We are also launching today new automation tools for generating OLCS compliant citation. You can now use a Citation Assistant on the OLCS website to easily generate legislation, cases, and fatwas citations. A similar feature has also been added to the free Decree Chrome Extension to allow you to quickly generate citations directly from your browser toolbar.

You can view the OLCS and use our new tools on the link below:

– 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– To improve the quality of the answers, Lex by default will not include in its analysis any repealed law. If the user wishes for repealed laws to be considered, the user would have to check a new box for this above the chat box message.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.

Lex AI is built using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence technology to generate its answers exclusively from Decree’s database of translated Omani legislation and case summaries, and it provides citations and references for all answers generated.

Lex AI is available through a bundle subscription to Decree. It is available for free for all Decree members on all subscription plans for the whole of the month of May.

We highly encourage Decree members to try out Lex AI and use the rating buttons to evaluate the quality of the responses. We are going to use this feedback to review the performance of the model and make any necessary adjustments.

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.

You can download the Decree Alerts extension from the Chrome Web Store:

Decree Risk used to cover risk incidents relating to liquidations, capital reduction, legal form transformation, and other risk incidents announced in the Official Gazette and daily newspapers. We are expanding the scope of Decree Risk by adding details on disclosures made by companies listed on the Muscat Stock Exchange. Our database populates new disclosures within minutes of their release on the MSX and lets users search the full content of the PDF file of the disclosure, which can be extremely useful for any person doing due diligence research on a company.

Adding MSX Disclosures to Decree Risk means that you can also track these disclosures using Risk Watchlist to receive immediate email alerts for specific companies you want to monitor. We also have a new Watchlist Assistant to help you quickly track some of the most popular companies on the MSX such as Abraj, Bank Muscat, Omantel, Ooredoo, OQGN, and many more.

For those who do not need to have individual emails for each disclosure made by a company they follow, it is also possible to subscribe to a new MSX Daily Digest newsletter to see a list of all the disclosures made the day before along with any circulars or decisions published by the MSX.

Outside Decree Risk, we now also include decisions and circulars issued by Muscat Stock Exchange as part of Decree Legislation, which means that you can find items such as MSX’s Dividend Distribution Policy Guidelines for Listed Companies on Decree.

Decree Risk is available through a bundle subscription to Decree. Certain qualifying users will have it for free until the end of their current contracts.

Not only is our database the most comprehensive, but Decree is now unquestionably recognised by the hundreds of users paying for our service for providing the highest quality legislation translations available anywhere with an unmatched availability speed as the majority of items were uploaded to Decree within a matter of hours of the release of the Official Gazette.

Even though Decree is a paid service, the spillover benefits of our service cannot be disregarded. The success of Decree allows us to keep Qanoon a free resource of critical importance to the Omani legal system that hundreds of thousands of Omani people use to access the law. Decree’s own paid subscription is also only required to view the attachments of royal decrees, and not the royal decrees themselves, and given that 75% of royal decrees have no attachments that require translation, this means that 75% of our content is free and is in fact used by thousands of users in Oman who are not paying members of Decree.

We have set our goals on transforming the way legislation is accessed beyond Oman, and for this reason, earlier this year, we launched Qanoon Saudi and Decree Saudi. Even though it has only been a few months since we launched these two new websites, thousands of users in Saudi have already used our websites to locate Arabic and English texts of new Saudi legislation. Similar to our operation model in Oman, Qanoon Saudi will continue to remain as a free resource, while Decree Saudi will now be available through a paid subscription service starting from today.

We have also redefined the scope of what Decree offers in Oman to go beyond legislation and Intel by introducing Decree Risk, a solution we built based on the needs of our existing customer base who engage with Omani businesses and want to manage potential risks that arise from such engagements. By providing timely updates on liquidation, capital reduction, legal form transformation, and other pertinent incidents, Decree Risk has become an invaluable tool for our customers in the telecom and banking sectors who need to swiftly respond to risk incidents relating to their customers.

2025: What’s Next for Decree

Our vision for the year 2025 is to create new specific solutions by addressing specific challenges facing legal professionals in Oman beyond the need to have basic access to the law. Our first project in this area will target governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) professionals in Oman that will initially provide a curated collection of toolkits that streamline the process of complying with new Omani legislation, with a view of expanding the scope and nature of these toolkits as we develop this product in consultation with our users. Our toolkits will be developed in-house by our highly qualified team of Omani lawyers.

We have been lucky to work with some of the biggest names in the Omani legal industry to deliver public engagement activities and we are delighted to announce that DecreeCon is coming back this year on the 22nd of January with more than double the number of sessions of DecreeCon2024. If you are a member of Decree, make sure to mark your calendar to attend the biggest legal event in the country.

Thanks to Our Members

We would not be able to continue our mission without the support of our members, and we hope that we are able to continue to serve them by providing the best solutions for empowering society with legal knowledge.

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.

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.

An example of the case use of Risk Watchlist is the use by a litigation department to monitor a counterparty in a court case or an arbitration. Due to the lengthy duration of court cases and arbitrations, a troubled counterparty in a dispute may decide to liquidate halfway through a case without notifying the other party. If this other party does not submit its claims to the liquidator on time, it loses its chance to recover any money.

Decree Watchlist helps these organisations address this challenge by monitoring the CR of any company they need to track. If this company is involved in any risk incident tracked by Decree Risk, such as liquidation, capital reduction, legal form transformation, or merger, the user will receive an email alert within hours of the risk incident taking place.

Risk Watchlist uses Decree’s own database that is populated daily by monitoring the Official Gazette and all daily newspapers to report all risk announcements.

Decree Watchlist is available free for all Decree users until the end of their current contracts without any additional charges. It will be available afterwards through a bundle subscription.

This service is being offered to cater to a small number of our customers established by royal decree who provided us with feedback that they need to comply with KYC checks by providing attested versions of the royal decrees establishing them.

Even though required only by a small number of our customers, we decided to provide this service to make our offerings more comprehensive.

Please note that this service is available to all Decree customers but it only applies to Decree content and additional charges will apply.

For more information or to submit an attestation request, please click the link below: