From the biggest commercial firms to sole practitioners advising the British expat community, there are plenty of solicitors working in Spain, discovers Jon Robins




The expat exodus to Spain drawn by the irresistible lure of sandy beaches, fantastic climate and a Mediterranean lifestyle has prompted another wave of emigration as lawyers follow work.



That secondary trend has been much helped by the unfortunate propensity on the part of Brits to invest rashly in their dream homes. Many who had expected to live out their retirement in paradise have found themselves mired in legal nightmares on the ‘Costa del Scam’.



‘When they get off the plane at Málaga, they’ve left their brain in Gatwick,’ quips Brian Marson, former chairman of the Kent bulk conveyancing practice Marsons. ‘The sky is blue, everything is lovely, and you want to believe what you are told. You want it all to be true and so you’re lulled into a false sense of security.’



The solicitor packed up legal practice in Bromley when he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the age of 59. ‘My wife and I genuinely came out to Spain to retire and enjoy everything that went with it,’ he says. ‘But after about six months of being here, we needed to do something. The only thing that I knew, having been in the law since 15 years of age, was how to start a business that featured conveyancing as its core product.’ He set up Legalanswers, a Spanish company which employs Spanish-qualified solicitors and English-speaking support staff in the old fishing harbour of Marbella.



Mr Marson says the endless British television programmes devoted to the theme of hapless holiday-home buyers being ripped off fail to ask the question: where did these people go for advice? ‘When you go off and buy a finca in the middle of the equivalent of Dartmoor and don’t have a structural survey, then you’re hardly well-placed to complain about the fact that the roof’s fallen in,’ he observes.



Every English solicitor working in southern Spain, and there are many, has their fair share of scare stories. ‘It’s absolutely right to say that there is a high level of naiveté,’ comments Michael Soul, a partner with Michael Soul Abogados. ‘There are some people who are just beyond protection.’ He was a partner at the City private client firm Withers until 2000, and his new Anglo-Spanish practice is based in London, Madrid, Málaga and Marbella. He is a member of the Madrid and Malaga bars and his 18 lawyers work as abogados (Spanish lawyers).



Mr Soul flags up a recent article in leading Spanish newspaper El Pais, in which a local lawyer representing some 40 British citizens who allege that they were defrauded in property transactions, says that his clients instructed lawyers recommended by the estate agent who (he translates) ‘never told them whether the development complies with the planning laws.



‘It is the first case I’ve come across in 35 years of specialising in matters involving Spanish law where a Spanish lawyer has openly acknowledged that the problem for a particular purchaser can be caused by instructing the wrong lawyer,’ he reflects.



Mr Marson is more forthright. ‘A commission on a new build property can be as much as 20%, and that’s paid to the agent,’ he says. ‘The agent is going to make sure that the buyer is going to use an adviser who is not going to jeopardise him earning ¤30-50,000. Common sense dictates that you are not really going to get the best advice in those circumstances.’



Bigger UK firms have recently shown an interest in the region and 18 months ago leading claimant firm Irwin Mitchell opened up a branch in Marbella. ‘We started literally with myself and two very junior lawyers and now we’ve grown to nine lawyers,’ says José María de Lorenzo, a dual-qualified partner at the firm. ‘There has been such an emigration from the UK. It is not a second home any more; people are selling their homes and moving lock, stock and barrel. They are then hitting those day-to-day problems that normal Spaniards confront, from setting up businesses and problems with local authorities, to cross-border issues such as which legislation is applicable for inheritance tax purposes.’



It is all fertile territory for legal advice as expats look for reassurance. ‘Everything is different, whereas people assume that it is all the same. They move and realise that it isn’t,’ says Mr de Lorenzo. ‘There is such legal insecurity with all the scandals and corruption. Irwin Mitchell is a soothing and calming element out here because we have the same standards as Irwin Mitchell in the UK but we have a “dual-qualified” mentality.’



