The New Law ensures that experts are now held more accountable, provides clarity on the role and qualification of the expert and imposes fines and imprisonment for violations.

Old Law

Currently, the appointment of experts is dealt with under UAE Federal Law No. 8/1974 (the Old Law) and the Law on Evidence (Federal Law No. 10/1992). The court can appoint an expert at any stage to investigate matters with which the court considers it requires assistance. In practice, in the majority of civil cases (whether technical in nature or not) the court will appoint an expert to opine on the issues in dispute.

Ordinarily, litigants rarely attempt to jointly agree (or are unable to within the specified time limit) the nomination of an expert, in which case an expert will automatically be selected from a list of experts maintained by the court and Ministry of Justice. In such cases, the parties will not have any influence over who is appointed.