The rise of the Spanish economy is often championed as one of the European Union’s (EU’s) miracles. Dubbed one of the ‘poor four’ on joining the EU, it has grown at a tremendous rate and has attracted all the big UK names to its legal market. Its law firms have suffered at the hands of the Anglo-Saxon firms but, as in France and Italy, the top independents say they are taking the best of what they have learned from the international firms’ arrival to create a new kind of indigenous firm.
Rafael Fontana, deputy general director at Cuatrecasas, sums up the firm’s feeling about its independence: “There is a saying in Spain that wine does not travel well – legal work also does not travel well.”
