People

Julie Beeton

Senior Associate
Commercial
  • Julie is a Senior Associate in the Commercial practice. She has more than 20 years legal practice experience, 14 years of which have been within the UAE market. She has expertise in corporate/commercial law, data protection, education, hospitality, cross-border transactions, corporate governance and compliance. Outside of the UAE, she has practised in Canada and in the United Kingdom, and has worked in private practice as well as in-house where she held Senior Legal Counsel and General Counsel positions.

    Prior to teaming with Hadef & Partners, Julie was the head of the legal team for the Registration Authority at the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) where she led the team responsible for drafting and developing all commercial legislation in the financial centre.

    Julie was previously General Counsel at an international university in Dubai and acted as the sole in-house counsel for the owner/operator of 31 international schools in the United Arab Emirates. During her time in the education field, Julie provided strategic, business-focused advice to Boards and management teams on all general corporate/commercial matters including drafting and reviewing all commercial agreements, providing legal advice on data protection, leasing, franchising, school management agreements, corporate governance and compliance.

    Julie has also been in-house counsel for a major international hospitality group where she worked closely with the development team negotiating hotel management agreements across the Middle East and Africa. She was senior associate with Allen & Overy in London and Dubai.

    Admissions

    • Solicitor, England & Wales
    Languages
    English
    • Advised an innovative AI automation company on a software development services agreement to be used as a framework agreement for various software development services.
    • Advised a green hydrogen company entering the UAE market on the Federal Agency Law, intellectual property rights and data protection.
    • Advised an Australian education provider on their collaboration agreement with a UAE government entity including advice on the various roles performed by the educator and overall deliverables.
    • Advised a global travel tech company on the legal considerations from a UAE law perspective on the question of businesses applying surcharges on debit and credit card payments made by UAE businesses and individuals.
    • Advised a global customer data science company on various technology-related legal queries, including the enforceability of ‘click-wrap’ agreements, the use of hyper-links within online terms and conditions (from an enforceability perspective), the legality of a unilateral variation of a contract, UAE alternative dispute resolution options, and advice on choosing an appropriate governing law and jurisdiction for dispute resolution under contracts with both UAE and foreign parties.
    • Advised an online hotel aggregator on the compliance of their online privacy and cookies policy in the context of UAE data protection laws, including the requirement for consent from data subjects for processing of personal data.
    • Advised an international hotel chain on their standard hotel management agreement including local law requirements and considerations.
    • Advised a global HVAC company on their template distribution agreement to seek to ensure the most favourable position under the UAE Federal Agency Law.
    • Advised a UAE charitable entity on their standard form funding agreement to ensure the entity’s financial contributions were used effectively and aligned to the entity’s mission and objectives.
Languages
English