The Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs published the executive regulation of the new Advocacy and Legal Consultancy Law in this week’s issue of the Official Gazette. This new regulation introduces further controls on the practice of the legal profession in Oman and provides implementation details for the Advocacy and Legal Consultancy Law.
His Majesty issued by royal decree a new Advocacy and Legal Consultancy Law in October of last year, which repealed the Advocacy Law of 1996 and introduced a major reform of the legal profession in Oman. The new Advocacy and Legal Consultancy Law splits the legal profession into two separate activities: advocacy and legal consultancy, with advocacy essentially covering all the activities of the legal profession—such as giving legal advice, drafting contracts, and providing litigation services, while legal consultancy covers the same activities with the exception of litigation services. Both advocacy offices and legal consultancy offices are also permitted to do arbitration work.
The framework created by the new law requires advocacy work to be exclusively delivered by advocacy offices that can only hire Omani advocates, while legal consultancy work must be exclusively delivered by legal consultancy offices that can only hire Omani and non-Omani legal consultants and no advocates. This means that if a law firm wishes to provide litigation services, this law firm must be registered as an advocacy office, and it will not be able to hire any non-Omani lawyer. If a law firm wishes to hire any non-Omani lawyers, this law firm must be registered as a legal consultancy office, and it will not be able to provide litigation services. The law also introduced new provisions that permit international law firms to open a branch in Oman in the form of a legal consultancy office without having a local partner.
In addition to this new classification, the law creates new qualification and continuous development requirements for advocates that an advocate is required to meet to move up the rolls that enable the advocate to appear before higher court levels.
While the law had comprehensive details of how advocates are admitted and qualified, it did not provide details on how legal consultants would be admitted, and left this matter to the executive regulation of the law, which was published this past Sunday.
The Executive Regulation of the Adovcacy and Legal Consultancy Law stipulates that for an Omani lawyer to be registered as a legal consultant, this lawyer must have at least two years of legal work experience, and that for a non-Omani lawyer to be registered as a legal consultant, this lawyer must have at least five years of legal work experience. The term used for legal work experience in the context of legal consultancy work is not the same term used for advocacy equivalent works provided for in article 12, so it is not clear what kind of legal experience is required. However, what this appears to suggest is that legal consultancy offices would not be able to hire any Omani person as a legal consultant if this person does not have at least two years of experience, and it also means that foreign lawyers can work in Oman in private practice only if they have at least five years of experience and only in legal consultancy offices.
Unlike advocates, there are no examination or continuous development requirements for legal consultants.
In regard to international law firms, the executive regulation stipulates that they can operate in Oman on their own or in partnership with legal consultancy offices (but not advocacy offices). This is only permitted for law firms that have been established for more than 15 years and have branches in at least three countries.
Both the law and the regulation have many other key changes that will affect the licensing of lawyers and law firms, and the impact that this will have on the industry will be unpredictable. If a local Omani law firm currently hires non-foreign lawyers (including Egyptian, Sudanese, and Indian lawyers), this law firm would have to decide whether to let go of these lawyers—if it chooses to remain as an advocacy office—or transform into a legal consultancy office and give up on its litigation business. International law firms operating in partnerships with Omani law firms might also have to reconsider their partnerships as the law now prohibits establishing a partnership with an advocacy office, and instead allows them to either operate independently or in collaboration with a legal consultancy office.
Both the law and its executive regulation have already entered into force. However, existing law firms generally have until October of this year to comply with it, and law firms established in partnerships with a non-Omani have until October of 2027 to remove the non-Omani partner.
You can read the law and its executive regulation in English in full on the links below: