Joining me today is Linda Fitz-Alan, Registrar and Chief Executive of ADGM Courts — the pioneering common law court system that has made Abu Dhabi Global Market a magnet for global capital. Since taking the helm more than a decade ago, Linda has built ADGM Courts into one of the world's first fully digital court systems, using blockchain to enforce judgements and pioneering AI-driven tools long before most jurisdictions caught up. Linda, welcome to Capital Markets Wall Street to Mena.
Thank you, Rachel. It's a pleasure to be with you and always with the Fintech TV team.
Abu Dhabi is advancing its Falcon Economy and expanding ADGM as a major financial centre. How is the courts' strategy evolving to support that growth?
Enormously — though I would move from the word evolving to accelerating. We have been digital by default since 2016 with our eDM platform, which means we have always operated without any boundaries of time or geography. For us, it has been essential to follow ADGM's ambitions — digital infrastructure, efficiency, speed, but always with transparency, predictability, and integrity. That is the infrastructure investors are looking for. They need predictability. That is germane to what they want to do with their businesses.
What role does ADGM Courts play in reinforcing investor confidence as Abu Dhabi positions itself as a global financial capital?
We play an enormous role in remaining consistent. The world can change, the ambitions around us can accelerate, and we can harness those ambitions — particularly with AI and blockchain — to do enormous things. But what investors need from us, what Abu Dhabi Finance Week participants want from us, is consistency. No volatility. And something that is genuinely different — we do not copy-paste, we do not imitate. We want to create and lead in our own particular way when it comes to what dispute resolution holds for the future.
AI is being embedded at every stage of the legal process across the UAE. What specific tools are you exploring at ADGM Courts and where do you see the biggest efficiencies?
We are pursuing a number of tools — landing where we want to be with our IT and Technology Services department. For us, the enormous efficiency opportunity is in commercial cases with huge data sets and large volumes of documents. It continues to be a document-driven industry — mostly electronic, which makes it manageable — but that is where AI can deliver the most. Digital disputes in an international financial centre is our main focus right now, and that is what we need to harness AI for.
How comfortable are you with AI being used to assist with drafting judgements, and what safeguards would you insist on?
Very comfortable — but I have non-negotiable standards. First: human intervention. You cannot be in the judicial system without human intervention. Second: transparency — you must show how the technology is being used and what the safeguards are. Third: accountability and governance — the systems must be investigated and what they produce must be examined. Fourth: confidentiality — that is something everybody in a court system demands and rightly expects. And fifth: creativity limits — the system must have blockers when it starts to move too far autonomously. For me, the judicial system we want is a human judicial system that is AI-enhanced. Not the other way around.
ADGM recently penalised counsel for relying on unverified AI inputs. What is your message to lawyers and in-house legal teams about how they should and should not use generative AI?
Be responsible. Be knowledgeable. Be careful. And be accountable. You cannot delegate the integrity of your client's case to AI. It will never work. Your insights, your rigour — that is what lawyers are still needed for. For all the talk that lawyers are going to be out of jobs, there may be some very administrative roles where AI enhances the workforce. But the judicial system will never work properly unless all members of that system are accountable and responsible for how they use AI.
What governance frameworks do you believe are necessary so that businesses and investors can trust AI-assisted decisions?
The frameworks we need — and that we abide by — are those that are transparent. Businesses need to understand how the process works, how AI is used within it, and what is expected of everybody. I do not think that is particularly complex. Transparency is the foundation.
Thank you so much, Linda. It has been a pleasure.
Thank you so much, Rachel.
