Dear Roseland,
When I replied to Glyn on the 26th June 2009 there was no lawyer mentioned on their website. This has also happened last week with another company.
They added this lawyer's name months later (In October I think). They claim to be outsourcing the litigation cases over to another company.
The outsourced company, "Gabinete Marbella y Asociados SL", to the best of my knowledge is a "gestorÃ*a" or "gabinete", not a law firm (they are not an S.L.P.):
http://www.midocumentacion.com/quién-somos/
The lawyer you mention on your post exists and is duly registered to practice by Madrid's Law Society.
As written above by Admin, our website has been around for over a decade now. In the span of these ten years every single company that acted on the same way as First Legal Services turned out to be a scam,
with no exceptions.
The way it works out is as follows:
1. These companies are recently incorporated. Most often than not, there isn't even a company incorporated, only a newly registered website which at most is 3 months old.
2. They hire no Spanish registered lawyers. Their workers (the ones that cold-call you) are normally ex-timeshare agents which are excellent at closing deals. They will label themselves as
Legal Advisors, Legal Executives, Paralegals, Senior Legal Adsvisors etc but never as lawyers.
3. They mislead those that they target into thinking they are a legitimate Spanish law firm.
4. They cold-call timeshare investors using the data bases belonging to the timesehare companies that scammed these clients in the first place either because they purchaed it or because they themselves are ex-employees or have acquaintances. This breaches Spain's Data Protection Act. What you should ask yourself is why would a timsehare company disclose your contact details over to a new company which is going to sue them unless they knew that the new company wasn't going to do anything about it, of course. Spanish law firms never cold-call people. Someone appropriately labelled this yeras ago as "the scam of the scam". Some people have fallen more than 5 times for it through different companies which always offer to sue the ones before and claim back the money.
5. In ten over years I've never met anyone who has recovered their money through any of these companies. Do you know anyone?
6. These litigation cases are in their majority a waste of time and money as the timesehare companies will invariably have no assets, so its throwing away good money after bad litigating. And this is when they actually do outsource someone to litigate, which is normally not the case. i.e. European Mediation Limited, Legal Advice Counsel, European Legal Services etc.
European Mediation Limited also added later (after a thread on them was started on our webiste) on their website a Fuengirola law firm to whom they supposedly outsourced legal work to. This company was wounded up by the UK Authorities in the Public Interest. You can read more on them on this thread:
Belegal forum thread
Bottomline, from the moment you receive a cold-call these people are breaching the law and they know it. How can you build a professional relation
of trust if it starts already illegaly as per Spain's laws?
Shouldn't you be asking yourself on why legitimate Spanish law firms don't work like this? It's always these new companies that have been set up over the last months which never have in-house lawyers working for them that cold-call you.
If you want to hire such companies we will not deter you.
My advice is that if you want to litigate or hire any legal service in Spain is that you do it only through legitimate Spanish law firms (S.L.P.'s) who will employ only Spanish registered lawyers. Besides, only Spanish registered lawyers have Professional Indemnity Insurance and are members of one of the regional Law Societies and have to abide by their rules.
Yours faithfully,
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