Four months after Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone launched its Washington, D.C., office with a team from K&L Gates, the firm announced Tuesday that two of those lawyers will now open an office in Qatar to serve its clients in the U.S. defense industry.

The Qatar office will be led by Pawel Chudzicki and Lana Yaghi. who joined Miller Canfield in June as part of the Detroit-based firm's move to D.C. Chudzicki and Yaghi will share their time between the firm's new Doha and Washington offices.

"From the firm's perspective, the opportunity to add both a D.C. office and Doha was a single, strategic decision. The two are related," said firm CEO Michael McGee. "The process to open the Doha office was initiated almost as soon as Pawel and Lana and Wladek Rzycki were added to the firm. Frankly, it's a credit to the Qatari authorities that we were able to see such a rapid follow-up."

The lawyers in Miller Canfield's Doha outpost will focus on serving the firm's clients in the aerospace, cybersecurity and defense industries. However, as that office grows organically, Miller Canfield could eventually branch out to other clients with other needs, Yaghi added.

Chudzicki launched K&L Gates' Warsaw office and then spent five years working for the firm in Qatar; his time in the Middle Eastern country led to him being deemed an expert on Qatar by Chambers and Partners in 2019, a point that was touted by Miller Canfield in its press release. Yaghi has spent three years in Qatar.

Chudzicki said they found that the same companies in the aerospace, cybersecurity and defense industries operate in both Qatar and Poland, where Miller Canfield has three offices.

"Both are very good markets for U.S. aerospace and defense industries, from the point of view of our clients. They are often the same clients, the same individuals within the general counsel's office of the clients, or on the business, are responsible for the Polish and the Qatari markets," he said.

Chudzicki and Yaghi have advised on some of the largest defense-sector transactions between Qatar and the United States. Chudzicki declined to identify those transactions, but he indicated that they worked on two of the five U.S.-Qatari transactions that were announced by the two countries in July 2019, when the emir of Qatar visited the U.S.

McGee said adding an office in Qatar fits within the firm's goal of growing its aerospace, cybersecurity and defense practices: "It all fits together very neatly."

The firm noted that Chudzicki and Yaghi have experience interacting and working with a variety of Qatari government agencies.

Qatar is home to Al Udeid Air Base, the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East with over 10,000 troops stationed there, according to The Washington Post.

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