Legally On the Move: Careers, Tech & Insights from Dubai – Irina Heaver – E01

For the first episode of Legally on the Move: Careers, Tech & Insights from Dubai, we’re joined by Irina Heaver, Managing Partner at NeosLegal, a trusted legal team specializing in Bitcoin, Crypto, and Web3.

🔥 Who is Irina Heaver?

✔️ Dubai’s top Bitcoin & Crypto lawyer – Managing Partner at NeosLegal, the first boutique law firm focused on Bitcoin, crypto, and Web3 in the Middle East.

✔️ Forbes Contributor – Covering global crypto laws and regulations for Forbes Digital Assets.

✔️ Advisor to 250+ crypto founders & investors – Helped raise funds and close over $500 billion in deals.

✔️ Regulatory Architect – Helped draft crypto laws and frameworks for multiple governments.

✔️ Board Member & Public Speaker – Recognised as a Top 20 Blockchain Entrepreneur of the Year and a Finalist for Most Impactful Person in Crypto & Blockchain in the Middle East.

You can hear Rob and Irina discussing:

– Dubai’s Unique and Supportive Regulatory Framework for crypto and Blockchain

– Being Cautious of Arrogance and Recognising Bad Business Advice

– Dubai’s Efficient Business Startup Process for New Entrepreneurs

–  The Use of AI and Machine Learning in the UAE

– The UAE Being a Strong Supporter and Leader of Diversity and Inclusion

Connect with Irina here:

⁠https://ae.linkedin.com/in/irinaheaver

Visit NeosLegal:

https://neoslegal.co/

 

Transcript

Robert Hanna  0:00  

Welcome to legally on the move, careers, tech and insights from Dubai. In this exclusive mini series of the legally speaking podcast, we’re taking you to the heart of Dubai, a global hub for legal innovation, cutting edge technology and transformative career opportunities. Here’s what you’ll gain, career inspiration, unlock the secrets to thriving in Dubai’s dynamic legal market Tech Trends. Dive into how AI blockchain and legal tech are reshaping the industry diversity and leadership here from Trailblazers driving inclusivity and innovation in the UAE and global perspectives, explore how Dubai’s unique blend of tradition and ambition is creating a thriving legal ecosystem recorded in iconic locations. These episodes bring you the energy and insights of one of the world’s most exciting legal hubs. Don’t just listen. Experience the future of law. Ready to move forward with us. Let’s go. So welcome to the legally speaking podcast. Name, title and firm. 

Irina Heaver  0:58  

Welcome to Dubai! 

Robert Hanna  1:00 

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.

Irina Heaver  1:01  

My name is Irina Heaver, crypto lawyer based here in Dubai, and I’m a managing partner of NEOs legal. We’re the first boutique law firm to support and represent Bitcoin, crypto and web, three projects in the entire

Robert Hanna  1:15  

Middle East. And I’m a big fan of your work. You and I have also had a few conversations, and obviously you do some some great work and build amazing communities. But let’s talk about regulation and crypto. What makes Dubai’s regulatory framework unique in supporting digital assets and indeed, web three innovation, in your opinion?

Irina Heaver  1:36  

Well, Dubai has really done a really good job positioning itself as the hub for entrepreneurship. And it did not start yesterday, right? It started all the way. I have to take you all the way back to 1975 when the ruler of Dubai, the father of the current ruler, had the vision to set up an economic free zone that would allow every trader, every businessman, to come into the UAE and do trade tax free and without having local sponsorship requirements, because the UAE is law up until only a couple of years ago, required you to have a 51% shareholder who is a local, individual or local company in order for you to do business here. And of course, imagine you are a big international company and you want to do business in the Middle East, so what you have to give 51% of your company to somebody you don’t know, yeah, or who has not contributed to the business. It’s not very interesting, right? So they establish an economic free zone. So that happened in the 80s, and then look what’s happening now, right? The center of banking, the center of technology. So it was a logical step to move into FinTech, and once you become the center of FinTech for probably the entire MENA region, then it was a very easy step to step to extend that onto crypto and blockchain and web three. Now AI is taking a center stage. So in my humble opinion, and I’ve been here 18 years, Dubai is the crypto capital of the world at the moment, of course, us now claiming to become one some sometime soon. Let’s see. I’m more than happy for for there to be a competition. Competition is good. But as of now, Dubai has certainty as to the virtual assets regulations. We have not one or two, no three, but five, virtual asset regulators, five. So that means that if your business model does not fit into a particular regulation, Fear not. You have four more regulators and four more regulatory regimes within which you can operate. And some may think it’s a bug, because you have so many regulators and so many regimes, but I think it’s a feature. Regulatory arbitrage is fantastic. Why not have a regulator who understands your business idea or your business model and can support you? I mean, that’s fantastic, isn’t it? But you have to navigate it smartly. There’s one thing you have to you have to do in the UI, you have to navigate it smartly. We have 45 plus economic free zones, two financial free zones, two or three offshore zones and five regulators. You have to navigate it very smartly. Yeah.

