When do I have to appoint property lawyer in Dubai?

The potential risk involved with giving you approval on legal assessment which gives you as an investor chance to decide to go with this deal or to go to another one.

It is unfortunate that sometimes we find clients that could easily avoid the legal aggravation if he could just appoint an appropriate advocate in Dubai to review the transaction in advance and give advice. Some clients would ask, "what is the best clause to put in my Sale and Purchase contract?" we tell them that it’s not just about contract clauses.

Although the contract clauses is important, it wouldn’t be of any value if you did not make sure that you are dealing with the proper owner of the property, or if the representative signing the contract as attorney doesn’t have the same authority. Or if his Power of Attorney is revoked before he signs the contract with the client or it is not valid anymore. Such scenarios would lead to potential litigation, many litigation’s we witness in Dubai could be avoided if the client would have consulted a suitable lawyer in Dubai. Some clients would say that due to lack of time they were unable to find a lawyer in which I consider quite risky decision especially now a day’s many lawyers are available online or through WhatsApp services.

If a person who signed the Sale and Purchase Agreement doesn’t have the right to sell the property, which would be considered as a fraud because it is a breach of Article 399 of UAE Penal Code.

It is One of the unfortunate events we find in property cases is that will have the client undergo criminal proceedings and filing criminal cases in addition civil cases to take his money back. In our previous scenario,

Does the client have to appoint beside his real estate lawyer or a special criminal lawyer to file for a fraud in Real estate transaction or it?

Such type of cases where the client says that he has already appointed a lawyer, should check his field of specialty, is he an advocate in Dubai or does he work in one of Dubai Law firms, does his law firm have the right of audience before the UAE courts or not.

If the lawyer is working in one of the advocacy firms listed in the list of the law firms in Dubai courts, then the firms is capable of representing you before Dubai Courts and proceed with the criminal cases on behalf his client. But if he is a legal consultant working under a legal consultancy firm that would means that he doesn’t have the right to a court audience, and there is a serious need to appoint different Legal firm to proceed with the criminal case.

In the past 15 years, we witness a lot of property lawyers in Dubai who favored to proceed with the civil arbitration cases without filing the criminal complaint just to save the client’s money together with not appointing any criminal lawyer simply because those property lawyer and their firm doesn’t have any right of court audience.

At Al Rowaad, our firm is permitted to a court audience, and our local lawyers have already represented plenty of clients from the Real Estate litigation field with cases on the civil disputes along with filing criminal complaints when we found it applicable to support our client’s litigation.

Dr. Hassan Elhais is a legal consultant in Dubai, specializing in the drafting of all statements of claim, memos and consultation on litigation of all manner.