Built for the Gulf: How Davidson & Co. Is Shaping Legal AI for the GCC
Davidson & Co., its technology adviser @GROUP, and August are building legal AI for the practice and business of law in Dubai, the UAE and the wider Gulf.
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Most legal AI products are designed around English and American law and later adapted for other markets. Gulf practitioners work with different courts, registries, regulators and drafting conventions, and adapted tools tend to miss them.
Davidson & Co. wanted a platform built around its own lawyers and clients in Dubai. The firm asked its technology adviser, @GROUP, to assess what it needed from AI and which platforms could provide it. @GROUP recommended August because the firm wanted close, hands-on support. The August team arrived in Dubai within two weeks to start building for GCC practice. We think this is how legal AI in the region should be built.
A firm that competes on knowing its clients
Jonathon Davidson founded Davidson & Co. in Dubai in 2008. The firm advises businesses and individuals across the Gulf on disputes, corporate and private client matters. Jonathon is a disputes lawyer with long experience in the region.
Clients stay with the firm because its lawyers understand their businesses and answer quickly. Jonathon wanted AI that would give his lawyers more capacity and let the firm offer new services on terms it sets. He also wanted a tool that fits the way Gulf lawyers already work.
“We’ve always won work by knowing our clients well and moving quickly. The question for us is whether a small team of lawyers like ours can serve our clients as effectively as firms much bigger than us.”
Jonathon Davidson — Founding Partner, Davidson & Co.
What the teams have built
We follow the same sequence at every firm. We find where AI should start, build August around the firm’s own precedent and standards, roll it out, and keep building after launch. More of that work than usual started from nothing at Davidson & Co., because a London workflow moved to Dubai leaves out most of what a GCC matter requires. The firm’s lawyers set the priorities and supply the regional expertise. @GROUP supports the integration, and August’s engineers build alongside the firm’s team.
Training sessions with the firm’s lawyers identified the repeatable tasks worth turning into agents. The aim is to codify the firm’s expertise into workflows the whole team can run, so lawyers spend their hours checking and improving drafts. The work so far covers four areas.
Private client and wills. A client questionnaire feeds a will-drafting agent, and a lawyer signs off at each stage. A second agent is being built to handle data entry for DIFC court portal filings, which takes associates about an hour per will today.
Letters Before Action. Playbooks built from the firm’s own letters produce first drafts in its house style and format.
Individual skills. Some skills belong to a single lawyer, such as one that drafts emails in a partner’s own voice.
Legal research. Research is switched on across the firm, and more jurisdictions can be added for cross-border matters.
What the time is for
The first gain is speed. Lawyers move through dispute and arbitration files faster and spend less time looking for information, which leaves more time to work out what the material means for the client.
“Previously, I’d spent a considerable amount of time reviewing documents before I could focus on the key issues of the dispute. But with August, I can start that process almost immediately and focus much sooner on strategy and legal advice.”
Raymond Kisswany — Partner, Davidson & Co.
Much of the firm’s work is on fixed fees. When document review and first drafts take less time, the firm keeps the margin and gives clients more of the strategic advice they hire it for.
“The faster we can get through documents and first drafts, the more time we can spend on the advice the clients actually value.”
Jonathon Davidson — Founding Partner, Davidson & Co.
Davidson & Co.’s lawyers have worked directly with the people building the technology, and the firm is already planning services it could not have offered before. In Jonathon’s words, “The technology doesn’t replace legal judgment. It gives lawyers more time to use it.”
What the GCC means for August
Law in the GCC has its own courts, regulators and conventions, and most legal AI providers treat the region as a translation job. August set out to build tools, agents and skills for Dubai, the UAE and the wider Gulf from the start. Davidson & Co. and @GROUP have been the right partners for that work, because they know exactly what their lawyers and clients need.
“Close, hands-on client service is central to how @GROUP works, and we needed a partner that works the same way. August pays attention to the detail of each firm’s practice. Firms start with a library of more than 500 agents, and August builds custom agents where a firm like Davidson & Co. needs something specific. That combination made August the right choice for the firms we advise across the GCC.”
Rick Campbell — Executive Chairman & CEO, @GROUP
Davidson & Co. joins the fastest growing firms on five continents that run on August. They include AmLaw 150 firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed, which uses August for the practice and business of law, as well as Lobo de Rizzo in Brazil and Hicksons in Australia. Each firm uses the platform differently. In the Gulf, we plan to keep working with Davidson & Co. and the firms that follow it.
About August
August is AI for the law firm of the future. The fastest growing firms use August to codify their expertise into workflows, automate repeatable work across practice groups, and run their operations with the speed and clarity of a modern company. The result is a firm with more capacity, better margins, and real agency over its own future. August is trusted by firms on five continents, including AmLaw 150 firm Hughes Hubbard & Reed. Founded in 2023 by Columbia classmates Rutvik Rau, Thomas Bueler-Faudree, and Joseph Parker, August is headquartered in New York City.
About Davidson & Co.
Davidson & Co. is a DLAD-licensed law firm in Dubai, founded by Jonathon Davidson in 2008. Its lawyers advise businesses, individuals and institutional clients across the UAE and the wider Middle East on corporate and commercial matters, disputes and arbitration, real estate, employment, regulatory work and private wealth, including DIFC wills. The firm appears before the Dubai Courts, DIFC Courts and ADGM Courts and in DIAC and ICC arbitrations, and it is a member of Legalink and the International Fraud Group. To learn more, visit davidsoncolaw.com.