Robert Hanna  4:13  

And I mean, thanks for that, just wow. There’s a lot to sort of take in. And I guess that’s why people need to work with good lawyers like yourself to get with that. What are some of the common challenges you see for crypto startups, particularly in the UAE market, or maybe going deeper on some of those points you just mentioned coming in

Irina Heaver  4:28  

here thinking we are some backwaters and you can do whatever you want, and regulators will not find out that’s not going to fly. The regulators are smart. The regulators are savvy. We have the first in the world virtual asset, dedicated regulator, they will explain and defy developer, what defy is. So they they’ve been focusing. The team is getting stronger and stronger every higher they make. It’s the team is like more and more savvy, which is fantastic. So coming in here thinking, you know, we’re in some backwaters and still riding camels, you know, we’re. We don’t know what’s happening in the world, and you can throw sand in our eyes, that’s not going to happen. The arrogance, you know, the arrogance the Western entrepreneurs come in here thinking, you know, they know it all. No, I’m sorry. You need to come in with the respect. Show respect and be you know, be humble. But because look at what the leadership of the UAE has done in 52 years. Wow. So, I mean, that’s mistake number one coming in, you know, thinking you can, you can own this place. No, I’m sorry. Thank you very much. Be humble, Be respectful to everyone, right, not only to the government and to the regulators, to everyone. So that’s one second is thinking that you can somehow bypass the rules and regulations. You can’t. Everybody’s equal. Everybody has to comply. You know, if you’re like, a huge number one exchange somewhere in the US thinking you can come here and do whatever you want. No, everybody needs. Everybody needs to follow the rules and the regulations. And also, another big mistake that I see happening, not with the big guys, but with the smaller medium guys getting the wrong advice, the virtual asset space is so specific, it is so particular and so specific. For example, yesterday, we onboarded a client who has been with a law firm for five years, and we had a look what was what was done. It wasn’t a crypto law firm. They don’t know what a crypto is, so the advice that they gave him is bluntly wrong. So now his tax liability is in millions because he was recording certain assets in in a way they told him, and he accounted it in a certain way. That is not correct, so we will now try to help him to change that. Another major thing, like a really big m&a deal we’re doing right now as a decentralized exchange. Came in here, hired a consultant. Consultant structured them completely incorrectly. The decks we took it on, we restructured it, and within three issued a token, advised how to restructure, and within three months, the dex was doing ten billion of trading volume. And they couldn’t have done that if, if the structure was incorrect, if the token was launching incorrectly, and if there was no, you know, correct legal framework. So third mistake I see is just getting wrong advice, not because people are bad or stupid, it’s because virtualized space is so specialized, yeah, so get specialized advice. I mean, I’m sure you have a cousin who practices family law, but if you have a construction dispute, you know they call him call a construction lawyer. That just common sense, or if your leg is falling off, you’re not going to go to your maid who sells, I don’t know, contacts, prescription glasses, right? Yeah, go to a specialized person for specialized problem you have or you might have in the future, right? Because unfortunately, a lot of wrong advice is being given.

Robert Hanna  8:00  

I always say specific is terrific. So the more the specific advice you can get from the people that specialize in what they do, the far less headaches you’re going to have down the line. So yeah, again, thanks for sharing that. So look, you’ve been in Dubai quite a while now. You’re very much a leader here in terms of crypto. How do you see Dubai’s legal infrastructure evolving to stay competitive in the global crypto ecosystem. As you say, it’s number one at the moment. What does it need to do to keep your opinion of it staying number 1?

