Crowd control

The big news in the Brazilian legal market is the sudden upsurge in the number of international law firms setting up shop, with five UK and US firms recently launching in São Paulo. Allen & Overy, Mayer Brown, Proskauer Rose, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, through its affiliated Brazilian firm Derraik Advogados, have all opened there in the past 18 months. The moves have increased the number of international law firms in São Paulo – Brazil’s key commercial and financial centre – from five to ten, and signal a landmark moment in Brazil’s increasingly international legal landscape.

What’s more, Barlow Lyde & Gilbert announced in January that it will open in São Paulo once it obtains regulatory approval, and in December Conyers Dill & Pearman became the first offshore law firm to open in Brazil. There’s no doubting that this is a hot market.

Proskauer Rose’s São Paulo head, Antonio Piccirillo, states that since the firm’s arrival in Brazil, its client portfolio has doubled. ‘We are now involved in our fifth flotation,’ he says. Piccirillo explains that the firm has mainly been advising Brazilian companies and local and international banks on equity and debt capital markets, as well as on syndicated loans and project finance. ‘Ninety per cent of our clients are Brazilian,’ Piccirillo says.

It is understood that at least two more LB Global Elite firms – Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton – and project finance and energy specialist Chadbourne & Parke are expected to add São Paulo to their international office networks sometime during 2009. Chadbourne & Parke is also rumoured to have successfully applied for registration as a foreign law consultant at the São Paulo branch of the Brazilian Bar Association (OAB).

To read the rest of this article subscribe to Legal Business.