Sep 9, 2026 · 50 min · 11 segments
Abdullah Mutawi has spent his career inside two very different worlds, corporate law and early stage investing. In this episode, the Partner at Winston Taylor and Co-founder and Chairman of Dubai…
Abdullah MutawiGuestMahmoud BouchelifHost
Well, look, I mean, it depends on where you are in the economy ecosystem, right? If you're an enterprise-sized company, you know all about legal, and legal is extremely important, you know, the role of lawyers in what you do.
Because at the end of the day, you know, lawyers exist to help you grow what you're doing, whether you're building a company, you know, that's manufacturing goods, or whether you're selling services at the end of the day.
You have to interact with the world around you and you have to raise finance and sometimes you're buying things and sometimes you're selling things.
And a lot of the time you have problems that you need to solve and lawyers belong in all of those different parts.
In the kind of world that we're talking about, the world where people are building things right at the beginning of their kind of journey, and hopefully, you know, a lot of founders are building businesses to turn them into big companies and ultimately to sell them down the line.
But right at the beginning of that journey, a lot of founders don't really think about the importance of it, as you just highlighted, because they're thinking about product.
And, you know, how they organize themselves legally, they're becoming more aware of it for sure, because every young founder now knows that you're going to have to raise money unless you've got lots of money because you've already exited a business or you are lucky for some other reason.
And if you're going to do that, then you know that investors will only talk to you if you have certain things in place.
But yeah, in the early stages of a sort of founder's life cycle, they typically underestimate the importance of lawyers and getting your kind of legal infrastructure
So I see that you are wearing a hat of a founder in your current job and role.
And you spent the last, let's say, four years or so where you are building the partnership here, the presence of the firm here.
So why did you make such a bet and you put yourself in such a position to take the responsibility of looking at something huge such?
I mean, I do think sometimes a little bit like a founder or like I'm building a business because all of us lawyers in private practice, at the end of the day, once we become, you know, well-trained and experienced lawyers and we want to become partners in a law firm, at the end of the day, you have to build what's known as your book of business and your book of business is a business.
So, yeah, I mean, I've been here in the region for 25 years now, and I've done a lot of different things advising clients on transactions.
But around four years ago, I joined a firm called Taylor Wessing, one of the largest law firms in Europe.
Well, look, I mean, it depends on where you are in the economy ecosystem, right? If you're an enterprise-sized company, you know all about legal, and legal is extremely important, you know, the role of lawyers in what you do.
Because at the end of the day, you know, lawyers exist to help you grow what you're doing, whether you're building a company, you know, that's manufacturing goods, or whether you're selling services at the end of the day.
You have to interact with the world around you and you have to raise finance and sometimes you're buying things and sometimes you're selling things.
And a lot of the time you have problems that you need to solve and lawyers belong in all of those different parts.
In the kind of world that we're talking about, the world where people are building things right at the beginning of their kind of journey, and hopefully, you know, a lot of founders are building businesses to turn them into big companies and ultimately to sell them down the line.
But right at the beginning of that journey, a lot of founders don't really think about the importance of it, as you just highlighted, because they're thinking about product.
And, you know, how they organize themselves legally, they're becoming more aware of it for sure, because every young founder now knows that you're going to have to raise money unless you've got lots of money because you've already exited a business or you are lucky for some other reason.
And if you're going to do that, then you know that investors will only talk to you if you have certain things in place.
But yeah, in the early stages of a sort of founder's life cycle, they typically underestimate the importance of lawyers and getting your kind of legal infrastructure
So I see that you are wearing a hat of a founder in your current job and role.
And you spent the last, let's say, four years or so where you are building the partnership here, the presence of the firm here.
So why did you make such a bet and you put yourself in such a position to take the responsibility of looking at something huge such?
I mean, I do think sometimes a little bit like a founder or like I'm building a business because all of us lawyers in private practice, at the end of the day, once we become, you know, well-trained and experienced lawyers and we want to become partners in a law firm, at the end of the day, you have to build what's known as your book of business and your book of business is a business.
So, yeah, I mean, I've been here in the region for 25 years now, and I've done a lot of different things advising clients on transactions.
But around four years ago, I joined a firm called Taylor Wessing, one of the largest law firms in Europe.
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