A number of English solicitors in Spain refer to concerns about becoming embroiled in corruption. The government is attempting to crack down on what is seen as a widespread problem in the construction industry and town hall planning departments. For example, there has been a series of arrests in Marbella involving at least a dozen building companies and up to 16 town councillors. ‘There is still one hell of a lot of black money flying around,’ reports one expat lawyer. ‘There are more ¤500 notes [the highest value] in circulation in Spain than any other Euro country. In the property world, corruption is endemic.’ The lawyer refuses to deal with clients where property deals are suspect. ‘What goes on the purchase deed is the price they pay, that is my rule,’ he says.



Brian Marson is also careful about the provenance of money he deals with. ‘I always say we aren’t going to handle black money, and I want the freedom to advise my client not to buy a property if there is a problem with it,’ he says. ‘That makes me as about as popular as a dead sheep on a Sunday afternoon.’



Irwin Mitchell is currently looking at two group actions. Firstly, a case on behalf of Spanish workers suffering asbestos-related injuries, which, Mr de Lorenzo says, is something new in Spain, whereas in the UK asbestos litigation has been going on for 15 years.



The other big group action concerns a brewing property scandal over illegal licences, which has left thousands of British residents in fear of losing their homes in the Almeria area. Recently the local county court ordered the demolition of 11 houses in Albox on the grounds that building licences had not been granted. So far an advice clinic run by the firm has been visited by more then 100 people.



‘We offered to come and visit many of the people affected by the court orders to offer urgent help on the legal steps they now may have to take in order to save their homes,’ says Mr de Lorenzo. The houses throughout the region have been built on ‘suelo no urbanizable’ (land designated not for urban building). Those affected, which could include thousands of Britons, may face losing their entire investment, estimated at ¤130,000 per property, a total of ¤300 million for the region.



The traffic has not all been one way and, for example, the Marbella-based practice BCP Abogados & Solicitors of Marbella has recently opened up in Cheshire and London. It is the first Spanish law firm to be included in the Solicitors Property Shop network. ‘We set up in the UK because we identified this huge market of British people buying abroad and we wanted to provide a level of client care from the UK as well,’ comments Roser Coll, the Spanish lawyer who runs the Cheadle office. ‘Spanish law is totally different from English. English lawyers do not understand it.’ Affluent Cheshire, she explains, is ‘a good area in terms of investors with an interest in buying abroad’. At the end of last year the firm also opened up offices in Portugal and Morocco. ‘To expand we need to make contacts in the UK,’ she explains, adding that 95% of the firm’s clients are English. How does she feel having to be stuck in Cheadle while her colleagues are in Marbella? Ms Coll does not apparently mind. ‘I’m a young lawyer. I’m only 29 and I’m not thinking of retiring,’ she replies.



The legal market for solicitors in Spain is starkly polarised. Away from the Mediterranean and those firms that advise principally private clients, the magic circle has increasingly been developing a presence in the capital and legal centre Madrid. The world’s biggest law firm, Clifford Chance, has been there for 26 years. ‘Our main competitors are the likes of Garrigues and Uria Menendez,’ comments Spanish senior partner Jaime de San Roman. ‘Our clients and our competitors perceive Clifford Chance as a local player. We don’t live only on referrals from the firm’s network.’ Around 70-80% of the firm’s work is locally generated.



The firm has 163 fee-earners and 21 partners, which makes it twice the size of the next biggest international firm, although, to put that into perspective, Garrigues has some 1,500 lawyers. Clifford Chance’s Spanish offices are expecting to bring in fees in the region of ¤65 million this year. Mr de San Roman cites the firm’s recent advice to utility company Endesa as evidence of the kind of big-ticket work undertaken by the Madrid office. ‘We have been advising them for the last 18 months since Gas Natural launched its hostile takeover in September 2005 and about eight partners and 40 lawyers have been involved on that team,’ he says.



