Hello Miguel, you’re the Managing Director of Morillon Avocats, and this year you’re celebrating your company’s 25th anniversary. Can you tell us about your beginnings?
When I finished my University studies in Law, I had done some market research to explore the various possibilities open to me and found that there was no legal firm in Madrid to handle the legal affairs of French citizens living in Spain. Being partly French, and with a particular link to French culture, I was familiar with both mentalities and so I decided to create something that didn’t exist.
What is the current status of this project in which you are fully invested?
Today, we are proud to have assembled a first-rate human and professional team. We are a family of 80 people, including 30 lawyers, spread across 18 offices in Madrid, Paris, Lisbon and most of the main Spanish cities. It is a highly qualified team offering cutting-edge legal services, in an ongoing effort to adapt to the needs of each case, thoroughly and as quickly as possible. And 48.2% of French-speaking residents in Spain who have needed legal advice have already required the firm’s services for one case or another over the last 25 years.
What is your main feature?
We always try to be close by and reachable as soon as possible, and we establish relationships of understanding and trust with every client.
So you pay very special attention to interpersonal relationships…
In fact, it’s one of our competitive advantages, as the human factor is our great strength. Our success is a reflection of the personalised attention and passion we put in to each case, and our clients’ needs and goals are the top priority.
I have witnessed the development and expansion of family businesses and businesses in general, flourishing thanks to our ability to react and intervene and to resolve disputes and bypass serious legal problems. The current international reputation of Morillon Avocats is the result of this defining feature, where we combine fair legal action with personal and cultural understanding.
Is the firm involved in any way in activities peripheral to the law?
Yes, absolutely. As director of the firm, but also as a lawyer, I have launched more than 12 trademarks linked to the legal sector (in the publishing industry, for example). I am also very active in the academic field, in the university and legal fields, collaborating, for example, in the joint law degree course at the Sorbonne University and the Complutense University. I firmly believe in the importance of collaboration between training and the practice of law, and I have established partnerships with various associations or entities that share my commitment to the professional development of present and future specialists in our field.
What do you want your clients, or stakeholders, to take away from the work you do for or with them?
We really hope to have a positive impact on their lives or businesses when they require our services, and especially afterwards. Knowing that we have removed a problem from their horizon, however small or serious, makes our work all the more meaningful. We are satisfied when someone thanks us and goes on with their life without legal worries.
Conversely, we are grateful to anyone who entrusts us with a legal matter that worries them. It is this trust that keeps us going.
How are you going to celebrate your 25 years in business?
Mainly by paying tribute to and thanking the «extended» community we work for, and who are the driving force of the creation of our firm.
We want to celebrate our 25 years by paying tribute, in our own way, to the community we have served over the years and who, in return, have placed their trust in us.
We have created a trophy, EL FARO, which we will award to a key figure in the French community, for their merits in respect of rapprochement, harmony and understanding between the French people and their host country.
We’re going to publish a collection of interviews we’ve called the «LIMITED SERIES» with people who have unusual careers, important jobs or exemplary work, and who are, for the most part, former students from the Lycée Français de Madrid.
And we are in the process of creating a sort of collection of stories that tell the origins, the trajectory and the influence of institutions, companies or organisations linked to the French community; we share a memory with them that retraces the last decades of the French community in Spain, and we have called this collection: Mémoires Partagées (Shared Memories).
Morrillon Avocats
