Qatar: Like Dubai 10 years ago?

A few years ago, when Dubai already had dozens of firms and Sheik Zayed Road was looking like it already had its full complement of skyscrapers, neighbouring Qatar was still a heavily restricted legal market with just a couple of significant (and licensed) foreign firms - Simmons & Simmons and Patton Boggs - and a couple of noticeably strong local firms - Gebran Majdalany and Hassan A Alkhater - and a distinctly low-rise city skyline. Then the LNG really started flowing, the government needed to invest the proceeds, an investment agency was set up (the Qatar Investment Authority), the investment banks arrived, and the scene was set for the legal market to take off.

Now at least five more foreign firms (Eversheds, Denton Wilde Sapte, Swiss firm LALIVE, Clyde & Co, Salans, the Middle East-aggressive DLA Piper, and Latham & Watkins) have set up in downtown Doha, which is even more pocked with construction sites, and even shorter on office space, than the region's other fast-growing cities. Indeed, office space seems to be a major constraint on firm growth here. "We'd double in size overnight if we could find more office space," says Eversheds' office chief Chris Jobson.
According to Jobson, the influx of lawyers raised the bar for the local profession, and the local firms, now competing with foreigners backed by hundreds of colleagues and giant international networks, quickly lost prominence. Meanwhile, the standard of legal work soared. Qatar is currently far less saturated with firms than Dubai, and undercutting is less a feature of the market here: the constraints to growth are on the supply rather than the demand side. Office space is at a premium, and young lawyers are less inclined to live in Doha than in 'glitzy' Dubai.

The key to the future of the legal market in Qatar though, according to Jobson, is how well the Qatar Financial Center fares in the race for regional financial dominance. Unlike the dual systems such as that of Dubai (one market regulated along local lines, and one (the DIFC) according to international best practice), the Qatar Central Bank and the Qatar Financial Center are adopting an 'integrated financial regulator' approach. This strategy, says Jobson, will be fundamental to where the Qatar market ends up.

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