“The expansion of Spanish law firms has been due to the expansion of Spanish companies, which have made an enormous jump abroad over the past 15 years,” says José María Alonso, managing partner of Madrid-based Garrigues, which now has eight offices outside Spain. “Spanish companies have stopped being provincial, and they’ve shed their fears. Who would have thought that a Spanish company [Grupo Ferrovial, S.A.] would run Heathrow Airport?”
Eastern Europe has been a favorite target of late. Last year Garrigues and Uría opened offices in Warsaw, while Maniega & Soler has been in Sarajevo since late 2006. Instead of building an outpost around local rainmakers, Spanish firms usually place a few Spanish partners in charge of an office of mostly local associates, with backup from the firm’s Spanish headquarters. Uría, for example, now has one Spanish partner, two Spanish associates, and two Polish associates in Poland, supported by another ten lawyers in Madrid and Barcelona. The team advises Spanish and Portuguese clients on real estate, financial, and wind energy investments in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic.
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