2020 has been a tough and complicated year for everyone, including the legal sector. The evolution of law firms has been very similar. durante el transcurso de las distintas fases de la pandemia. Al principio, cuentan, enfocaron sus esfuerzos en velar por la buena salud de sus equipos de trabajo y, una vez asegurada, buscaron formas de seguir ofreciendo el mejor servicio a sus clientes, trabajando de forma remota y anticipándose a sus necesidades.
Law firms such as Arias, Barros & Errázuriz, ClarkeModet, Écija, Gómez-Pinzón Abogados, and Tanoira Cassagne Abogados also agree that 2020 was a year full of challenges. Despite operating in different jurisdictions, they concur that the most dynamic areas for 2021 will be M&A, telecommunications, new technologies, labor law, finance, refinancing, and energy. During our conversation, they affirmed that uncertainty will continue to be the dominant theme in 2021.
But specifically, how did the firms evolve in 2020?
Carolina Flores, partner and managing partner of the Costa Rica office and member of the Arias regional council: “2020 has been a year full of challenges for all companies. However, at the firm, we have been successful in implementing alternatives to maintain our service portfolio without any disruption, ensuring it remains accessible and attractive to our clients. We have also seen an increase in billing in certain practice areas, which have experienced increased client demand, such as labor law, finance, tax, and regulatory law. Currently, we expect to close the year having reached the regional target set in 2019.”
Cristián Barros, Managing Partner of Barros & Errázuriz (Chile): “2020 was a very unusual year in Chile, not only due to the pandemic, but also because of a social crisis that had been ongoing since October 2019. In this regard, as a firm, we have prioritized safeguarding the health and well-being of our teams and remaining close to our clients to support them in the new challenges they are facing. Legal activity was particularly affected in the first part of the year, but thanks to our efficient technological network for all our lawyers, we were able to transition to remote work immediately and ensure the continuity of our services. Despite all the difficulties, it has been an active year in areas such as energy, finance, labor, tax, and, in the second half of the year, also M&A. We are closing out a year that, so far, has been close to what we expected, which makes us very pleased and grateful to our team, who have made a tremendous effort.” important”.
Fernando Strubing Gomes, Corporate Director of International Business Development at ClarkeModet: “Pending confirmation of the closing figures, we expect the group’s revenue to remain stable compared to 2019, which was around 63 million euros, representing a growth of 9.5% compared to the previous year.
Despite the current situation, which has undoubtedly affected almost every sector, ClarkeModet has the advantage of offering solutions for organizations of any sector and type of company worldwide. In 2019 alone, we initiated cases in 186 of the 194 countries recognized by the UN.
Mauricio París, LATAM manager and partner at Écija Legal Costa Rica: “The firm’s projected year-end revenue for 2020 is €71.7 million, representing a 21.94% increase compared to 2019. In LATAM, our revenue has grown by 52.8%, from €19.7 million to €30.2 million. All our offices have experienced increased revenue, despite the health situation.”
José Luis Suarez Parra, managing partner at Gómez-Pinzón Abogados (Colombia): Despite everything we experienced and given the circumstances, it was a good year for GPA. For a few months, the workflow slowed down, but towards the end of 2020, it increased significantly. We confirmed that we were on the right track. I believe the main achievement of this year is the mental shift we made, the change in mindset for the entire organization. We realized that we could work 100% virtually from anywhere in the world and continue to provide a better and more efficient service than even when we were working in person. At GPA, we responded to the needs of each of our clients in an agile and efficient manner, and this was achieved thanks to leveraging technological solutions.”
Alexia Rosenthal, partner at Tanoira Cassagne Abogados (Argentina): “We started the year with a lot of uncertainty about how COVID-19 would impact us. We quickly transitioned to 100% remote work and strengthened our technological development, focusing on service quality. We managed not to miss a single day of consulting, and the workload grew due to several factors. Among them, we can highlight the large amount of regulation issued by the government as a consequence of COVID, from financial aid and essential services to exchange restrictions on transferring foreign currency abroad. Likewise, many of our clients migrated their business models to become 100% digital, for which they also needed active support. The digital revolution, accelerated by the pandemic, spurred innovation, and many of our clients experienced in one year the growth they expected to achieve in three to five years, which opened up many opportunities.” opportunities. Consequently, the evolution of billing was slightly above the projected amount, having incorporated new lawyers due to the accumulation of work demanded.”
What is your business strategy and priorities for 2021?
Alexia Rosenthal, partner at Tanoira Cassagne Abogados (Argentina): “Our strategy is to continue providing innovative legal services, offering agile, creative, and professional service so that our client portfolio continues to grow as it has been. We will continue implementing our own innovative process, growing organically, and supporting our clients in their transformation processes. Our priority is investing in technology and implementing measures aimed at strengthening relationships with our clients and our teams. In the immediate future, we will continue working 100% remotely, although we anticipate a hybrid model, and we are already preparing for that.”
