Looking at Latin America wondering which country and what areas of law your firm could get involved with to generate new streams of income? Well, lawyers attending MD Communications’ breakfast briefing in London served up some possibilities outlining the pros and cons of doing business in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.
The advice was – don’t necessarily think about traditional models of opening up an office but consider more flexible approaches to creating relationships that result in fee paying work.
Speaking at the MD Communications’ Latin American breakfast briefing Alberto Navarro, a partner at Navarro Castex Abogados, an Argentine-based law firm with offices in Uruguay said: “What we expect is to work together in projects such as white collar crime and infrastructure that are the pending issues for these economies.”
For Mr Navarro and fellow speaker Horacio Bernardes-Neto, a senior partner at Brazil’s Motta, Fernandes Rocha Advogados, there is a lot of room for UK and Latin American lawyers to work together.
“I can’t say that setting up an office in Uruguay or Argentina is feasible for UK firms in the short term but a lot can be done through collaboration,” said Mr Navarro.
He highlighted a problem that Latin and UK firms often mention – it’s not easy to find alliances with a specific firm.
For Navarro, it is a matter of discovering reliable friends and firms. “There are plenty of reliable firms in Argentina and Uruguay most with US and UK trained lawyers,” he said.
If you’d like help meeting those reliable firms then MD Communications can help you do just that, researching the markets, helping you identify possible partner firms, arranging introductions and raising your profile and/or managing a multi-media PR campaign.
For a copy of our White Paper Untapped Potential: UK Legal Services & Latin America please contact us.