Irina Heaver  8:27  

Leadership is doing such a great job in attracting the talent. So I spend half of my time in Switzerland. Do you know how long it takes to get a residence in Switzerland? If you know, God help you. If you’re from UK with a British passport. Do you know how long it will take you tell us it never gonna happen? Wow, like it’s just not gonna happen. Do you know how, unless you’re being sponsored by the largest corporation and they have enough visa quarters and all of that, do you know how long it will take you in Dubai to relocate here, get residency permits, get all the documents in order and start running, start doing business. Do you know how long it will take you in Dubai? Tell us, four days. Wow. Within four days, you can run you can establish a business. You can run a business. You can get all your Mrs. IDs, you can open a bank account. You can start trading internationally. And you will have zero personal taxes. So you pay yourself a fantastic salary because you’re a fantastic, fantastic employee of yourself. Everything that you receive is tax free. And as a business, your your your taxation is the low, one of the lowest in the world, 9% and also, if you’re an SME, the first 3 million is basically untaxed. So I mean, where else would you have these conditions? Where else would you have a city where is anybody can walk on the street at 3am and not be bothered, not be not be robbed at a knife point, where in the city you would have international immunity, you know, 300 nationalities or. All the religions in the world practicing their religion in peace and tolerance. Where would you have that? I mean, just looking at the UK, what was happening recently in Zoe, I will not walk on the streets at 3am I would not do that in Germany. I was just watching this video. The girl was crying how she’s terrified to go to a central station, because of the problems are happening in Germany like and the UAE. We’re in the Middle East. We’re very close to a lot of conflict areas, but the leadership of the UAE managed to keep this place peaceful, tolerant and prosperous, which is good, because the more prosperous people are around you, the more chances for you to be prosperous. And I’m not talking about, you know, prosperous in terms of, like, dollars in your bank account, but prosperous as in, safe have a safe apartment, safe house to live in, and great community.

Robert Hanna  10:54  

I think. The other thing I’ve noticed from doing this, you know, and speaking to experts like you and many people in and around the world of business. It’s not legal. There’s happy people here, you know, there’s, there’s smiles, you know, and you go to there’s a good energy connected to Dubai. And I think, like, there’s a lot of positivity in terms of business. And you’ve mentioned there, like, there’s so many reasons why it’s such an attractive place and why people want to come and do business here. Why

Irina Heaver  11:15  

wouldn’t you be positive? The sun is shining, yeah. Waters are crispy, cold. Around eight out of 12 months in the UAE are just perfect, yeah, and then four months, okay, it’s a little bit hot. I love hot weather. I was born in Central Asia. Our me too. I love hot weather. Our average weather in summer was about 55 degrees. So absolutely love hot weather. So I’m thriving in this in this environment. The only thing that is a little bit problematic for me personally is the sandy air. Yeah, some days I stay at home and I don’t go out much, but it’s okay. I mean, we all have to compromise.

Robert Hanna  11:51  

Yeah, everything, there’s like, there’s compromise and everything. One thing you touched on before as well is obviously AI, yeah? And obviously, a lot of the conversations we’ve been having throughout this discussion have touched on AI. So how will AI and machine learning shape the future of legal work in UAE crypto space? In your view?

Irina Heaver  12:07  

I’m not sure about the UAE in particular, but I can tell you about our experience. So we build our own AI platform. We took open source llms. The most recent one that we’ve implemented is deepseek, and we’ve built rag engines, and now we’re building AI engines, and it’s got to the point where I would never need to hire ever again for my firm. You know why? Because our AI engines are doing the work of anybody under five, six, pQe, above that at the moment, still some human intelligence is required, unfortunately, yeah, but I predict that in three, one year, that problem will be solved. So the AI agents that we have doing the work of unlimited number of under five, six pQe associates. So that means we will never need to hire every game, because all the research, all the sort of legwork, all the review of the massive documents that we need to review is done by AI agents, of course, human lawyers, when they receive the result, will have to interpret it. We have to correct it, because AI agents are hallucinating like insane. At the moment, there’s still some tethering problems. AI agents are hallucinating like crazy right now, there’s still some tethering problems, but it is just incredible what technology is doing. And I always like to say, and I just made it up last week, go on, I like to say that AI will not replace lawyers, but one lawyer with the proper AI tools purpose built for their practice, because we’re building our purpose, our tools for web three and crypto and Bitcoin practice, this one lawyer with the correct tools, with the correct usage of the tools, will replace 500 lawyers. And I see this already now, for example, it will take us, in the past, it will take us about one week to prepare a legal opinion as to the token utility, because we need to review the website, the project, all the communications, all the documents. Now we do it under two hours, because the AI agents are doing that for us, and then we just get the result. We double check with triple check, and then we can write the legal opinion. And not only that, but we’ve plugged in specific laws of each jurisdiction where we operate, which is 60 plus jurisdictions. So when something changes, we just plug in the new regulations into feed the system with the latest regulations, and we don’t need to remember anything system no like our AI platform remembers, knows. And reminds us, if something is incorrect, it’s mind blowing. Really,

