Court representation in the UAE
We will appear for you once a matter is listed: the filings the court expects, the hearings themselves, and the steps that turn a judgment in your favour into money you actually receive.
Filing a claim
Подача требования
5%, from $1,500
5%, от 1 500 $
An appeal notice
Апелляционная жалоба
$5,000
5 000 $
Judges on appeal
Судей в апелляции
at least three
не менее трёх
When you need representation in court
A date has been set
Somebody filed and a hearing exists. From here the timetable belongs to the court, every deadline in it is real, and none of them moves for you.
You were served and have to answer
An answer filed late, or filed in the wrong form, costs more than the argument it contains, and sometimes costs the argument entirely.
The other side went first
They chose the moment and the forum. What is left is whether they chose it correctly, and that objection has a short window.
You have a judgment and no money
The decision is not the payment. Turning one into the other is a separate application, with its own filing, its own fee and its own timetable.
An appeal is being considered
Appealing costs a fixed amount and buys a day of hearing. Whether the point is the kind an appeal court will take is the question worth asking first.
What you get
- Filings in the court’s own form
- Someone in the room for you
- Evidence prepared to be used
- The cost of each step
- A route from judgment to payment
What court representation covers
Once a matter is listed, the work changes shape. Nothing depends on what could have been arranged: it depends on filing the right document on the right day, in the form the court publishes, and on being in the room when it is discussed.
Choosing the forum before any of this is dispute resolution strategy. The demand itself, and the reply to one, live on claims and responses; running the matter as a whole is commercial disputes.
What the court asks for
- The claim or the defence in the court’s own format, with the fee paid at filing rather than at the hearing.
- Evidence in a usable form: documents that can be authenticated, witnesses who can be produced, and translations where they are required.
- Attendance at what the timetable contains — case management, a pre-trial review and the trial itself.
- Applications made in time, because a step taken late is often a step that cannot be taken at all.
What it costs to be there
In the Dubai financial free zone the price of filing follows the size of the claim. Up to and including 500,000 dollars it is 5% of the sum claimed, and never less than 1,500 dollars, and larger claims move onto a published scale. That fee is not only for the paper: it covers in-chambers meetings, one case management conference, one pre-trial review and up to three days of trial, with anything beyond charged separately.
The ladder, and where it stops
The court of first instance sits as a single judge. An appeal goes to a court of at least three judges, presided over by the chief justice or the most senior of them, and filing an appellant’s or a respondent’s notice costs 5,000 dollars, which includes a one-day hearing. That court lays down the final order: no appeal lies from its decision.
Getting paid afterwards
Enforcement is its own application. Enforcing that court’s own judgment inside the zone costs 100 dollars, and other enforcement applications there cost 300 dollars. These are one court’s published rules; the onshore courts of the emirates run their own procedure and their own tariff, and we check which of them your matter actually falls under. In those onshore courts the language of the process is Arabic, and a party or a witness who does not speak it is heard through an interpreter.
Sources: the single judge, the 5% scale and what the fee includes — the court of first instance; the three judges, the 5,000 dollars and the finality — the court of appeal; the enforcement fees — enforcement, published by the courts of the Dubai financial free zone; the language of the process onshore and the interpreter — the UAE civil procedure law.
Stages of work
The matter is listed and you are the defendant.
The answer goes in on time and in the court’s form, and any objection to the court hearing it at all is raised at the first opportunity, because that objection does not keep.
The matter is listed and you brought it.
The claim, the fee and the evidence are prepared together, so that the first hearing is about the dispute instead of about what is missing from the file.
The case settles before trial.
Most of what is filed early is what makes a settlement possible at all. The terms are written to be enforceable on their own, so that a second dispute does not grow out of the first.
It goes to trial.
Up to three days of hearing sit inside the filing fee; beyond that each day is charged. We tell you which of your points need a witness and which can be proved from documents alone.
The judgment goes the wrong way.
An appeal is a fixed cost and a single day before at least three judges. We will say plainly whether the point is one an appeal court can take, because that court’s decision ends the matter.
The judgment goes your way and nothing arrives.
Enforcement starts as a fresh application against something the other side owns, and where that something sits elsewhere the route changes with it.
Everything we do around disputes sits under Dispute Resolution.
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