By Atty. Rany Sader

Part 2: LegalTech’s Quiet Revolution And the Power of Structure

There was a time, not long ago, when legal knowledge was confined to a privileged few. Laws, jurisprudence, and interpretive doctrines were the exclusive domain of licensed professionals. Legal libraries and closed networks preserved the mystique and the monopoly of legal expertise.

But the dawn of the Information Era dismantled that wall.

Today, government websites publish thousands of laws and cases online. Courts stream proceedings. Ministries of Justice launch multilingual legal databases. In the Gulf region, the UAE’s Ministry of Justice, per example, offers comprehensive bilingual access to legislation in Arabic and English, serving as a reference for practitioners, foreign investors, and compliance teams alike.

The lawyer’s value has shifted, from gatekeeper to navigator, from document retriever to strategic advisor.

The Pandemic Pivot: From Optional to Essential

Then came COVID-19. Suddenly, courtrooms emptied. Offices locked. Legal professionals moved online, overnight.

Tools like Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Meet became the new legal meeting room. Access to digitized legal databases, virtual filing systems, and e-signature platforms was no longer a convenience, it was the foundation of continuity.

In this environment, legal information providers stepped up as mission-critical partners. But not just for access to cases or laws, they began offering customized Legaltech ecosystems, including:

• AI-powered legal research tools
• Contract lifecycle and compliance management platforms
• Legal analytics dashboards
• Client relationship and document automation systems

One standout example is SADER Legal’s legal database platforms such as SADERLex which offer structured access to hundreds of thousands of legal texts and court decisions in Arabic, French, and English, across Lebanon and the GCC. Their recent AI-based project, LAItron, leverages SADER’s structured big legal data with natural language processing (NLP) and multilingual legal translation, paving the way for next-generation research and automation in Arabic-speaking jurisdictions.

Smart Data in Hybrid Systems: The Middle East Advantage

Middle Eastern legal systems are rich but complex. They blend civil codes, Sharia law, and common law principles—often within the same jurisdiction. This hybridity demands a legal infrastructure that can accommodate both rule-based systems (textual statutes) and case-based systems (jurisprudence).

Here, the structuring of data is critical. One well-tagged legal article in a civil law system may eliminate the need to review tens of thousands of case decisions. Conversely, in a system that values precedent, being able to extract patterns from loosely formatted judgments is equally vital.

Emerging Middle East Legaltech are responding creatively to this challenge:

• UAE’s ADGM Digital Courts: The Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) has implemented a fully digital court system, including e-filing, e-bundling, and virtual hearings. Their tech stack is built to integrate structured case data with online arbitration and dispute resolution platforms—offering one of the world’s most modern paperless legal environments.
• Egypt’s Digital Judiciary Initiative: The Ministry of Justice launched a national digitization program for court judgments and administrative rulings. Their ambition? To turn court archives into a searchable, structured national legal database, complete with metadata, anonymization, and integration with online citizen services.
• Qatar Legal Portal by QLRC: The Qatar Legal Research Center, backed by HBKU and the Ministry of Justice, is developing an advanced repository of structured legal texts and multilingual case law analysis, aimed at supporting regional legal scholars, businesses, and policymakers.

Imagine needing to review a million court decisions to find the 12 that matter to your client. Without structure, that’s a paralyzing task. With structured legal data and AI, it’s done in seconds.