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A forward thinking and highly innovative function, the Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD) legal team has supported a number of major deals over the past two years. CBD’s chief legal and governance officer Dr Souhayel Tayeb lists the most important of these as ‘an AED700m development project in Abu Dhabi, an AED800m syndicated deal for development projects in Dubai Canal, an AED300m oil terminal commodity finance transaction, an AED1.2bn syndicated deal for a governmental entity and an AED450m aircraft financing transaction’. Successful completion of such high-value and complex deals requires a top-notch legal department who are well-motivated and committed to the company’s strategic objectives, and Tayeb reports that the CBD legal team is very strong in just these areas. ‘The whole team is very well engaged’, he explains, ‘and we have one of the highest scores in employee engagement across the company. As such, we don’t only provide legal advice but also provide practical solutions to enable business growth and protect the bank’s interest’. Alongside a highly capable roster of personnel (with senior legal advisors Osman Hamed, Ibrahim Albamby and Ayman El Nour providing further example of the high quality of the team), CBD has been a keen proponent of technology adoption within the team, as Tayeb explains: ‘The work in the department is currently digitised at an advanced level. Case management systems are used in order to ensure the clear traceability of all internal requests received by the department. The department is also working through a legal portal and technological interface with all internal stakeholders’. As well as this, the CBD legal function has undergone a major internal restructuring after receiving a vastly expanded portfolio of responsibilities. ‘As the legal department took on the responsibility of all corporate and SMEs’ bilateral lending and security documentation at the bank, 15 documentation officers joined the legal team in order to ensure that both lending and collateral documentation are drafted and executed in a manner that protects the bank’s interests’, Tayeb explains. Mindful of the fact that training sessions conducted by in-house lawyers are often unengaging for non-lawyers, the CBD legal team has collaborated with the internal audit team to ensure training sessions contain relevant and useful information, and have liaised with other business units to ensure internal stakeholders from each department will motivate colleagues to promote engagement.