With the adoption of the evidence law for the first time in the history of Saudi Arabia, all sectors, in addition to individuals, are looking forward to the effects of this game-changing law on their judicial procedures and cases, which have circulated for a long time in the corridors of the courts due to the conflict of evidence, as the provisions of the new law will apply to commercial and civil transactions as well. Evidence procedures were previously accompanied by many questions and inquiries until the date of enforcement of the new law, due to the lack of clarity of the rules governing the procedures related to evidence and their full submission to the discretion of judges. With the adoption of the new law, whose detailed nature becomes clear to us, we hope that this will contribute to accelerating litigation procedures and removing the uncertainty and vagueness that faced most evidence procedures in the past few decades. The new law was based on the plaintiff’s proof of his right and the defendant’s entitlement to deny such proof and even to prove the contrary in some cases. But what if the evidence in one case is contradicted and cannot be combined? In this case, the court examining the case will take from this evidence what the circumstances of the case support and, if this is not possible, the court will not take any of them, with an explanation of the reasons for that rejection, of course. Furthermore, the new law made it possible for the parties to the lawsuit to agree on and adopt certain rules of evidence as the court will apply their agreement unless, of course, it violates the law, provided that this agreement must be concluded in writing. This feature, in particular, will greatly contribute to facilitating and accelerating litigation procedures and will help both parties to ensure that their rights are preserved, and the rights of the other party are respected and preserved as well since there is an evidence mechanism agreed on, which will definitely save both parties from circumventing the legality of this evidence or even tampering with its credibility in case of indeterminacy. Based on the approval of this new evidence law, some people may wonder about the fate of evidence procedures before the date of its entry into force, where all procedures of validating evidence will be considered valid and the new provisions will be only applied from the date of the law’s enforcement. Undoubtedly, the adoption of this new law will open a new horizon for the private sector in assisting the judiciary in its procedures, as the law stipulates the possibility of using the services of the private sector in evidence procedures, and we look forward to further clarification of the mechanisms for using such services and their controls, in particular to avoid returning to the same ambiguity that marred the procedures previously. In our next article, we will elaborate more on the new law’s reference to digital evidence in the era of technical progress we are currently witnessing, in addition to the education that individuals need in general to make the most of the historical evidence law. • Dimah Talal Alsharif is a Saudi lawyer and legal consultant. Twitter: @dimah_alsharif Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News" point-of-view