City law firms are rapidly increasing their presence in the Middle East in an effort to counter a slowdown in London.

Clifford Chance, the world's biggest law firm by revenue, opened a new office in Abu Dhabi yesterday with 14 lawyers drawn from offices including London. It expects the office to double in size in the next two years.

Allen & Overy, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Herbert Smith have opened offices in the oil-rich emirate in the past year, while others, such as Norton Rose, are awaiting regulatory approval to join them.

Abu Dhabi is the latest emirate to become fashionable. Many of the City's leading law firms already have offices in Dubai and both British and American lawyers have been establishing a presence in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and even Saudi Arabia.

Graham Lovett, Gulf managing partner at Clifford Chance, said that the rush mirrored that of investment banks and reflected the region's booming economy.

Although much attention had been focused on the emergence of sovereign wealth funds and the rise of Islamic finance, law firms were advising on a range of areas such as oil and gas, transport, construction and arbitration.

Mr Lovett said: “There's plenty of work, absolutely masses. I can't think of any one of our practice areas [in the Middle East] that is quiet.”

That is in stark contrast to London, where, after a record year in which many of the City's top 20 firms posted startling revenue increases, a sense of pessimism has set in.

Key practice areas, such as private equity, finance and property, have suffered a dramatic slump in activity and lawyers are talking bleakly of impending redundancies.

So-called emerging markets such as the Middle East, Russia and China were already growing in importance, with global giants such as Allen & Overy and Clifford Chance generating up to half of their £1 billion-plus revenues last year outside Britain.

The slowdown in London means that those new markets are set to figure even more prominently in the plans of City firms.

Highlighting the growing importance of the Middle East, a number of leading executives have relocated there from the City this year. In February, Denton Wilde Sapte, one of the longest-established English law firms in the region, moved James Dallas, its chairman, to Dubai.

Freshfields has bolstered its finance expertise in the region with the relocation of the veteran partners Bob Charlton and Charles July.

Yet not only senior lawyers are being asked to move. Young partners and associates in London are being seconded from departments that no longer have enough work to go around. The usual stint of duty in the Middle East is six months.

Matthew Rhodes, editor of RollonFriday, a popular website for young City lawyers, said that it made commercial sense for law firms to move unoccupied staff to busier offices and that such a policy was preferable to slashing jobs.

However, he said that some would be reluctant to make the move: “Not everyone's happy to leave family behind. But there are professional issues, too, particularly for more junior lawyers. Firms may deny it, but many of the deals being done in the Middle East are on the back of an envelope. They are not of the same quality as deals being put together in London.”

Mr Lovett added another note of caution, suggesting that the region may have become over-lawyered after the recent influx of British and American firms.

“Some have rushed in quite quickly on a 'me too' basis,” he said, adding that those firms could struggle without local relationships and an understanding of the culture. “Some of the new players will have quite a tough time. It will be quite competitive for them.”

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