Big or bountiful

Following lengthy internal wranglings that focused largely on strategic priorities, PLMJ – A.M.Pereira, Sáragga Leal, Oliveira Martins, Júdice e Associados suffered a huge blow when Gabriela Rodrigues Martins, one of the country’s outstanding corporate experts, announced last October that she was leaving the firm, together with four other partners and a team of 18 fee-earners. Just weeks before the announcement, Fernando Campos Ferreira, the firm’s longstanding managing partner, who is also highly respected as a finance practitioner, had stepped down from his role at the head of the firm. It quickly became clear that one of Portugal’s foremost firms was in crisis.

PLMJ boasts over 40 partners and prides itself on having long completed its management succession from founding partners to the second generation of lawyers. It came as something of a surprise to the market, then, to witness the firm going back to its roots in appointing founding partner Luís Sáragga Leal to the top job. ‘PLMJ has shown a total inability to renew its partnership,’ one partner at an international firm commented.

Sáragga Leal is aware of market perceptions, but counters that he has been drafted in temporarily to see the firm through a difficult spell. ‘I have returned to the firm as managing partner to relaunch the generational transition,’ he explains. ‘I don’t expect to stay one second more than is strictly necessary. From a selfish point of view, I would hope to stay no longer than one year, but I admit it may turn out to be two years.’

Meanwhile, Rodrigues Martins, who spent 20 years at PLMJ and had also recently been a member of the firm’s management committee, explains the context of her departure. ‘We spent several years trying to set a clear strategy for the firm, but we were never in agreement. It seemed that the only key objective for PLMJ was that it should stick to the strategy of being the largest firm in Portugal,’ she says.

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