La calidad competitiva y el nuevo entorno de la abogacía española

In this article the process of the development of the Spanish Legal Market leading to a new competitive structure is described and the following two main challenges identified; an emerging global legal market and a spiralling economic crisis. Further to this, it focuses on competitive quality, understood as a key advantage for law firms delivering legal services to the business community. The results and conclusions drawn are taken from exploratory research into the Catalan legal market based on in-depth interviews conducted with shareholders, in-house lawyers and managers from twenty eight companies. Among other aspects, the interviews reveal the different priorities of the sampled companies with regard to the benefits they expect to obtain from their primary law firms, depending on the strategic group to which those law firms belong. Also shown are the diverse ranks of perceived satisfaction, with the result being the Spanish local firms are the most valued.