Madrid-based Garrigues has gained an outpost in Chile through the incorporation of Santiago-based Avendaño Merino. The latter firm has twenty lawyers, and its incorporation will add five partners to Garrigues, including Luis Felipe Merino, Oscar Ferrari, José Miguel Rioseco, Luis Eduardo Correa and Rodrigo Fernández. Avendaño Merino will continue under the moniker Garrigues Chile.
This move is part of a strategy outlined by Garrigues in 2013. In that year, Garrigues announced that it was leaving the Affinitas alliance which it formed in 2004, and would expand into Latin American countries by opening its own offices. The firm already has offices in São Paulo, Mexico City, Lima and Bogotá, and it is looking into further expanding its presence, particularly into Argentina, in the near future.
The managing partner of Avendaño Merino, Luis Felipe Merino, reflected on this move in the light an increasingly globalized legal world. “We do believe that practice of law is becoming global more and more, and probably being a local attorney could be all right, but you are not providing your client with a broader view and with a broader network,” he said.
Merino went on to explain how the firms came to an agreement to merge. “Our conversations lasted for about a year, and over this bit of time we had the opportunity to work together with some clients; we sent them some clients; they sent us some clients. We had the opportunity to see if how we approached clients was alike or not.” According to Merino and Javier Ybáñez, who oversees Garrigues’s Latin American activities, the firms had highly compatible business philosophies.
Practice area overlap also contributed to the decision, according to Merino. “Probably the practice areas that we are strongest in are M&A and tax and also real estate and [those] are also practice areas in which Garrigues is quite strong,” Merino said.