In conversation with Abdallah El Shehaby
Partner at Jurisera
The legal world is evolving, and AI is becoming a game-changer for both lawyers and arbitrators. Abdallah El Shehaby, Partner at Jurisera, has spent two decades handling high-stakes arbitration, competition law, and multi-jurisdictional disputes. In this conversation, he shares how Jus AI is reshaping legal practice—helping lawyers refine case strategy, analyze key documents, and stay ahead in arbitration proceedings. From billion-dollar disputes to AI-powered insights, Abdallah offers a firsthand look at how AI is empowering legal professionals to deliver stronger, more strategic legal outcomes.
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Introduce yourself and your firm.
My name is Abdallah El Shehaby. I’m a partner with Jurisera Attorneys at Law. I’ve been practicing for some 20 years now in local and international law firms in a number of jurisdictions. I do mainly dispute resolution – arbitration, litigation, and mediation. I focus on construction, banking and finance, M&A, and sports law. We are a full-fledged law firm. We do more or less every legal aspect that is related to business law [and] focus mainly on Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.
You represented a continental sports federation in what has been described as the largest competition law case in Africa. The case involved a multi-billion USD contract and allegations of abuse of dominance. Can you describe the key challenges you faced in this case and how you navigated the complexities of competition law across multiple African jurisdictions?
I would divide the challenges into two parts. The people bucket [involves] all [aspects] related to decision-making and internal and external politics, and the legal bucket, which is, as you rightfully said, not just navigating through legalities over a number of jurisdictions, but also because sports law, in general, is a cross-disciplinary, cross-sectional law. It’s not just sports; there is competition, labor, corporate investment, capital market, procurement, and so on and so forth. Although sports might come across as a business of ledger, for lawyers, it’s not. It’s a sophisticated field, and it gets even more sophisticated as things develop.
On the people front, the main issue [arises] when you represent an election-based client where [there are] no owners. There are no shareholders, [and] there are no people [with] direct ownership interest. Your client is the entity, so you have, at the end of the day, to look after the interests of the entity. And that’s not necessarily the drive of everyone within this entity.
So, to push the decision towards the right legal direction that wouldn’t expose the entity was challenging, and definitely, due to confidentiality, I wouldn’t be able to disclose much on this. But I think any lawyer who’s [represented] an election-based client would understand the heat and the challenge.
On the legal front, I had hoped that Jus AI was there at the time, but unfortunately, it wasn’t. We had to dig [up] the law ourselves across the different jurisdictions before getting local advisors because the fact that you get a local advisor wouldn’t lift this burden off your shoulders as the coordinator or the main counsel.
In order for you to be able to ask the right questions, you have to educate yourself first. There is a certain level of self-education that you have to undertake before getting the advisors on board.
Generally speaking, the law is an ever-changing product. But it all depends on how frequently it changes and how it changes, as well as the procedure of changing the law because the law is not just what is written in the code. [What is] the law is what happens on the ground, how it is applied. Between theory and application, there can be huge discrepancies.
How we dealt with this was not easy. [It was] a lot of sleepless nights…[and] a lot of conversations off and on the record. I can’t say that it was 100% successful. There were ups and downs. At the end of the day, we were able to close it and settle it, but this was a few years later, [after] a few years of hassles and hustles.
How has Jus AI impacted your workflow?
Since we started to use Jus AI, I personally use it across the board. Even beyond that, me being me, I started to come up with challenging questions. I mean, a question that I know [would be difficult]… I’m trying to make it fail, but so far[,] it doesn’t.
The document upload feature has become central to many users; how does it fit into your team’s routine, and what potential do you see beyond arbitration?
Let’s distinguish between sitting as an arbitrator and acting as a counsel. And how one would use the feature from both perspectives, from both seats.
As counsel, it helps you across all the phases of a given case. So, it would help you with the fact-finding and assessment. It would help you extract the relevant facts, put them in chronological order, produce a factual chart, produce an index chart, analyze the witness statement that you gathered, [etc.] So, definitely, [Jus AI] helps you and saves time.
On the arbitrator front, however, it has a different use. Similar uses [apply] when it comes to [the] chronological factual chart because it’s needed across the board, but also[,] it would help you to remain on top of your case throughout the procedure.
If you’re the presiding arbitrator or the sole arbitrator, you will have to double the work. It means that with every submission, you have to read it – including the unsolicited [and] unscheduled submissions that some of the parties do – in order for you to be able to manage the case properly. And then, after the case is complete and ready for you to issue the award, you would restudy the case fresh all over again. While what you need throughout the progress of the case is just certain information. But in order for this certain information to be looked at within context, without being dissected from their context and accordingly [giving] you misleading directions, you have to read all [of] the submission.
With [Jus AI’s] document upload feature, you upload the submission. You ask for the summary. Then, you ask the right questions, and you’re abreast with the case until the case is complete. [After] you sit and study the case once and for all.
What made you confident in Jus AI to commit to using the tool, and how do you see it evolving within your team’s work over that time?
Two things [stand out]:
[One], the fact that I know that hallucinations are kept to the minimum – that’s very important.
Two is [the] explanation of the results, the blue footnotes. Sometimes, although the answer might not be in the shape that you [need to] put in a submission or take and communicate directly to a client, the footnotes are always very leading. You can either ask the question in another way or extract the entire document and ask for a [summary].
Since I started using Jus AI, I keep on remembering a saying that they used to tell us in the first year of law school: A good lawyer is [one] who asks himself or herself the right questions. I think now this is what it boils down to: asking the right questions, and the answers are just there. Knowledge is no longer an issue. Usage of knowledge is. This is, at this stage, what would differentiate a good lawyer, [or] a good arbitrator, from a not-so-good lawyer or arbitrator. Not knowledge, because knowledge is out there. It’s simple to get. [It’s] skills and perspective.
Note: This interview is a transcription of a video interview with Abdallah El Shehaby shot on November 15, 2024, and edited for clarity and readability. The full interview is available for viewing here.
Abdallah El Shehaby shares how Jurisera leverages Jus AI for sharper legal and arbitration strategies. From tackling complex cases across jurisdictions to quickly extracting key legal insights, Jus AI equips professionals with the intelligence they need to act decisively.
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