Is your Spanish legal team qualified for what you're paying them for?

Spain has a lot of excellent lawyers. Properly qualified, properly regulated and exactly what you need when you have a legal problem.

The issue is scope creep. Spanish legal teams and law firms routinely offer accounting services, tax compliance and financial structuring advice that in the UK or Germany would require entirely separate professional qualifications.

A Spanish law degree doesn't cover double-entry bookkeeping, financial statement analysis or corporate tax mechanics, but that doesn't stop the service being offered, or the client assuming it's covered.

When things go wrong, the professional indemnity insurance carried by an abogado is calibrated for legal errors. Accounting errors are a different category entirely.

That gap sits with the client. 

In my previous two posts, I talked about the fact that anyone can call themselves an asesor fiscal, no qualification required. And in Spain, gestores are authorised for administration, not advice, but hundreds of thousands of businesses rely on them for their entire tax position.

In Spain, it's not that people aren't properly qualified, it's that they still may not be qualified for the specific thing you're paying them for... and the insurance won't tell you that upfront.

Understanding what your adviser is actually licensed and insured to do isn't due diligence. It's the baseline.

What's your experience, have you ever assumed a professional relationship covered more than it did?

Part of the Beyond the Sun and Sangria series.