an employer if you made a claim against your departing employee for breach of trust because they went and spoke with your competitor, in the past a breach of trust was a criminal offense. In the past you would have gone to the police and said this employee breached my trust because they went and talked to my competitor, and you did not have to present very much and you could easily open a criminal complaint against that employee. It would be investigated as a criminal complaint first. Ultimately, it might be dismissed as not having any merit to begin with, or as not being criminal, but that’s how it would start, and that was only because it was breach of trust.
Now, anything that stems from the employment relationship, for the most part, you have to go to civil court, and this is not criminal. In other words, you need to know how and have good experience and understanding of how the U.A.E. jurisprudence is forming, establishing, and evolving, and how it’s growing, because you need to be able to know these changes and advise your clients along the way.
Tim Elliot: There’s no substitute for local knowledge, is there, Ludmila? Wherever you go in the world. Two more questions. And then I have one final question to ask you for this particular podcast. Here’s one. What happens if you don’t reach the result you were expecting with your lawyer? Do you have to pay the remaining fee?
Ludmila Yamalova: It depends. In most cases, I’ll tell you, yes, you do. Because in most cases, it is contract based. Contractually, I have yet to see – maybe some do, but very rarely so – any kind of lawyers who would take clients on the representation of a guaranteed outcome. That’s just not possible. Over the years of my practice, I have had many people come and ask, can you guarantee? Absolutely not. Well, I need assurance. I can’t. I’m just a lawyer. All I can guarantee you is that I will do the best I can do within the framework of the law and my own abilities and experience. My team, we will do the best that we can do within these parameters, but I cannot guarantee anything else. The only thing you can guarantee in life is death and taxes, and that’s it. Therefore, any law firm that would have guaranteed a result is setting themselves up to fail. But I would say in most cases, a law firm could represent the likely potential outcome, but they would never guarantee it. Therefore, when you don’t receive your desired result, it depends on how you draft the terms of engagement. Often it happens that the lawyer, especially local advocates, they will say that a certain payment is received upon successful resolution of the case, and then you don’t have to pay if that last payment is contingent upon the results of the case. But in most cases, that is not the case.
Tim Elliot: It’s not as simple as that.
Ludmila Yamalova: It’s not as simple as that. No. Because lawyers can only legally do what the law allows us to do and ultimately it is in the hands of the judges. How can you guarantee something that is not in your control?
Tim Elliot: No. For sure. I get that question is kind of predicated on the no win, no fee that you see in other jurisdictions, which as far as I’m aware, doesn’t exist as a concept here, or does it?
Ludmila Yamalova: It did a little bit before and then less so. But now again legally it is now become possible. Legally, contingency arrangements are now expressly allowed. Before, they were actually expressly disallowed. Now they are expressly allowed, but they have to be properly documented and such, but yes, in many cases, they are not purely no win, no fee. In most cases there is some kind of payment involved and if the result is successful at the end there is an additional payment. But these are the only kind of arrangements here. Otherwise I have not yet seen here a no win, no fee, pure contingency based arrangement.
Tim Elliot: Okay. Final question. Final TikTok question, since we are still live. Can I change my mind about my legal representation at the last minute?
Ludmila Yamalova: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. You can always change your legal representation. You just need to be mindful of what that will do to your case. First, you need to make sure that you appoint the new lawyer timely and effectively to allow them to actually make a difference in your case and not make it worse. Also, that you deal with your previous lawyers correctly so that they can recuse themselves and de-register themselves from the case, and that means, obviously, you need to finalize that relationship properly. Yeah. Absolutely. Then also you need to advise the judge. You cannot ultimately use this, you are talking last minute, you cannot use this as an excuse to request more time and to delay proceedings. If it’s going to affect the flow or your case, you need to be able to present to the judge why it is that you are changing counsel at this point in time, so late in the game.
Tim Elliot: One final question I wanted to ask you, because the point of this podcast is to talk about how you find a lawyer and what you need to do. We’ve discussed lots of the nuances around that. But is there any system – I don’t know – is there a legal help line you could talk to? Is there a legal aid system, a pro bono system? Is there anything like that you could rely on?
Ludmila Yamalova: Well, there are a number of things you could rely on. For example, if you are looking for a registered lawyer, as I said earlier, the Dubai Legal Affairs Department or Ruler’s Court has a registry of local advocates, if that is what you want. You can go and look up a such and such lawyer that is registered. That is one way, but that is only about registration. It’s not about the quality of their work. But then if you want to, for example, you want a DIFC lawyer, the DIFC has its own registry. But again, that is less about quality and more about whether that person has a right of audience before a particular court. The same thing with arbitration. If you want to go to a Dubai-based arbitrator, there are certain arbitration associations that will have this listed. But again, it is more about listing registrations and affiliations versus quality.
With regard to quality, there are different platforms. For example, in the U.A.E. there is a platform we have used in the past called Legal Advice ME, and that is a database where people pose questions and you can answer as a lawyer and then on the basis of that there is some kind of reference. It is a reference-based platform where you can judge a potential lawyer on the basis of the answers they provide to you through this platform.
There is the old-fashioned way, the Google reviews. Those are the ones that we hear are the most organic as long as it is organic traffic, the most organic and the most reliable because that is actual people that supposedly giving you feedback. Because Google and its algorithms are designed in such a way that it is very difficult to fool the system, so these comments actually do have to be organic. That’s how we have had a few clients recently come to us and say they just rely on the old-fashioned methods, such as Google.
Then finally, perhaps less old-fashioned, is social media, like the TikTok platforms, Facebook groups, YouTube, and there is so much content that is provided by certain lawyers. This is what we do on TikTok and on all these other social media platforms. In that case, then you choose you lawyer on the basis of what you see, on the basis of the advice they provide, how they interact. Perhaps these days this is one of the new and more effective ways of choosing a lawyer because in that case you are relying, not because somebody said something, because of where they went to school, because of what award they might have won, but rather by what you see them do, how you see them interact, and what kind of advice they give. That is like a live cv or resume. That is what we are seeing now is one of the newer ways of people making decisions about which lawyer to hire.
Tim Elliot: We are coming full circle back to that comfort level thing, aren’t we? You’ve got a consultation in three minutes, by the way. I’ve just gotten a message, so we are going to wrap it up here. That is another episode of Lawgical, how to find a lawyer, the right lawyer, the best lawyer, the best English speaking, Russian, whatever it is, lawyer for you here in the U.A.E. As ever, our legal expert, the lawyer I would probably choose. Did I say that out loud? I did.
Ludmila Yamalova: Yes. Yes. You can say it again. You can say it again.
Tim Elliot: The lawyer I would choose, Ludmila Yamalova is the Managing Partner here at Yamalova & Plewka. Thank you.
Ludmila Yamalova: American qualified. U.S. qualified, Russian speaking lawyer who has been practicing in Dubai for the last, almost 15 years now.
Tim Elliot: That’s the same one. To find us at LYLAW, you can check out social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, of course, LinkedIn. There is a huge ever-growing library of hundreds of podcasts, all kinds of legal matters here in the U.A.E. answered. If you would like a legal consultation to get a question answered, or if you want to get a question answered in a future episode of Lawgical, click Contact button at LYLawyers.com.
