Hand-out visitor maps available in the expanding airports of the Gulf region have a key explaining which symbol means hotel and which means shopping mall and so on: not unusual. What is unusual, however, is that sometimes the key has two separate colour schemes - one for real hotels and malls, and another for hotels and malls under construction. And well they might. For as the visitor emerges, blinking, into the diabolical heat and blinding sun, he finds that as many points of reference are building sites as are buildings. And that visitor cannot rely on any conventional notion of a coastline - as an immovable constant placing parameters on human settlement - to aid his navigation round the Gulf's new urban centres. Here, coastlines change faster than the tides that now wash impotently against hundreds of kilometres of reclamation walls. Dubai has its famed Palm developments spreading their fronds into the azure waters; Abu Dhabi has its financial and residential Saadiyat Island; Bahrain has relinquished its fine corniche in favour of the ultra-sleek Bahrain Bay development; and Doha has its multiuse, multi-billion-dollar Pearl complex. 

Cutting to the chase, the Gulf is going off. Another five years of oil & gas revenues - this time boosted by record high prices - have created a lake of liquidity in a region that has the need, the wherewithal, the ambition and the sheer will to make things happen. Law firms have for some time been feasting on big-ticket oil & gas, project finance, infrastructure and banking & finance work. But never to the current degree, and never across so many centres of activity. The numbers speak for themselves. ALB counts at least 18. And among the new arrivals, few predict anything less than further rapid growth - even doubling of lawyer numbers - over the next two years. Demand is still strong in the 'traditional' practice areas - projects, energy - but it is being supplemented in many other areas: outbound M&A, telecoms/media/technology, and especially Shariah compliant finance are among the areas mentioned by firms as rising to prominence.

Key to understanding the practices of firms operating in the region (even those with only a Dubai presence), and the reason they are growing so fast, is recognising they are here to serve the whole of the Gulf and way beyond. The spectacular construction might be taking place mostly along the Gulf coast, but the petrochemical plants, the water projects and the infrastructure deals are taking place anywhere from Sudan to Siberia, and lawyers based in the livable new cities of the Gulf are working on the lot.

Continued: Gold-paved streets and tough times back home: Recipe for market overcrowding?

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