Practice
About this area

UAE court work is the part of disputes practice where procedural discipline determines outcome more often than the merits.

Our litigation caseload sits squarely in the UAE onshore courts. Recent and ongoing work includes a forced-liquidation and recovery action under Article 308 of Federal Decree-Law No. 32 of 2021, judicial dissolution and execution proceedings before the Abu Dhabi Commercial Courts, an unfair-dismissal claim before the Abu Dhabi First Instance Court Employment Division, a labour cassation appeal before the Federal Supreme Court, criminal extradition proceedings in Dubai, tenancy and administrative-decision appeals, and a portfolio of FTA-related tax disputes spanning first instance and cassation.

We treat jurisdiction, governing law, and the interaction between arbitration clauses and court proceedings as live issues to be litigated — not assumptions to be inherited from the contract drafter. Where the right forum is contested, we contest it.

“Onshore court work is decided as much by what is filed in the first thirty days as by what is argued at the hearing.”

— Pillar III · Disputes

Interim relief, attachment, and post-judgement enforcement are coordinated as one workstream with the substantive claim, so that a favourable judgement translates into actual recovery — including travel bans, banking attachments, and execution against UAE-located assets.

The work, in detail

Four matter types we handle in litigation.

Commercial and contract disputes.

We handle commercial-contract disputes in the Abu Dhabi and Dubai onshore courts — breach claims, debt recovery, distribution and supply disagreements, and post-contractual performance disputes — from demand correspondence through to cassation. Our recent matters include cross-border debt recovery and shareholder injunction proceedings.

Corporate, shareholder, and dissolution claims.

Shareholder and corporate disputes are a recurring area of work — including a judicial dissolution before the Abu Dhabi Courts that resulted in a dissolution order plus compensation, and ongoing shareholder-injunction and director-conflict matters across ADGM and onshore entities. We coordinate the corporate-law and litigation strands of these disputes as a single strategy.

Employment and labour cassation.

Employment litigation in the UAE moves quickly through three court tiers and rewards preparation. We have represented respondents and senior employees through the Abu Dhabi First Instance Court Employment Division and through to Federal Supreme Court cassation, including matters with twenty-five years of service exposure and post-employment restrictive-covenant enforcement.

Tax, regulatory, and enforcement.

We act in the UAE's growing tax-dispute caseload — FTA-related claims and cassation appeals — and in administrative-decision appeals before sectoral bodies. On the enforcement side, we run execution files including dissolution, attachment, and travel-ban applications so that our litigation outcomes are realised, not just recorded.

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