Cashed-up emirates beckon Aussies

By Chris Nicholson
THE Middle East has emerged as the last great hope for Australian lawyers seeking their fortunes offshore.

Flush with cash from high oil prices, the booming Gulf states have an insatiable appetite for lawyers who can help them become global commercial and financial hubs.

Relatively junior lawyers can take home up to $210,000 tax-free.

Building modern diversified economies virtually from scratch has provided enormous opportunities for the international law firms that have descended on the region.

"The Middle East market has been the most voracious in its appetite for lawyers in the last 24 months," says Cam Thomson, associate director at legal recruitment firm Naiman Clarke.

"If you look at what's going on there, in terms of the nature and type of the economic activity, if there was to be a market where there is a recession-proof boom, then that's where it's occurring."

And Australian lawyers have been flocking to the Middle East, drawn not only by the generous salaries but the opportunities to work on some of the biggest and most complex deals in the world.

Demand for lawyers is strongest from high-profile Dubai, says Jennifer Lee, of recruitment firm Naiman Clarke. It is closely followed by the neighbouring emirate of Abu Dhabi, which relaxed operating restrictions on foreign law firms last year.

In Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the strongest demand is for lawyers with experience in the sectors closely allied with building modern commercial and financial centres from the ground up.

Other Gulf states are seeing an increased demand for international lawyers. Qatar is also repositioning itself as a commercial and financial services centre and has huge demand for lawyers with experience in the energy, construction, technology, media and telecommunications, corporate and banking and finance sectors.

Bahrain is a financial centre with demand for project finance and general banking and finance specialists, especially those with experience in Islamic finance.

And the huge Saudi energy industry continues to fuel demand for corporate and project finance lawyers in the capital, Riyadh.

Local candidates with hands-on transactional experience, particularly those coming from a top-tier law firm in Australia, are the most sought-after in the Middle East.

But experience is very important and employers are becoming more open to candidates from smaller firms.

Salaries throughout the region are generous and tax-free, but they are subject to major variations, even within the most popular markets of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Firms elsewhere in the region have raised their salary packages to attract quality candidates, Lee says.

In such a competitive market for legal talent, most firms offer attractive bonus packages that can add up to 30 per cent to a lawyer's base salary.

But for many lawyers, the prospect of working on some of the biggest transactions in the world is an even more attractive proposition than the salaries.

That was the case for Stephen Webb, a former consultant at Mallesons Stephen Jaques in Brisbane who accepted an offer from DLA Piper a year ago to move to the Gulf.

He is now managing partner of the firm's Abu Dhabi office. "I'm a projects lawyer, in the construction and project finance area, and this is the centre of the universe for what I do. There's just so much going on and the scale of the work is quite phenomenal," Webb says.

Before joining Mallesons in 2005, he was a partner in the Hong Kong office of London-based firm Clifford Chance, and he believes the growth prospects of the Middle East considerably outpace what is happening in Asia.

"It's something that I can't see happening anywhere else," he says. "I lived in Hong Kong when the whole China boom was under way but I've never seen anything quite like this."

Webb says much of his time is taken up by interviewing candidates.

"The growth is quite phenomenal. We opened our office in Dubai just over two years ago and the plan was to have 30 lawyers after three years but we're very close to hitting 100 now," he says.

"For Abu Dhabi, we've now got 10 lawyers on the ground, with another five on the way.

"We're building up our clients and firm size as there is a real desire on the part of clients to now have work done here on the ground.

"Our plan is to double or triple in size by the end of the year."

London-based firm Trowers & Hamlins opened an office in Dubai in the early 1990s, and with that head start it has become one of the leading international law firms in the Middle East.

It has five offices and 160 staff in the region.

The Middle East is so important to the growth of the firm that in January, the firm's head of human resources, Malcolm Lewis, moved from London to Dubai.

Lewis says the firm's demand for new lawyers will continue for the foreseeable future, and that Australian lawyers remain at the top of his wish list.

"There really is very strong demand here right across all areas and we've got a pretty successful track record with Aussies."

Another factor in favour of Australian lawyers is that Gulf states have generally adopted a legal framework based on common law, with former British chief justice, Lord Woolf, setting up Qatar's new civil and commercial court.