Decree Blog
The Oman Legal Citation Standard (OLCS) was first launched in 2016 as a guide for creating a standard format for citing Omani legal authorities in academic works and legal documents. The previous version of the OLCS only covered the rules for citing Omani legislation of all levels. We updated the OLCS to include new rules for citing Omani court judgments as well as Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs fatwas.
We received a lot of feedback from the use of Lex AI by the members of Decree over the past couple of weeks, and this enabled us to better understand how our members use the service and the kind of answers they expect. Based on this feedback, we made several changes to Lex AI:
– Lex AI is now fully conversational and appears as a chat thread to make it easier for the user to continue conversing with Lex. Even though the original version of Lex had conversational capabilities, the tool behaved more as a single question single answer tool.
– Lex AI question box now allows you to insert a larger amount of text that appears as a paragraph block. The original version of Lex accepted a smaller amount of text that was limited to a single line in the search box.
– Lex AI now lets you copy the text using a share button under each response message. This is useful for individuals who need to use the answers generated by Lex.
– To improve the quality of the answers, Lex by default will not include in its analysis any repealed law. If the user wishes for repealed laws to be considered, the user would have to check a new box for this above the chat box message. This is usually necessary for comparing differences between an old and a new law.
– We also made some technical improvements to the logic of Lex to improve the quality of the answers.
Decree members on all membership bundles have free access to Lex AI until the end of May. If you have not used it until now, we highly encourage you to do so. Please make sure to use the vote buttons to help us improve the service.
We are delighted to launch Lex AI—Decree’s artificial intelligence legal research assistant. This tool enables Decree members to use natural language to ask legal questions, generate summaries, create compliance checklists, and carry out a variety of other legal tasks.
We are adding a new search engine for Decree with Advanced Search options such as search in title only, exact phrase, date range, and the option to select a mix of legislation types and legislation issuers to filter the results.
Our extremely fast original search engine will remain the primary search engine associated with our search button, and those wishing to utilise the new advanced search options will be able to quickly access the new search form from the search side bar.
We have built this new search form with power users in mind who need to conduct a thorough research of our database. If you would like to see additional options and filters added to the new search form, feel free to get in touch with us.
Advanced Search is available to all Decree members.
Today we are launching Decree Alerts, a free Chrome extension that provides users with alerts on new items published on Decree along with the ability to quickly search Decree directly from within the extension.
You can download the Decree Alerts extension from the Chrome Web Store:
We are announcing today the addition of Muscat Stock Exchange Disclosures to Decree Risk, which makes it possible to search for the contents of these disclosures, receive email alerts for disclosures made by companies tracked using Risk Watchlist, and subscribe to a new MSX Digest daily newsletter.
The year 2024 was a big year for Decree. In terms of content, Decree remains the biggest and most comprehensive database of English-translated Omani legislation ever created, and this year alone, we added more than 500 new and old legislative items to our catalogue, including essentially every single new royal decree and ministerial decision published in the Official Gazette in 2024.
We are launching today the free beta version of Decree Saudi Arabia. This version of Decree offers full-text of English-translated Saudi royal decrees, laws, ministerial decisions, and other content published in Umm Al-Qura Newspaper, i.e. the Saudi official gazette, on a weekly basis.
We are still in the early stages of building the English database of Decree Saudi Arabia, and we welcome feedback from our users regarding items from the backlog of Saudi legislation that they would like to see translated on Decree.
Similar to the Omani version of Decree, Decree Saudi Arabia is linked with Qanoon Saudi Arabia, and it is possible to use the English website to locate legislation items even if they are not translated so that the user can view the original document or use Google translate to access the document.
Decree Saudi Arabia also has its own free weekly newsletter that notifies users of the contents of new issues of Umm Al-Qura.
Please note that the login details of Decree.om are NOT linked with the login details of Decree Saudi Arabia. Upon the official launch of the service, both services will be accessible using a unified access system.
Decree Saudi Arabia is available free of charge until the end of the year. It will be available as an add-on to Decree.om customers.
You can stay up to date with Decree Saudi Arabia by following our Saudi LinkedIn account.
Decree Risk has become a valuable resource for organisations dealing with large numbers of small and medium Omani enterprises, such as utility companies and banks, who need to submit liquidation claims for unpaid bills and or make an objection to the government to block a legal transformation when any of these small and medium enterprises enter into liquidation or attempt to undergo a legal transformation.
Today, we are taking Decree Risk to the next level by announcing Risk Watchlist—a tool that allows organisations to monitor future risk incidents by adding the CR number of a target company on the Risk Watchlist to receive immediate alerts when any of these target companies appear in a risk announcement.
We are delighted to announce that Decree now offers translation attestation services for Decree content through Fal Translate. Fal Translate is a boutique legal translation office registered in the Sultanate of Oman with a wealth of experience in legal translation.