José Luis Suarez Parra, managing partner at Gómez-Pinzón Abogados (Colombia): “The strategy is to continue on our current path, but adapted to the new reality. We aim to become the best firm in the country primarily through client service and excellence. All our strategies are necessarily based on technological solutions, and that’s what we’ve been working on. The pandemic also confirmed that the strength of our services is directly related to the strength of our team. Our approach to the market remains the same: focus on providing excellent service, ensuring the quality of our product, maintaining relationships with valued clients, and, of course, continuing to concentrate on growing our areas of expertise such as M&A, finance, and capital markets. We will also continue to push into areas that are becoming increasingly relevant, such as telecommunications, data protection, and trade secret protection. At GPA, we will continue our regional expansion and maintain a strategy of alliances and relationships with other firms in New York and London.”
Mauricio París, LATAM manager and partner at Écija Legal Costa Rica: “Our priority for 2021 is to complete the map of LATAM jurisdictions, with the opening of Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Uruguay, through the incorporation of local firms with a relevant presence in the local market and compatibility with our values and vision of the practice of law.”
Cristián Barros, managing partner of Barros & Errázuriz (Chile): “In terms of strategy for next year we will continue to strengthen areas such as venture capital, fintech, information technologies and energy, which are sectors that we estimate will become increasingly dynamic in the market.
Within this, it is worth highlighting our Innovation and Entrepreneurship area, and the work we have done in fintech, where we have been highlighted as the number 1 studio in Chile, by the ranking of Chambers, recently published.
Also related to innovation, we will continue developing initiatives such as the first Latin American Legal Hackathon , which we launched together with our partners in the Affinitas Alliance and the social startup Laboratoria. This unique experience demonstrated the relevance of digital transformation in the legal industry and is also an effective tool for women’s entry into the workforce, a fundamental commitment for our firm.
Internationally, we will continue to promote our Affinitas Alliance, which we formed with three other firms in the region (Gómez-Pinzón, Colombia; Mijares, Angoitia, Cortés y Fuentes, SC, Mexico and Mirando & Amado, Peru), focused on the Asia Pacific axis, which is becoming increasingly important in our markets.”
Fernando Strubing Gomes, Corporate Director of International Business Development at ClarkeModet: “We believe that in situations like the current one, it is essential to continue investing. In our case, this means investing in technology to facilitate organizations’ access to new disruptive solutions that make the management of their industrial and intellectual property more efficient. It also means investing in knowledge, which necessarily involves an increasingly broad and strong team of experts in the various areas of knowledge on which we focus at ClarkeModet.”
Carolina Flores, partner and managing partner of the Costa Rica office and member of the Arias regional council: “Our strategy is to continue driving the development of the practice areas in which we have seen an increase in demand for services during this last quarter of 2020. In addition, one of our priorities is to work on the development of digital platforms that allow us to streamline and add value to the portfolio of services we offer to our clients.”
What are your aspirations for 2021, what are your goals?
Carolina Flores, partner and managing partner of the Costa Rica office and member of the Arias regional council: “Our priority remains safeguarding the health of our human talent and continuing to serve our clients with the same service standards that characterize us: quality, efficiency, and speed. In administrative terms, in 2020 we had to make important decisions and implement a series of modifications that proved successful, such as teleworking, without interrupting our services or their quality. Our objectives for 2021 are focused on maintaining these efforts, which have allowed us to face the COVID-19 crisis with solid and consistent strategies.”
José Luis Suarez Parra, managing partner at Gómez-Pinzón Abogados (Colombia): “Growing numerically will be a very challenging year because recoveries are very uneven. The biggest challenge will be how to distribute that growth more evenly. I think we’re aiming for 10 to 12% revenue growth in 2021, perhaps a little more, although there’s still a lot of uncertainty. Additionally, our internal projection is to consolidate four or five technology-driven products that effectively solve our clients’ problems. Another objective is to design how we’ll operate going forward; we’re finalizing details to develop our work remotely and in person, leaving it somewhat to the discretion and flexibility of the people in the organization. And, of course, we’ll maintain growth in our practice areas, such as real estate, energy, finance, refinancing, restructurings at all levels, and in the area of M&A and corporate.”
Cristián Barros, managing partner of Barros & Errázuriz (Chile): “Beyond the strategy mentioned above, if there is a relevant lesson from 2020, it is that we face an increasingly changing world and that, outside of any planning, the biggest challenge we have to consider is the ability to adapt to new times, new processes, and new ways of approaching legal practice and our clients.
No one knows exactly how the world will operate again after we overcome the pandemic. That’s why having the ability to implement transformations quickly and efficiently is a key objective for us.
