As previously announced, starting January 2023, Decree will graduate out of its beta phase and will become available as a paid subscription service.
Since its launch in January 2022, Decree has become the biggest and most comprehensive database of English language Omani legislation available on the internet, and it is already a critical resource for a number of organisations in Oman who rely on its user-friendly search engine, extremely fast update speed, and world-class translation to provide legal advice to their clients, make sure they comply with Omani law, and carry out important legal research.
To ensure the sustainability of this vital resource to the legal community, Decree will start charging a subscription fee to organisations that rely on Decree to conduct their daily business.
In determining the appropriate pricing for Decree, we looked at the rates charged by our regional competitors. Even though there is consensus in the legal community in Muscat that the solutions provided by these regional competitors do not satisfy the needs of lawyers in Oman to access the legislation in English, the reality is that many organisations in this country still do subscribe to them and pay significant subscription fees for such products.
We then looked at the value of the content currently on Decree from a translation point of view. Being the biggest database of English language Omani legislation ever produced, Decree approximately has 500,000 words of translated legal content, and the cost of translating this content would be significant if done by a generic Muscat translation office, let alone by a bilingual UK-educated lawyer with experience comparable to Decree team members.
We also looked at the value of keeping our content up to date, by translating all the royal decrees and ministerial decisions published by the Official Gazette every week, which is something that we already started doing as can be seen on our ministerial decisions page. There are approximately 50 Official Gazette issues every year—translating them speedily and maintaining this content would significantly add to the overall cost of creating this content.
This being said, Decree is not a translation service, but a comprehensive solution to locate up-to-date texts of Omani legislation. Translating legislation by a generic translation office in Muscat would not help lawyers locate the laws they are looking for using a state-of-the-art solution that is user-friendly, has all the amendments integrated, and is updated within hours from the publication of the Official Gazette. The convenience that Decree provides to law firms and companies in Oman so that they do not have to spend their time trying to find the law, but instead focus on doing their actual work, is the true value of Decree, and which cannot be captured merely by the cost of the translation of the content we have.
Finally, we had to look at the size of the Omani market and acknowledge the reality that we live in a small country with a handful of organisations that have the need for the services offered by Decree and are capable of paying a subscription fee equivalent to that charged by the regional competitor.
In light of all these factors, we determined that the subscription price needed to make Decree sustainable is 990 Rial Omani plus VAT per team member per year in each organisation.
Our pricing will be based on the number of qualifying users (or team members) in each organisation. The definition of a qualifying user differs from one organisation to the next, but it generally means an English-speaking law practitioner in an organisation.
For example, if a law firm has 10 employees, 4 of which are lawyers who speak English or are bilingual, 2 of which are lawyers who do not speak English, and 4 are admin and support staff, the cost of the subscription to Decree would be as follows:
| 4 qualifying users (English and bilingual lawyers) x 990 = 3,960 + VAT Rial Omani |
The definition of a qualifying user usually relates to members of a legal team. For example, if a company has 100 employees, and the legal team has 4 individuals, but only 3 of them speak English, the cost of the subscription to Decree would be as follows:
| 3 qualifying users (English and bilingual lawyers in the legal team) x 990 = 2,970 + VAT Rial Omani |
The rates mentioned above are the base rates for small teams, and we will be offering different discounts for medium-size and large-size teams.
For more information on subscribing to Decree, you can view the Pricing page or directly use the Decree Sales Form.