How does Hamdan Al Shamsi Lawyers & Legal Consultants’ distinguish its services from other legal service providers in the UAE?
Our focus on hiring a talented team of like-minded and commercially aware lawyers helps us distinguish our services from other players in the market. Our founding partner is an Emirati UK law school graduate registered as a lawyer in the UAE who has believed in recruiting both common law and civil law qualified lawyers from 18 different countries to provide tailored and pragmatic solutions for our clientele.
Visa reforms, introduced recently, have accelerated economic activities in the UAE, drawing businesses from across the world. This has also opened doors to a lot of disputes and cases requiring arbitration. How do you help companies resolve conflicts through arbitration?
One of the backbones of any modern legal practice in the UAE is a strong arbitration practice. As most arbitration centres and governing law clauses are based on the laws of England and Wales, our arbitration team has hired exceptionally talented lawyers from that jurisdiction. The breadth of the work before the recent reforms was focused primarily on construction disputes but we have seen an increase in various other disputes.
What makes our practice different is that we work with both transactional and litigation lawyers to not only ensure that our clients’ commercial interests are protected but also anticipate any potential disputes and prevent them from transpiring.
The UAE has announced the implementation of corporate tax from June 2023. How could businesses prepare for corporate taxation?
Whilst we await the substantive corporate tax legislation to be introduced, we have been informed of several important points that we have been able to advise our clients on. More specifically we have been providing restructuring advice in anticipation of the implementation of the new corporate tax regime with a focus on utilising existing free zones to ensure that not all operations are exposed to the blanket 9 per cent rate. Our firm has qualified tax lawyers to assist in these regards.
How could your lawyers resolve complex matters related to company acquisition, mergers and restructuring?
One of the key issues facing companies during an acquisition, merger or restructuring cycle is ensuring that a complete due diligence is done and that any discrepancies are reflected in the suite of legal documents. More importantly, what makes our practice different is that we work with both transactional and litigation lawyers to not only ensure that our clients’ commercial interests are protected but also anticipate any potential disputes and prevent them from transpiring.
Please share some details on your services for family inheritance, estate and succession planning and wills?
Our Shari’a law specialists are able to provide advice to Muslim clients in relation to family inheritance and can advise on the utilisation of ADGM and DIFC Foundations as another estate planning vehicle. Our DIFC team is also registered with the probate department at DIFC to draft and register wills.
As with the majority of businesses, the legal profession has been forced to accelerate its digitisation following the pandemic. What initiatives have you taken to streamline your operations and enhance your services?
Our firm has always prioritised the use of technology in our practice. Under the vision of our founder, we have developed an in-house legal matter management software that allows for our teams to work together on the same matter and documents, insert our time entries and generate data on our lawyer utilisation.
This in turn allows us to be competitive with other firms, whilst ensuring visibility on areas where our teams should prioritise their focus.