How to address the needs of our clients in changing environments, to be close to them, even at a distance, to always ensure the quality of our services by combining them with work flexibility, to generate spaces for professional development based on gender equality and to advance in terms of digital transformation in the legal industry, are the issues that we review and that we consider in our vision and projection as a firm.”
Mauricio París, LATAM manager and partner at Écija Legal Costa Rica: “Completing the map of LATAM jurisdictions. Strengthening our existing jurisdictions by incorporating new partners or local mergers, under our open-door policy, and maintaining the double-digit growth rate we have maintained since 2012, which has allowed us to double our revenue in six years.”
Alexia Rosenthal, partner at Tanoira Cassagne Abogados (Argentina): “We want to be better, and thus be an option in innovative legal advice that companies and leading executives identify when designing and carrying out their projects, providing a high-quality service, oriented towards obtaining effective results so that they can do more and better business in this new era.”
Fernando Strubing Gomes, Corporate Director of International Business Development at ClarkeModet: “Our main objective is to support our clients so they can emerge stronger from this crisis. It is said that we will emerge stronger and better as a society from this situation we are experiencing worldwide, but this is something we can only achieve if we do our homework. The pandemic has highlighted the urgent need to definitively commit to innovation. Neither public nor private organizations can postpone this issue any longer if they want to avoid the effects of the pandemic and emerge stronger.”
At ClarkeModet, as always, we will stand alongside organizations in this process as a strategic partner in managing the entire innovation lifecycle. Our methodology places innovation at the heart of any business plan.”
What do you think activity will focus on in the coming year?
Fernando Strubing Gomes, Corporate Director of International Business Development at ClarkeModet : “As a result of the current surge in science and technology, we believe that industrial and intellectual property strategies will play an increasingly important role in the new global landscape. This includes not only traditional instruments like patents, but also newer ones such as trade secrets, due to their flexibility and the coverage they offer for many of the assets generated in the new economy.”
Furthermore, it is clear that the digitalization of businesses is now an unstoppable reality. Organizations are generating, and will increasingly generate, intangible assets related to the digital world, and will also require new disruptive solutions for managing their industrial and intellectual property.
We also anticipate that the valuation of intangible assets will become increasingly important. Faced with a crisis like the one we are experiencing, companies need to leverage the intrinsic value of their intellectual property assets. Knowing the value of your brand, patent, or design is the first step toward licensing, assigning, or transferring the technology.
And finally, the management of industrial and intellectual property also plays a fundamental role in enabling companies to access new aid and funds through various programs, such as Horizon Europe.”
Carolina Flores, partner and managing partner of the Costa Rica office and member of the Arias regional council: “Based on market trends in Central America, we know we must focus on service innovation and entering new markets. We will also continue implementing strategies to become more cost-efficient, in order to adapt to our clients’ needs. Finally, we will focus on maintaining and increasing technology-based services to be more efficient for our clients.”
José Luis Suarez Parra, managing partner at Gómez-Pinzón Abogados (Colombia): “I don’t believe the pandemic will significantly change the nature of our clients’ needs and the services we offer. But specifically, we will focus on financing, refinancing, and restructuring at all levels. We can also talk about telecommunications and new technologies, which are areas that have become more relevant due to the pandemic. In Colombia, there will be a tax reform in 2021, and that will generate needs, as will infrastructure projects. We will continue to be key players in those areas, and we will concentrate our efforts there.”
Cristián Barros, managing partner of Barros & Errázuriz (Chile): “The development of non-conventional energy projects and the consolidation of existing ones will remain active next year, as will the areas of innovation, technological development, and communications, already mentioned. Within this, desalination projects and the development of Green Hydrogen stand out, as they are part of Chile’s energy and trade strategy for the next 30 years. M&A and refinancings will also be active.”
Mauricio París, LATAM manager and partner at Écija Legal Costa Rica: “Digitalization. The health situation has forced digitalization in all sectors, and that is precisely one of our team’s core practices. M&A. The economic crisis is generating an increase in M&A transactions at the regional level. Dispute resolution. Due to the economic situation, but also the health situation, we are seeing an exponential increase in litigation for late payments and breaches of contract, often due to circumstances associated with force majeure.”
Alexia Rosenthal, partner at Tanoira Cassagne Abogados (Argentina): “The volume of regulations will increase given the government’s policy of actively intervening in the relationship between private parties. In this regard, the areas of administrative law and Central Bank regulations will remain very active. The labor law area will also continue to be active with restructurings, terminations, and significant union activity. We will remain very active in the restructuring and refinancing of both corporate and sub-sovereign debt, as well as in the area of insolvency and bankruptcy proceedings, and participating in M&A transactions resulting from the excess of pesos in the market. We will also work in the areas of real estate, where we believe there will be good opportunities, and the areas of e-gaming and Health & Science, both of which are on the rise.”
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