A financial expert is registered by entry on the roster of experts kept by the Ministry of Justice under Federal Decree-Law No. 21 of 2022 Regulating the Profession of Experts before Judicial Authorities, after satisfying the qualification, experience, training, examination, and insurance conditions in Article 6. Registration is not permanent: it runs for a renewable term of three years under Article 10 and carries continuing obligations. Dubai Courts operate their own separate register, which Article 3 expressly permits, so registration in one does not confer eligibility in the other.
Two Registers, Not One
Article 5 requires the Ministry of Justice to maintain a roster of experts classified by specialty. Article 4(1) makes appointment from that roster the rule, and Article 4(2) allows the litigants to agree on an expert who is not registered, subject to the court's approval, which is the narrow exception rather than a general alternative.
Article 3 then permits local judicial authorities and arbitration centres to regulate experts under their own rules. That is the provision under which Dubai Courts run their own local experts register, established by Dubai Law No. (13) of 2020 Regulating the Expert Witness Profession in the Emirate of Dubai, which requires registration in the Dubai Courts experts register and applies alongside the federal decree-law rather than in place of it. The DIFC Courts and the ADGM Courts operate their own frameworks again, under their own procedural rules.
The practical consequence is the one most often missed. An expert registered federally is not automatically eligible for appointment before Dubai Courts, and vice versa. When you check an expert's standing, check it for the specific forum where your dispute sits.
The split is deliberate rather than an untidy overlap. A federal roster sets a national standard and a single point of classification, while a local register lets an emirate calibrate to the volume and character of the disputes its own courts handle. For a party the effect is administrative: two applications, two renewal cycles, and two sets of continuing obligations for an expert who works across both, which is one reason the number of experts appearing before every forum is smaller than the number registered anywhere.
The Conditions in Article 6
Article 6 sets the entry requirements. A candidate must hold a university degree in the field of specialisation, and must show practical experience after qualification: not less than five years for UAE nationals and not less than fifteen years for non-nationals, a deliberate policy distinction in the law.
Experience alone is not enough. The candidate must complete the prescribed training, pass the examinations set for the specialty, and hold professional liability insurance covering the practice. The insurance requirement is worth noting from a client's perspective: it means a registered expert carries cover for professional error, which an unregistered adviser giving the same analysis may not.
Registration is also a decision with a deadline attached. Article 9 requires the application to be decided within sixty days, which gives applicants a defined period rather than an open-ended wait.
Term, Oath, and Practice Structure
Article 10 sets the registration term at three years, renewable. This is the provision that makes a stale claim to be a registered expert worth checking: a name that appeared on the roster four years ago may not be there now.
Article 11 requires the expert to take the oath before practising. It is a formality in the sense that it takes minutes, and not a formality in the sense that work done before it is done without standing.
Article 12 addresses how the practice is structured, requiring practice through a licensed expert firm. For a client this matters because it identifies the entity that carries the engagement and the insurance, rather than an individual operating without a licensed vehicle behind them.
Continuing Obligations Under Article 14
Registration imposes duties that continue for as long as it lasts. Article 14 requires the expert to complete a minimum of thirty training hours each year, to keep a true copy of every report for at least five years from the date it was filed or delivered, and to state the expert's name and registration number on the reports issued.
The last of those is the most useful to a party. A report from a registered expert should carry the name and registration number on its face. A financial report that does not is either not an expert report within the meaning of the law or has been issued without the identification the law requires, and either way that is worth establishing before relying on it.
Article 14(6) sits in the same article and is the conflict rule: an expert may not accept an assignment in a dispute where a party previously consulted him or where he issued a consulting report for it. Article 15 covers the cases requiring withdrawal.
Fees
Article 30 governs expert fees. In court-appointed work the court fixes the fees and orders a deposit, and the final allocation follows the outcome of the case rather than the party who advanced the money. Fees agreed privately with a party fall outside that structure and belong to the party-appointed relationship, which is a different engagement with different weight in the proceedings.
One consequence is worth stating plainly. Because the court fixes court-appointed fees and the deposit is ordered rather than negotiated, an expert in that role has no commercial relationship with either side to protect. That is the structural reason the report carries the weight it does, and it is also why a party that treats the appointed expert as a service provider to be persuaded has misread the relationship.
What Registration Does Not Establish
Registration is a floor, not a ranking. It establishes that the holder met the entry conditions for a specialty and remains subject to the ongoing duties. It does not establish that this expert has handled a dispute resembling yours, that the specialty on the roster matches the precise financial question the court has referred, or that the methodology in a particular report is sound.
That distinction matters when a report is unfavourable. Arguing that a registered expert must be right because he is registered proves nothing, and neither does the reverse. Registration determines who may be appointed; the quality of a report is assessed on its own contents against the requirements the Evidence Law sets for it, which is a separate question with separate grounds of objection.
It also matters when selecting a party-appointed expert, where no roster requirement applies at all. There the client is choosing on evidence of relevant work rather than on a register entry, and a registered expert acting in that capacity carries the same standing as any other party-appointed adviser.
How to Check an Expert's Registration
Ask for the registration number and the specialty under which the expert is listed, and confirm the register that number belongs to, federal or local. Confirm the term is current rather than lapsed, given the three-year cycle. Check that the specialty matches the question in dispute, since the roster is classified by specialty and an appointment outside it is open to objection. For a report already filed, look for the name and registration number on the report itself.
How AABDxb Helps
AABDxb is led by Abdulrahman AlNuaimi, a Ministry of Justice registered court-appointed accounting expert and a Ministry of Economy licensed auditor, who prepares financial expert reports for UAE court proceedings and reviews reports filed by other experts on behalf of parties considering an objection. Where a party needs the standing of a filed report established before it responds, that check is part of the review.