Gide Loyrette Nouel is closing all of its Middle East offices, and the firm's Senior Partner said that the writing was on the wall for firms in Dubai. He told The Lawyer that it "is shrinking dramatically so whatever remains of work in construction and, in some cases project finance, would naturally go to those English firms that have been there for ages".
It's tough news for the poor buggers who are going to lose their jobs, of course. But it's hard to supress the schadenfreude that accompanies the woes of this artificial state.
Dubai never sat entirely comfortably with many lawyers. OK, it's jolly nice to get a tax free salary. But the "glamorous" expat lifestyle of flitting between an air conditioned apartment in some stupid steel and glass penis, an air conditioned office in another stupid steel and glass penis and an air conditioned hotel bar in yet another stupid steel and glass penis can quickly lose its lustre.
Particularly when said penises are built and maintained on Indian slave labour. Propping up an essentially feudal society that supports itself by paying its disenfranchised masses a few bucks a day is, at the very least, a morally grey area.
Still, the angst can be washed away by getting mashed on G&Ts and picking up hookers every night. As long as you don't do it in public, in which case you'll be banged up. A Freshfields trainee was locked up a few weeks back for trying to find his drunken way home one night. A Hogan Lovells partner was jailed for running a red light. Seriously. 20 days doing bend and stretch in a hell hole of a jail for running a red light.
So maybe it's not the end of the world if lawyers have to earn their crust in countries that allow couples to kiss in public and don't hand down ten year jail terms for consensual gay sex. And at least they won't bump into a holidaying Wayne Rooney...
It's tough news for the poor buggers who are going to lose their jobs, of course. But it's hard to supress the schadenfreude that accompanies the woes of this artificial state.
Dubai never sat entirely comfortably with many lawyers. OK, it's jolly nice to get a tax free salary. But the "glamorous" expat lifestyle of flitting between an air conditioned apartment in some stupid steel and glass penis, an air conditioned office in another stupid steel and glass penis and an air conditioned hotel bar in yet another stupid steel and glass penis can quickly lose its lustre.
Particularly when said penises are built and maintained on Indian slave labour. Propping up an essentially feudal society that supports itself by paying its disenfranchised masses a few bucks a day is, at the very least, a morally grey area.Still, the angst can be washed away by getting mashed on G&Ts and picking up hookers every night. As long as you don't do it in public, in which case you'll be banged up. A Freshfields trainee was locked up a few weeks back for trying to find his drunken way home one night. A Hogan Lovells partner was jailed for running a red light. Seriously. 20 days doing bend and stretch in a hell hole of a jail for running a red light.
So maybe it's not the end of the world if lawyers have to earn their crust in countries that allow couples to kiss in public and don't hand down ten year jail terms for consensual gay sex. And at least they won't bump into a holidaying Wayne Rooney...
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The rest of the article is based on two recycled news stories - the Freshfields trainee had been thrown out of a club and not paid his cab fare. Any why shouldn't he or the Hogan Lovells partner be locked up for breaking the law? Is it unreasonable to be locked up for (in the case of the partner) for doing something which could have killed somebody? Dubai had one of the worst accident rates in the world until they clamped down on it.
Apart from the property market (which is a total mess) things are slowing turning around in Dubai. It is far from finished. Things have even improved for those construction workers still there - no-one's forced them to fly out to build. I'm sure they'd sooner be doing something else, but we should be questioning why India isn't doing more for them, not why the UAE is taking advantage of a neighbouring pool of cheap labour. It isn't so different from employing Eastern Europeans to pick fruit and veg in Lincolnshire, and Asians to drive our minicabs....
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Things are recovering in Dubai (albeit slowly) and it remains the main hub for commerce in the Middle East. It is hard to see that really changing whatever Abu Dhabi or Qatar might like to think.
The Middle East will remain a hugely important market over the coming decade and Dubai will do OK on the back of that so the idea that the international law firms are going to shut up shop en masse and go home is a very long way removed from reality.
As for the "stupid steel and glass penis" jibe well, its a new city and new cities do tend to be full of new buildings, and some of these may indeed (shock horror) be made out of steel and glass in much the same way that many new buildings in London, New York or Hong Kong are.
That is not to say that there isn't much that is wrong with the place of course. Its laws on sexual behavior are certainly unacceptable by modern standards but I wonder how many of those who are quick to condemn people for "supporting" a country with such laws either by working there or traveling there as a tourist spent their gap years on a beach in Goa conveniently overlooking (or rather having no idea about) the law providing for a 10 year prison sentence for homosexuality which was then in force in India (and only overturned in the last 18 months). I wonder how many boycott the Maldives (where being gay remains a crime).
As for being "a society that supports itself by paying its disenfranchised masses a few bucks a day". It should be remembered that the disenfranchised masses that reside there and provide this "support" are not so much theirs as those of their neighbours. One has to ask why so many people are lining up to leave India to come and work in these conditions while in Mumbai the Indian billionaires sip Krug in their very own steel and glass "penises" and new space ships are planned in New Delhi.
Overall, I am not quite sure what Dubai did to attract so much more venom than any other emerging market that is somewhat less than a liberal democracy (i.e. most of them). Islamophobia? I don't think so actually. I suspect it is that they represent what the British hate more than anything else: New Money.