DLA Piper is another big player in Madrid with about 70 lawyers. ‘Spain is clearly a vibrant economy,’ comments office managing partner Juan Picon. ‘The fact that we are a large law firm focusing on key economies across the globe means we have a significant presence in Spain and it is important we have a full-service law approach in each of the key markets.’



DLA has doubled its Spanish presence in the last couple of years following the acquisition of 22 lawyers from the Madrid practice of US firm Squire Sanders & Dempsey in February 2005. The office acted for the Royal Bank of Scotland’s financing of Metrovacesa, Spain’s largest listed real-estate group, and recently completed a major wind farming transaction worth ¤400 million. It is aiming to bill at least ¤15 million this year. ‘Spanish companies are very active in the US, Europe and Asia and have been very aggressive of late,’ he says.



Clifford Chance also has, relatively speaking, a big presence in Barcelona with 50 lawyers. Why Barcelona? ‘It is a very strategic office for us,’ explains Mr de San Roman. ‘It is a very industrial area and the number of multinational companies based in Catalonia means that it is important as a connection not only for the local industry as well as for clients in Madrid with branches in Barcelona.’



Christopher Lee, a partner at Domenech Spanish Lawyers, is registered number ‘007’ at the Barcelona bar. ‘There were a few Germans before me, but I was the first English solicitor and the seventh foreigner,’ he explains. ‘Catalonia is an industrial powerhouse and a real powerbroker in the political sense. But it isn’t the state capital and a lot of the head offices go to Madrid and, so as far as international firms are concerned, they put their first toe in the water there rather than here in Barcelona.’



He has been in Spain since 1991, after he was sent following a misunderstanding at his old firm Frere Cholmeley Bischoff (now part of Eversheds). The young lawyer was asked by the Lib Dem peer Lord Razzall, then chief executive of the firm, if he spoke Spanish. He said that he had failed his O-level. ‘He didn’t hear me and thought I said I had Spanish O-level,’ he recalls. ‘So I arrived here and all I could say was one phrase, which translated as: “I am 14 years old.” It wasn’t very helpful. I was then 30.’



He set up his firm with his wife, an ex-Baker & McKenzie lawyer, in 1994. Their clients are almost exclusively foreign corporates and individuals, and he specialises in international family work and child abduction cases. ‘More often than not, we are in the Spanish courts but usually applying foreign law,’ he explains. ‘Spain is an odd jurisdiction because in England, for example, if you have a family law case and you have a foreign law case, it is the English law that applies. But in Spain you could well be applying that foreign jurisdiction’s law.’



Setting up in Spain has been a nightmare for some. One solicitor, Graham Consitt, who had semi-retired to Alicante on the Costa Brava in 1988, was arrested by Spanish police in 1996, fingerprinted, photographed and kept in a police station before the hearing on a charge that he was practising illegally. The judge later dismissed the case on the grounds that the client knew the Englishman was not a Spanish lawyer.



It is not Michael Soul’s experience. He worked with a solicitor who requalified as a French avocat while he was requalifying as an abogado. ‘The French were very chauvinistic and put as many stumbling blocks as possible in the way,’ he says. ‘The Spanish were far more relaxed.’ Are there any restrictions on practice now? ‘None whatsoever. I have complete freedom,’ he replies. ‘It has been a long haul, but principally I practise as a Spanish lawyer.’



Not everyone shares that view. Historically Spain is ‘not an easy jurisdiction’, says another UK lawyer, who re-qualified in Barcelona. ‘Even now there is considerable resentment from local law firms who aren’t particularly happy about international firms coming in,’ he comments.



Few UK lawyers regret the move. Brian Marson says it has helped ward off the symptoms of Parkinson’s. But he points out he is working 9.30 to 6.30 and, thanks to his English clientele, has no siesta. ‘The sea is sparking, people are on the beach. I can see North Africa on a clear day,’ he says. And you can’t say that about Bromley.



Jon Robins is a freelance journalist