ELS
The Engineering Leader
Shortage Is Getting Worse.
Here’s How to Hire
Ahead of It.
Business Bay and ADGM are scaling faster than the legal talent pipeline can follow. Here’s what that means for firms trying to hire — and for candidates thinking of making the move.
The Setup
Three years ago, if a Magic Circle firm wanted to hire a senior disputes lawyer in Dubai, they had a shortlist of thirty. Today that same search produces eight — and four of them are already in process with a competitor.
This is not a temporary tightening. It is a structural shift. And understanding why it happened — and where it goes next — is the difference between firms that hire well and firms that lose candidates to offers they never even knew were on the table.
340%
6–8 wks
AED 72k
Average monthly package for a Senior Associate in Business Bay— up 28% from 2022
What Actually Changed
The conventional explanation is simple: more firms opened, demand went up. That’s true but incomplete. What changed the dynamic permanently is the combination of three simultaneous forces hitting the same talent pool at the same time.
First: supply didn’t scale with demand. The Gulf legal market has always relied on lateral hires from London, Hong Kong, and New York. But post-pandemic, fewer senior lawyers are willing to relocate without extraordinary packages — and the extraordinary packages have pushed market rates to levels that compress the spread between what firms will offer and what candidates will accept.
Second: in-house teams became a genuine competitor to private practice. ADGM’s growth as a financial hub created a new buyer of senior legal talent that didn’t exist five years ago. A Deputy General Counsel role at a sovereign fund paying AED 85,000 a month is now a more attractive proposition to many candidates than partnership track at a mid-tier firm. Private practice didn’t lose ground to other law firms. It lost ground to its own clients.
The firms winning this market aren’t offering more money. They’re moving faster, deciding sooner, and treating the hire as a business priority — not a procurement process.
Sahar Al-Rashidi · Gilbert Lennard Dubai
Third: Saudi Arabia opened. Vision 2030’s legal reforms created overnight demand for international law firms in Riyadh. That demand drew from the same Dubai pool. Suddenly the same candidate who was choosing between two Dubai firms is now fielding a call from a firm in Riyadh offering a tax-free package that Dubai can’t match on raw numbers.
What This Means If You're Hiring
Speed is now the primary differentiator
In a market where the strongest candidates are typically available for six to eight weeks before accepting an offer, firms that run four-stage interview processes are structurally disadvantaged. We regularly see firms lose their first-choice candidate between the second and third interview — not because the candidate chose someone else deliberately, but because another firm moved to offer while they were still deliberating.
- First interview within five working days of receiving the shortlist
- Maximum two stages for senior lateral hires — three for partnership
- Offer within 48 hours of final stage — not 'subject to board approval'
- Package benchmarked to current market, not last year's survey data
- Relocation support structured before the offer — not as an afterthought
The package conversation has changed
Salary benchmarks from 2023 and early 2024 are materially out of date. A Senior Associate in disputes who was earning AED 55,000 a month eighteen months ago is now earning or expecting AED 68,000 to 72,000. Firms using historical data to anchor their offers are losing candidates to firms using current data.
The single most expensive mistake we see is a firm declining to match market rate on base salary and offering a performance bonus instead. Candidates in this market are not taking risk on a bonus they can’t bank. They’re taking the firm that pays them what they’re worth today.
What This Means If You're Moving
If you’re a senior lawyer in London, Singapore, or Hong Kong considering the GCC move — the window is real, but the terms have changed. The market is strong enough that you have genuine leverage. It is not strong enough that you can afford to run a slow, exploratory process.
The candidates doing best in this market are the ones who enter it knowing exactly what they want: the practice area, the firm type, the package floor, and the lifestyle requirements. Vague exploratory conversations produce vague outcomes. Specific conversations with specific firms about specific roles — run properly, with full market intelligence on both sides — produce offers.
The lawyers who do best in this market enter it with a clear view of what they want and a willingness to move quickly when the right role emerges. Months of exploration produce nothing. Weeks of focused process produce offers.
Gilbert Lennard · Market Observation, Q1 2026
The tax conversation
Zero income tax remains the structural advantage of the UAE and Saudi markets. For a senior lawyer earning AED 80,000 a month in Dubai, the net equivalent in London — accounting for income tax, NI, and cost of living — would require a gross salary of approximately £210,000. That comparison remains compelling and it’s not going away.
What candidates underestimate is the housing market. Premium Dubai apartments are tighter and more expensive than they were two years ago. Building realistic cost-of-living assumptions into the package negotiation — not discovering them six weeks after accepting — is the difference between a move that works and a move that doesn’t.
The Next 18 Months
Saudi Arabia will continue pulling talent from Dubai. That’s not a threat to the Dubai market — it’s an expansion of the regional talent circuit. The lawyers moving to Riyadh today will, in many cases, return to Dubai in three to five years at a more senior level. The region is building the kind of career ecosystem that London and Hong Kong have had for decades.
Compensation will keep rising — not at the pace of the last three years, but steadily. The floor has risen and it won’t come down. Firms that benchmark annually and adjust proactively will retain their talent. Firms that don’t will fund the packages of firms that do.
And the firms that build direct relationships with the senior talent pool — not through reactive searches when a seat opens, but through ongoing intelligence and genuine engagement — will have a structural advantage that compounds over time.
That’s not a pitch. It’s an observation. The market rewards preparation. It always has.
S
Sahar Al-Rashidi
Partner · Dubai