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Case Study
How Salik’s legal’s department pioneered the use of legal AI in the UAE
Chief Legal Counsel Anwar El Khatib reveals how CoCounsel’s AI legal assistant helped him to improve the value that his legal team delivers.
Corporate counsel have many competing demands on their time. Each task must be prioritised appropriately and completed to a high standard.
For Anwar El Khatib, Chief Legal Counsel at Salik, a top priority is ensuring that all of his organisation’s transactions align with strategic, contractual, and legislative requirements. Salik plays an integral role in Dubai's transport ecosystem, operating the emirate's tolling system and helping keep the city moving.
Anwar found that CoCounsel’s AI legal assistant provided valuable insights into internal processes and legal projects. He leveraged these findings to deliver better and faster results to internal stakeholders. “CoCounsel is an amazing tool. What makes it different from the others is that it relies on its own database, which is built in very accurately.” he said.
The Challenge
A challenge Anwar had identified was the need to verify the accuracy of legal work completed by his legal team. He also needed access to an expert legal research platform that could provide reliable and up-to-date legal know-how across the region.
Anwar was “very familiar” with Thomson Reuters’ legal research platform Westlaw, and so he was keen to use it at Salik too. When he got in touch with Thomson Reuters, he realised that he also needed to have CoCounsel in his legal toolbox.
CoCounsel’s AI legal assistant delivers drafting, reviewing and summarising of complex legal documents within minutes. It can also redline draft contracts to ensure they comply with internal policies and regulatory guidance.
The Solution
Implementing CoCounsel and Westlaw
Anwar found that CoCounsel and Westlaw were a strong fit for his legal department's needs, giving his team the benefit of working with a single, trusted vendor for both legal research and AI-driven support. This consolidated relationship allows him to simplify vendor management, ensure consistency in quality and compliance, and advance his organisation's legal transformation with a partner that understands his strategic priorities end-to-end.
CoCounsel’s built-in content guardrails ensure the AI's answers draw only on verified legal databases. Anwar found that these safeguards provide greater quality assurance than open-source AI tools.
“What makes CoCounsel different from the others is that it relies on its own database, which is built in very accurately. So it's not just going through the web and conducting searches and collecting data from sources that might not be reliable,” he said.
“CoCounsel helped me to confirm that what we are trying to do is more or less accurate, is more or less properly mitigated.”
Anwar also had a strongly positive experience of leveraging Westlaw’s expert legal database. “In terms of Westlaw itself, the amount of information that is there is amazing, is significant. And the way it is organised also helps a lot,” he said.
“What is most important in Westlaw International is that a lot of precedents, a lot of laws or regulations, are being explained by top-tier law firms, which is something that you don't find in other platforms.”
The Results
Wide-ranging benefits of using CoCounsel for in-house legal work
- Enhanced negotiation planning. “It helped me to plan my negotiations. It helped me to understand what key points I need to really be aggressive on and where I can just be more flexible.”
- Faster stakeholder response times. “It helped my stakeholders in the way that I was able to deliver tasks faster.”
- Stronger risk management. “It helped to educate us on several aspects to discovering new regulations and new ways of tackling risks whenever we’re facing them.”
- Richer view of Salik's business ecosystem. “It helped me a lot in understanding how our entire ecosystem works, to segregate the channels for each service we provide, and to better understand the business I'm conducting with my stakeholders and partners.”
- Operationalised legal workflows. “It helped me to be more organised and have proper action plans.”
I approached Thomson Reuters for Westlaw, and when they informed me that they have CoCounsel, which is an AI platform that helps in our domain, I felt like I was a kid in a candy shop!
Day-to day ROI of CoCounsel for Salik’s legal team
- Refining drafts. CoCounsel assists with proofreading, suggesting alternative phrasings, refining research, and much more.
- Sense-checking drafts. CoCounsel helps with testing arguments, checking blind spots, and identifying overlooked connections.
- Boosting legal efficiency. CoCounsel efficiently identifies potential implications of complex legal drafts and governance processes.
- Increasing productivity. CoCounsel completes routine tasks within minutes instead of hours, enabling the legal team to focus on higher-value work.
- Enhancing business effectiveness. CoCounsel is effective in connecting legal advice with business strategy. It enables the legal team to deliver more strategic recommendations based on an in-depth understanding of the business.
Use Case: Strengthening Salik's governance framework
Anwar gave the example of how CoCounsel enabled him to make Salik’s governance processes more efficient, resilient and sustainable.
- The challenge: Anwar needed to review Salik’s delegation of authority (DoA) framework to ensure compliance with overlapping regulations, policies, and governmental interceptions.
- The solution: CoCounsel rapidly simulated how different stakeholders might interpret various provisions in Salik’s governance documents. It also identified subtle authority overlaps that were not immediately visible.
- The results: Anwar leveraged CoCounsel’s analysis to prepare more robust governance recommendations for executives. The technology helped him to ensure Salik’s governance processes were aligned with organisational and legislative requirements.
The bottom line
Overall, Anwar’s experience of utilising CoCounsel was very positive. “For me, I would not hesitate for a second to give it a try.”
Looking Ahead
The future of AI in UAE legal services
Thanks to Anwar’s initiative, Salik is a pioneer in the use of legal AI in the UAE. He is a strong proponent of the innovative technology’s potential to enhance the value of legal services in the region.
“If we are the leader, then that would be great. But because there are people that are still not going through this, I think they cannot be left behind,” he said.
Legal AI can help corporate counsel to achieve significant efficiency gains. Anwar found that CoCounsel freed up valuable time to focus on strategic thinking and higher-level analysis.
Although legal AI has impressive capabilities, he is certain that it cannot operate in isolation. He believes every organisation will still need experienced lawyers to review all AI outputs — especially its factual claims, legal citations, and statistical information.
“What we really need to emphasise is that, whatever outcome comes from the AI, it's artificial. So let's remember that word, because this is what it's called: it's called artificial intelligence. It's not real. So this is the hard work that we need to conduct, it is to review whatever outcome comes from AI,” commented Anwar.
With new advancements in AI being regularly announced, it is vital that law firms and legal departments become accustomed to using this powerful technology. Anwar believes “the sky is the limit” when it comes to the future of legal AI. “AI is going very fast and we need to move along.”
Thomson Reuters recently announced the integration of CoCounsel into Westlaw’s legal know-how platform to enable seamless AI-powered legal research and analysis. The newly integrated solution, provides exciting opportunities for greater efficiencies. The AI assistant draws on Westlaw’s expert legal database to provide fully verifiable answers to complex legal research questions. This includes detecting mischaracterisations and omissions in legal documents from opposing counsel.
Getting started with legal AI solutions
Legal AI empowers corporate counsel to make faster and better-informed decisions based on their legal expertise, implicit knowledge, and professional judgment. Anwar’s advice to other lawyers who are considering leveraging legal AI is to implement a three-stage process.
- Start with simple and low-risk use cases, such as document summarisation or research assistance, and validate the results.
- Experiment regularly with the AI tools to build competence and an awareness of their capabilities and limitations.
- Incorporate AI into legal workflows incrementally, while maintaining oversight and validation processes.
Anwar’s views on AI are unequivocal. “What are you waiting for? As I always say, AI is not here to replace us. The people who know how to use AI are going to replace us.”
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the individual participant, shared in their personal capacity as a user of CoCounsel. They do not represent the views, positions, or endorsements of Salik as an organisation. Any references to the participant’s role or workplace are for identification purposes only and should not be construed as statements on behalf of Salik.
