K&L Gates

The Firm

K&L Gates is an integrated, international law firm. As a single global law firm, truly integrated and unified, the firm provides seamless service to clients regardless of their location and offers efficiencies that other firms cannot.

The Doha office, established in 2011, delivers solutions to clients’ legal challenges across the Middle East and supports regional clients globally. The Doha-based team offers full-service legal experience across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and beyond, working on mandates for Qatari, regional, and international companies.

Advice is bilingual, provided in both English and Arabic among other languages, enabling smooth interface with the regulatory authorities and in carrying out documentary review.

Main Areas of Practice

Finance and Islamic Finance:

The Doha-based banking and finance team handles clients’ strategic transactions, regulatory matters, and operational issues. The team represents lenders, borrowers, servicers, trustees, and other participants in a wide range of financing transactions, including some of the most complex regional workouts involving cross-border and Shari’a considerations.

As a key center of excellence for the firm’s global Islamic Finance practice group, the Doha team advises on Shari’a-compliant structures and transactions in Qatar and internationally, including Turkey, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Central Asia, and the United States. Capabilities also extend to asset management, sukuk, and other Islamic capital markets instruments. The team has been active on landmark bank mergers, including advising on the creation of one of the region’s largest Shari’a-compliant banks.

Firm lawyers bring vast experience in the fintech sector, helping clients to navigate regulatory, policy, and business challenges. With a progressive approach, legal guidance is aligned with the latest industry advancements.

Asset Management and Investment Funds:

The Doha Asset Management and Investment Funds practice is part of a global team that is one of the world’s largest and most experienced investment management legal teams. Services are provided to institutional investors (such as family offices, sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and more), regulated funds (including exchange-traded funds and mutual funds), alternative funds (for example, private equity funds and hedge funds), and intermediaries (including investment managers and banks).

Comprehensive legal services cover structuring, regulation, fundraising, marketing and offering, operations, advisory, litigation, and enforcement.

In addition to advising global players, the team works closely with small, mid-sized, and boutique managers, as well as the broader investment management and professional investor communities. Many institutional investors in Qatar and across the Middle East work with the team in connection with their fund investments. This includes advising global asset managers on market-entry options for them and their products (including advising on the QFC/QIA Fund-of-Funds program).

Corporate:

Members of the Qatar corporate and commercial team provide a full spectrum of legal services, from general business planning to highly specialized, strategic matters. Team members serve as trusted advisers to Fortune Global 500, middle market, and emerging businesses, as well as their investors and boards, addressing the key strategic, commercial, and governance issues across industries.

Clients receive support across the full life cycle of corporate work for high-value and routine matters. Lawyers have extensive experience advising on all aspects of domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, private equity, venture capital, general corporate, licensing, and restructuring matters, and commercial contracts.

Regulatory, Financial Regulatory, and Compliance:

The regulatory team provides top-tier advice to government entities and regulators across the Middle East and Levant on reviews of legislation and the drafting of new frameworks. In the GCC, ministries and central banks have been advised on policy-making issues in connection with foreign direct investments. Private sector clients receive assistance with regulatory compliance with local laws and regulations, governance, and risk management. K&L Gates is one of very few firms able to advise across the full risk spectrum, from technical compliance with regulatory requirements to investigations, and, in extreme cases, to criminal liability.

The firm’s lawyers offer an in-depth understanding of Qatar law and regulatory matters, including complex overview of regulatory and compliance requirements affecting corporate transactions, financial services regulation, business establishment licensing, listing rules, competition, takeover rules, internal policies, standards, and procedures. Advice has been provided to the State of Qatar and the Qatar Financial Centre Authority on the drafting of (and amendments to) a number of laws and regulations, including on public-private partnerships.

Litigation and Dispute Resolution:

Clients are advised on dispute avoidance and dispute resolution across a wide range of business sectors, including the commercial, retail, real estate, construction, and information technology sectors. Litigation and dispute resolution team members carry out advocacy in arbitration and in the Qatar International Court, delivering clients a full-service dispute resolution offering. They advise local and international clients on litigation, arbitration, mediation, and alternative dispute resolution, while being also renowned for their significant experience in complex construction, engineering, design, and information technology disputes.

The firm has an impressive track record of cases in the local Qatari courts, working closely alongside leading local counsel as client advocates. Partners from the Litigation and Dispute Resolution practice often sit as arbitrators managing cases under all major local and international rules (ICC, LCIA, SIAC, DIAC, arbitrateAD, and QICCA), in all key seats, and subject to local laws, English law, or federal law of the United States.

Energy, Infrastructure, and Resources:

Lawyers in the Doha Energy, Infrastructure, and Resources practice advise leading clients in the infrastructure and public-private partnership space, combining commercial insight, market knowledge, technical and regulatory experience, and project management skills. All aspects of a project’s life cycle are covered, from the early stages of procurement, design, and finance to construction, operation, and closeout.

Energy, Infrastructure, and Resources legal practitioners have deep experience advising on projects across a wide range of sectors, including water and waste, social infrastructure, power, energy, transportation, telecommunications, and others.

K&L Gates is among the few firms in the Middle East with public-private partnership experience and is recognized as a market leader in advising on front-end construction and infrastructure projects, including tendering, contract drafting, and project financing. Clients include major utilities and construction companies, real estate developers, infrastructure funds, government entities and state-owned enterprises, project funders, energy companies, consultants, leading family offices, and members of the royal family.

Real Estate:

With expansive knowledge regarding key real estate and infrastructure issues associated with large-scale developments, Doha-based Real Estate practice members are highly skilled in producing effective, practical documents that serve the needs of real estate sector clients and are consistent with international best practices.

Strategic advice is provided on complex real estate matters spanning multiple Middle East jurisdictions, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Oman. The work encompasses advising on acquisitions, developments, construction (both contentious and noncontentious), planning, environmental, tax structures, transactions investment, and real estate financing. The real estate team assists clients with property management, leasing, servicing, and outsourcing matters, and handles enterprisewide leasing programs.

Intellectual Property:

The Doha Intellectual Property practice is part of K&L Gates’ global full-service Intellectual Property practice. Clients receive advice across key sectors—including healthcare, technology, retail, luxury, consumer products, and sports—on a wide range of commercial, regulatory, and technology-related intellectual property matters. Assistance is provided in the areas of trademark, copyright, and design protection, as well as portfolio management, licensing, enforcement, and disputes. Lawyers also support clients with intellectual property due diligence, transactions, and safeguarding trade secrets and other intangible assets as critical business value drivers.

Doha Senior Partner: Amjad Hussain

Banking and Finance Partner: Simon Chan

Projects, Construction, and Infrastructure Partner: Paweł Piotrowski

Litigation and Dispute Resolution (including Construction) Partner: Matthew Walker

Managing Partner: Tony Griffiths (Managing Partner, Brussels, Dubai, and Doha Offices and Managing Partner, Europe and Middle East)

K&L Gates Offices:

Austin, Berlin, Boston, Brisbane, Brussels, Charleston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Doha, Dubai, Dublin, Fort Worth, Frankfurt, Harrisburg, Hong Kong, Houston, Kansas City, London, Los Angeles, Luxembourg, Melbourne, Miami, Milan, Munich, Nashville, Newark, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, Paris, Perth, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh, Research Triangle Park, San Francisco, Seattle, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, Tokyo, Washington, DC, and Wilmington.