Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced that it has launched Westlaw Gulf, a new legal research service created specifically for the legal professionals in the Middle East.
The new Westlaw Gulf service offers a full suite of legal research tools and an unrivaled database of legislation and cases for lawyers operating across the Gulf region. The service is built upon state-of-the-art Westlaw technology, and modeled after market leading Thomson Reuters legal information services in the United Kingdom, United States, India, Asia and South America.
Westlaw Gulf provides lawyers with expertly written English translations of over 8,000 of the most commercially relevant and widely used laws from major Gulf States, including Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. In addition, the service includes a searchable database of 23,000 laws from across the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and 3,000 laws from Qatar, providing lawyers with access to thousands of translated principles of cases from key courts, reducing valuable time spent on lengthy legal research. In addition, Westlaw Gulf provides access to important legal principles from courts such as Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts, Dubai Court of Cassation, Abu Dhabi Court of Cassation,
and Union Supreme Court (Federal).
A unique feature of the Westlaw Gulf service is the assistance offered to users who have translation and research requests. In the event a user cannot find the translation of the law they require, the Westlaw Gulf team will work to provide an accurate translation within 72 hours of the initial request. If the user has subject-specific questions or needs to know about regional developments, the Westlaw Gulf team will also be on hand to provide assistance.
Additional features of the service include:
* Alerts updating users of the latest legal developments across the Middle East
* Daily reports on key legal stories in the local press and breaking news alerts
* Custom free-text and category searching, which enables users to search within legislation, cases, citations, journals, books and news sources
* Translations of legislation on request, free of charge
Helen Owers, chief development officer, Strategic Markets for Thomson Reuters, said: “Westlaw Gulf will radically improve the way that lawyers work in the Gulf by offering the most comprehensive source of laws covering the region. Westlaw Gulf will increase the speed at which a lawyer can work and will be a real boost to the accuracy and depth of information that lawyers can access on Gulf law.” She noted that most beta users have been converted to customers. “A number of law firms have already subscribed to this service, including four out of the five magic circle law firms,” she added.
“During the past several years, Thomson Reuters has made significant investments in products for professionals in the Gulf region,” said Jim Smith, chief operating officer for Thomson Reuters. “I am especially excited about Westlaw Gulf, which I believe will not only bring transformational change to legal research and the practice of law in the Middle East, but also enable attorneys and other legal professionals to experience the law like never before.”
Westlaw Gulf will be featured at the International Bar Association annual meeting in Dubai, Oct. 30-Nov. 4.
