Firms' paradise lost

Golden sands, a laid-back lifestyle, and higher fees can all lure lawyers abroad to advise ex-pats - but behind the picture-postcard scenery Stephen Ward discovers local hostilityMoving from practising in the UK to practising abroad in many ways means more of the same, according to Fiona Swainston who moved from west Sussex to the Algarve in Portugal in 1997.

She is largely still working for British clients and says: 'Three quarters of the work is property and wills.

There are also some matrimonial cases, where an English person has married a Portuguese spouse, or where both are English but the marriage has run into difficulties.'But the lifestyle in the non-working hours is in most ways an unequivocal improvement, says Graham Consitt, a sole practitioner near Alicante in Spain.

'I've just driven back from England, and it's not just the weather that's better.

Everybody's more laid back about things here.'Ronald Swyer, who also practises in the Algarve, agrees.

'If it's warm you can take an hour-and-a-half for lunch, and eat seafood in a beach-side caf, sitting in the sun,' says Mr Swyer, who moved a decade ago from being a sole practitioner in London.

'It's all on tap.

If you want to play tennis it's there without having to wait hours or days to book an indoor court.

There is golf if you want it.' His particular diversion, which is equally readily available, is clay pigeon shooting.Then there are the fees, which for conveyancing are much higher than in England.

According to Ms Swainston, the fees for conveyancing are still 'substantial', often 2% of the purchase price, and properties can be worth 1 million or more.

David Anderson, an English solicitor who tried to set up in Montpelier, France, says: 'There are no English lawyers in the whole of south-west France, and 250,000 ex-pats.

We worked out that all we had to do was pick up wills and probate from them and it would be a nice business.' Given all these factors, the free market in labour in the European Union, and the growing number of Britons retiring or working abroad, it takes more than the inherent conservatism and caution of solicitors to explain why there are not more than the small handful of solicitors in any of the similar long-standing expatriate communities of Italy, Greece, Spain or France.

Most of the few who do practise are running an outpost for a British firm, and they mainly have corporate clients.

One reason for the small size of the band of ex-pat British lawyers is that as barriers have slowly come down over the past decade, the local practitioners in all these EU countries have improved their standards, and made themselves more user-friendly to overseas nationals.

Ms Swainston says: 'Many of the younger Portuguese lawyers speak English - they have realised they need to because of the number of wealthy English and the greater competition for their business.'This contrasts with the experience of Mr Swyer when he bought a property in the early 1990s.

He used a top local lawyer, but it still took two years to complete the transaction.

'I thought, if this is the best they can do, I'll come and do it better.' Many have now caught up.The unfortunate experiences of some pioneering ex-pat solicitors may have deterred others from following.

In 1996, Mr Consitt, an English solicitor who had semi-retired to Alicante on the Costa Brava in 1988 and has a practice advising expatriates on wills, divorce and property, was arrested by Spanish police, fingerprinted, photographed and kept in a police station before the hearing on a charge that he was practising illegally.After an intervention by the Spanish Bar - prompted by the Law Society - the judge later dismissed the case on the grounds that the client knew the Englishman was not a Spanish lawyer.

Mr Consitt says he has recently encountered another similar complaint, although without similar consequences.In France, the experience of Mr Anderson, one of three partners at London firm Sykes Anderson, was even worse when he tried to set up an office in Montpelier in the late 1990s.

From the first day he faced enormous hostility from the local lawyers.

'They were like the mafia.

There was a lot of personal and professional unpleasantness.'He had planned to run the French practice mainly from England, using the Internet and the telephone, and took a different approach from many solicitors who set up abroad, and he re-qualified as avocat.

He sat the first written test with no problems.

Then in the middle of the second day, a senior member of the local Bar association walked in unannounced on the test, took him outside for an unprecedented oral examination, then pronounced him unfit to practise.

'He told me to leave Montpelier and not come back.'June O'Keeffe, the Law Society's Brussels-based head of EU and World Trade Organisation affairs, says the reluctance of many European national equivalents of the Law Society and Bar Council to face up to foreign competition is because they approach law as 'some ancient and exalted art' rather than as a business.Her point is illustrated by the slow pace of implementation of the European Establishment of Lawyers Directive, giving EU lawyers the right to practise law in any other member state under their home professional title, including host state law.Article 3 says nationals must register with the appropriate 'competent authority' and must comply with the local profession's rules of conduct; and article 10 gives EU nationals the right - after three years practising host state law locally - to be admitted to the local profession.

No fewer than eight countries, including Portugal, France and Spain, had to be warned by the European Commission earlier this year for failing to implement the directive speedily enough.Portugal is still dragging its feet, according to Christian Wishkirchen, the Society's international policy executive for Europe.

He says the country is on a final warning before being referred to the European Court of Justice.

He expects it to back down at the last moment, because it is the last country outstanding.Recently, Portuguese police even threatened Mr Swyer and Ms Swainston with the closure of their offices for allegedly practising law illegally.

To head off this threat while they wait for the EU rule to arrive, both entered into co-operation with members of the local Faro Bar, an arrangement which puts the names of Portuguese lawyers over the door, with the English solicitors listed as consultants.Aside from such extreme difficulties, there are practical headaches to switching countries.

Ms Swainston, who had worked for Johnson & Clarence in Midhurst - before seeing the Algarve practice for sale in the classified columns of Gazette - says: 'Working in an overseas country has been a steep learning curve.

I have been learning on the job, so the first few months were the hardest.'She spoke no Portuguese before she moved to the country.

'I spoke Spanish, which helped a bit, with written documents particularly.

But the pronunciation is something else.

It took about 18 months, with language lessons, to learn to be fluent in Portuguese.' Mr Consitt says even after a decade, he would hesitate to use his Spanish in a courtroom.The laid-back culture has a downside.

As Ms Swainston says: 'The bureaucracy can be a nightmare - you often have to queue for three hours.

The government departments often stop for the day at 2pm.

Some stop at 4pm.

The finance department closes for two hours for lunch.' Whatever the weather, this is enough to make even the English civil justice system look efficient.Stephen Ward is a freelance journalist