May 27, 2014
Thomson Reuters Launches Market Leading Legal Research Service in Iraq
IRAQ – Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced the launch of its leading legal research service, Westlaw Gulf, in Iraq.
Iraq is the third country in the Middle East region, after UAE and Qatar, whose legislation is now available on Westlaw Gulf. With the launch in Iraq, legal professionals from around the world and in the region can consult new sources of reference material and use the latest legal technology from Thomson Reuters to quickly and accurately research Iraqi legislation in English.
Westlaw Iraq is designed to improve the workflow of the individual legal practitioner working on Iraqi legislation. The platform offers a Master Gazette Index which is set up to search more than 3,000 Federal and Kurdish pieces of legislation, complete with English translations and links to the original Arabic text. Legislation is sourced from the official Gazette and covers commercial laws spanning from 1922 to the present day.
Nadim Najjar, Managing Director, Middle East, Africa & Russia / CIS, said: “We are glad to announce the launch of the Westlaw Gulf platform in Iraq which includes a consolidated source of Iraqi legislation. The service offers translations of principles from over 200 cases from the Iraqi Court of Cassation covering the most commercially relevant topics.”
Mohammed El Belbesi, Head of Legal, MENA, Thomson Reuters, said: “Now that Iraqi legislation is on a global platform like Westlaw, it can be disseminated more easily to corporations and potentially to investors, providing greater transparency, supporting business confidence and ultimately contributing to the overall attractiveness of Iraq as a Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) destination.”
Westlaw Gulf is built upon state-of-the-art Westlaw technology, and modeled after market-leading legal information services from Thomson Reuters in the United Kingdom, United States, India, Asia and South America. It is used by more than 350,000 legal professionals globally and covers 68 countries. Powered by this global platform, Thomson Reuters launched Westlaw Gulf in 2010.
Legal researches can browse key texts of the civil, commercial and business laws of Iraq, covering areas including Companies, Financial, Energy, Oil and Gas, Construction and Real Estate, Employment, Foreign Investment, Intellectual Property, Tourism, Agriculture, Judicial and Litigation. The service includes a market intelligence and insights service through the current awareness newsletter, selecting relevant news from a wide variety of sources and bringing them to the legal researcher’s attention as they happen.
All translations are carried out by legal experts and overseen by the in-house legal expert team at Thomson Reuters, all of whom have experience in the local Iraq market and the wider Middle East.
To learn more about the new Westlaw Gulf service in Iraq, please visit: http://westlawgulf.com/contact-us/.
Thomson Reuters
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