Portability in Doha is two questions, and they are answered from different instruments. The first is whether the client will instruct the new office. The second is whether the partner is allowed to ask. Law No. 23 of 2006 treats advocacy as the lawyer’s profession and, in the Arabic text, times the lawyer’s fee claim and the client’s claim for papers from the end of the retainer. The counterparty the client signed is the office that took the work. A lateral does not carry that retainer. The client signs again, or the matter stays.
The non-compete depends on who employs the partner. An onshore employee is under the Labour Law. The ILO’s English text of Law No. 18 of 2020, issued 30 August 2020, replaces Article 43. A clause that binds the worker to the employer for life, or that bars any occupation for life, is void. Where the work let the worker know the employer’s clients or business secrets, the contract may require the worker, after it ends, not to compete and not to join a competing business in the same economic sector. The obligation is not valid for more than one year. It is null in the cases in Article 51, and it is null if the employer violates Article 61. Qatar News Agency, on 25 June 2026, reported that the Amir had issued Law No. 9 of 2026 amending that Labour Law, and that the Ministry described clearer rules on non-competes, trade secrets and client relationships. The dispatch does not state a duration.
Two readings of the amending law, both dated, supply the duration the dispatch omits. Crowell & Moring, in a client alert dated 30 June 2026, read Law No. 9 of 2026 as raising the maximum from one year to two, removing the same-sector limit, requiring Ministry of Labour approval before a clause is enforced, and making the clause void where employment ends during probation. Dentons, on 6 July 2026, reported that the Amir promulgated the law on 25 June 2026 and read revised Article 43 the same way on the two-year cap. This page does not treat those alerts as the gazette. A hiring committee that needs the operative words reads the Official Gazette text of Article 43, and until that text is in the brief the working assumption is the one both alerts state: two years, Ministry approval, and no clause where the employment ended in probation. The 2020 one-year, same-sector text is what that amendment is described as replacing. It is not safe to keep a 2020 template and call it current.
A partner employed by a QFC entity is not on that statute. Article 2 of the QFC Employment Regulations, Version 8, February 2025, applies the Regulations to employees of QFC entities. Subject to Article 25A, laws of the State on employment do not apply to an employee those Regulations govern. Article 20 is the covenant rule, and it has no one-year or two-year cap. A clause that stops the employee working on similar projects, or for a competitor, must be reasonable, must not be an unreasonable restraint of trade, and must be appropriate to that employment. The parties do not get to write “two years, all of Qatar” and assume Article 20 will carry it.
The Court has already refused that assumption, in a case that is not a law-firm partnership and should not be briefed as one. In Syed Meesam Ali Mousvi v Aegis Services LLC [2021] QIC (F) 16, decided on 15 July 2021, the claimant was a former employee of a QFC company registered as an ISO consultant. Clauses 13.4 to 13.8 stopped him working for a competitor in Qatar for two years after termination and threatened a penalty of USD 500,000. The First Instance Circuit declared those clauses an unreasonable restraint, contrary to Article 20, and void. Confidentiality in clauses 13.1 to 13.3 was a different promise and was not struck. The Court followed Chedid & Associates Qatar LLC re Said Bou Ayash [2015] QIC (A) 2: Qatar is a small country, almost all business sits in Doha, and it is in the public interest that a foreign national who took one job be free to take another when the first ends. Demand for the person’s skills in Doha counted on his side of that balance. A law-firm deed can still be reasonable. A two-year ban on the whole city, backed by a large penalty, is the pattern this judgment voided.
Notice is the third instrument, and it is not the non-compete. Article 49, in the same 2020 ILO text, lets either party end the contract after probation by written notice: one month during the first two years of employment, two months after that. Pay in lieu equals the worker’s basic wage for the notice or the part that was skipped. A foreign worker who leaves the country without honouring that article is not granted a work permit for one year from departure. That permit bar is a mobility fact. It is not a valuation of the book. On the QFC side, Article 23 sets minimum written notice, where the employee has one month of service or more, at two weeks under three months’ service, one month from three months to under five years, and three months at five years or more. The employer pays salary during that notice. The parties may agree a longer or a shorter period, waive notice, or accept payment in lieu. A QFC partner with more than five years’ service is not automatically on a three-month clock if the contract says something else. The brief has to quote the contract.
A partner who is not an employee of either entity is on a fourth paper, the home partnership deed, often English or New York law, plus whichever Doha license the individual holds. Article 2 does not pull that person into the QFC notice table, and Article 43 does not pull that person into the Labour Law, unless the deed or the local contract says so. The scorecard, before any name is discussed, is short.
- Category of office. Practicing-roll advocacy, ministerial international license, or QFC legal-services entity. A disputes seat that needs both the Qatari courts and the Qatar International Court is two gates.
- Employing entity. Which company or partnership pays the partner, and which law that contract chooses. QFC entity, onshore employment, or a secondment under a home deed.
- Client paper. Which matters are in a written retainer with the current office. Those matters move only if the client signs again.
- Non-compete instrument. Article 43 as amended, including the 2026 readings, if the partner is an onshore employee. Article 20 if the partner is a QFC employee. The home deed if neither employment statute applies.
- Notice after acceptance. Article 49 if onshore. Article 23 if QFC, including any longer or shorter period the contract already states. The deed’s garden leave if the partner is seconded.
