Highly commended: The DIFC Courts
Finalists: ADCO • Dell • Economic Zones World • eGovernment Authority, Kingdom of Bahrain • Emirates Group

The judges praised the five-strong Middle East legal team at China State Construction Engineering Corporation for its "innovative approach to enhancing engagement and communication, covering both internal and external arrangements".

The challenge for the team, which comprises lawyers from Singapore, Egypt and China, is to oversee legal issues affecting more than 4,500 staff operating in eight countries.

The team uses technology to get its message across internally and ensure its lawyers are always on hand to provide legal advice. Its lawyers tweet legal updates, provide graphical information to staff to keep them abreast of the amount of work they are generating and offer legal advice via an instant messaging system. The team has also launched a web-based portal for the logging of new requests for legal work. A bespoke contract management system has also been established, which is populated with key contract documents to save redrafting time.

When work is farmed out to external advisers, the team insists that it is undertaken on a value billing basis with fixed fees supplemented by success fees that encourage the swift resolution of cases.