Robert Hanna  15:03  

I just get excited by that, though I think you have to be, you know, appreciative of where the puck is going. And like you said, I think there’s still this resistance. But just those examples you gave, they’re not out of nowhere. This is a practical you’re building purpose built technology to speed up your firm, to be more efficient, to give better quality services to your clients. And yeah, I mean, we’re in 2025 what that looks like in 2030 who knows, but it’s only going to get better. It’s certainly not going to go backwards. Okay, one question before we let you go around diversity and tech in law, what can the UAE do to improve diversity inclusivity in tech and legal sectors, especially for women in leadership.

Irina Heaver  15:45  

I think what other governments should learn from the UAE when it comes to inclusion and diversity and supporting women, this is not what UAE can do to improve already. Now, more than 50% of UAE leadership are women already. Now. Women Leaders run largest international law firms here, already now. I mean, you have women in charge of huge crypto initiatives like DMCC, DMC, crypto center, the CEO as a woman, rag doll, the chair woman is a woman. I mean, adgm courts, the CEO is a woman. I mean, I can be here for a week naming all the powerful, strong women leaders that we have. And I am all for meritocracy. I don’t care if you’re a man or a woman or undecided. I am all for like, can you deliver what you are here to deliver? And I’m actually against promoting somebody based on their gender or supporting them based on their gender. This women that I mentioned, they’re at the top of their game, not because they’re women, they’re because they’re so intelligent and so smart, they’re at the top of their game. They competed with men on the same level, and they got those into the house positions. I mean, when I started the first crypto law firm in in the Middle East, do you think? Do you think anybody gave me a discount for being a woman? Or do you think when I started running Bitcoin meetups in 2014 somebody’s like, Oh, she’s a woman. Let’s come and support her. Of course, not, absolutely not. Any man could have done that. They didn’t do it. Why? I don’t know. They had better things to do. They the first Bitcoin meetup I ran, a guy came told me, a colleague I was in the oil and gas industry. A colleague came told me, arena stopped being an idiot and left right. So, on contrary, nobody supported me. I was, I was, you know, working against the people laughing in my face. I can only imagine what they were saying behind my backs. So UAE is doing an amazing job. Other countries should learn from the

Robert Hanna  17:55  

UAE really well said. And I’ve got that impression from a whole host of discussions I’ve been having over here, and I think it’s great. And, yeah, I’m all for contrarian strategies and going the other way, when one way is going that and look what looks what happened now, like hugely successful you built a beautiful firm. You’re doing great things. So if people want to learn more about you, your firm will get in touch. What’s the best place for them to get in touch? Feel free to share any social media handles or websites will show them this episode for you too. It’s

Irina Heaver  18:19  

very easy to find us Neos, legal.co, and it’s very easy to find me on LinkedIn. Arena Hever, watch out for impersonators. There’s about 100 plus social media our profiles of arena Hebrews that trying to scam you from your Bitcoin and your crypto. That is one of the downside of the crypto industry, that we have a lot of scammers and impersonators, and it’s some, you know, farm somewhere in, I don’t know where, so they’re not real people, right? You’re not talking to a real person. You’re talking to a bot. So LinkedIn is the best. Reach out. I answer to everyone, or at least I try my best. My team answers to to everyone. And yeah, come to Dubai, absolutely.

Robert Hanna  19:01  

And it just leads me to say thank you so much for joining me on the legally speaking podcast here in Dubai, beautiful weather, beautiful settings, but from now, from all of us over and out, thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of our legally on the move from Dubai series. If you enjoyed today’s conversation, please take a moment to rate and review the show on your favorite podcast platform. It really helps us out. And if you want to connect with us directly, join our vibrant, legally speaking club community on Discord or visit our official website. Legally speaking podcast.com for more updates and ways to get involved. Stay tuned. We’ll see you again soon. Over and out.