Herbert Smith has transferred London partner Stuart Paterson to the Dubai office to strengthen the firm's litigation and arbitration practice as the number of construction-related disputes surges in the region.
Paterson will work alongside Dubai-based dispute resolution partner, Craig Shepherd, on commercial and banking litigation, ADR and risk management issues. Shepherd said while the firm always planned to augment the Middle East practice, this appointment was made to meet recent demand. "It was not our plan to have a second disputes partner this quickly, although we'd always planned to build critical mass here. The original plan was to have a litigation partner in the second half of 2011, and we've now accelerated that."
Law firms across the Middle East have recently cited a massive increase in litigation and dispute work arising from the crisis-addled construction sector. Shepherd agreed that Herbert Smith was dealing with similar volumes, and added that while typically, the practice would handle a steady rate of work on disputes over pricing or employee compensation, the financial crisis has changed this. "Construction disputes are fairly standard beasts, but there are now more disputes related to the suspension or termination of projects, or shareholder disputes in relation to project funding. These issues are driven by questions of finance, rather than the typical subject matter of constructions disputes - for example, how much cement costs or unexpected discoveries in the land. These are not the same," he said.
Shepherd was in Hong Kong during the Asian financial crisis and said that just as litigation work grew exponentially, post-crisis in Hong Kong, Dubai is at the beginning of the boom. "As the market turned in Hong Kong, people then started to litigate and arbitrate over the disputes that had arisen during the downturn. That lasted many years, and I suspect that we will see the same here," he stated.
Herbert Smith's strategy in Asia and the Middle East has been to relocate lawyers to meet demand. The firm recently moved disputes partner Nick Peacock to Singapore, and real estate partner Nick Turner to head the Abu Dhabi real estate practice.
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