Michavila-Acebes Abogados appoints Ángel Acebes Pérez managing partner and opens a new stage

Michavila-Acebes Abogados has appointed Ángel Acebes Pérez as the firm's new managing partner, Expansión Jurídico reported on 19 October. The appointment opens a new stage at the independent firm, which has completed more than 15 years of activity, promoted by the founding partners, José María Michavila and Ángel Acebes Paniagua, who will remain fully involved in the firm.

The founders will continue to play a role in two areas: legal advice to clients and business development, according to the published information.

A cross-cutting management model

Acebes Pérez will assume the firm's general coordination, the execution of its strategy and the development of its internal organisation, working alongside the management committee, made up of the heads of the practice areas and the firm's general manager.

The firm explains that this management model seeks a more cross-cutting and coordinated management, one that favours collaboration between teams and makes the most of each area's capabilities, while preserving their autonomy and specialisation. The appointment is part of the strategy of powering a new stage of growth as an independent firm and reaffirming its identity.

"This new structure will allow us to keep growing and to face with strength the challenges ahead," says José María Michavila in the released information. Acebes Pérez himself underlines his commitment to continue driving the firm's evolution, "building, together with all the firm's professionals, a solid project with a vision for the future".

The new managing partner's profile

Ángel Acebes Pérez has broad experience in corporate law across its full scope and in mergers and acquisitions (M&A). He has worked on due diligence processes advising national and international companies, including banking entities and listed companies, according to the cited source.

What the managing partner role means

The figure of the managing partner has been spreading through Spanish mid-size firms as an answer to a scale problem: when a firm grows, the founding partners cannot be with the client, on business development and on daily management at the same time. The managing partner takes on internal coordination, strategy follow-up and team organisation, while the partners with the greatest commercial weight concentrate their time on advice and business development.

In Michavila-Acebes' case, the structure is completed with a management committee made up of the practice-area heads and the general management, a combination common in firms that have made the leap from a founders' practice to a professionalised organisation. The challenge of these transitions is always the same: for the firm to gain in management without losing the identity that fed it, something the announcement itself underlines when it speaks of "reaffirming its identity" as an independent firm.

Generational transitions at independent firms

The Michavila-Acebes move follows an increasingly frequent pattern in Spanish independent firms: founders move from day-to-day management to advice and business development, and a new generation assumes executive leadership with more professionalised structures. It is a different transition from team moves between big firms, like the Osborne Clarke hire of a real estate team from Baker McKenzie we published today, or from new firms born of a departure, like Marest Law, Marlen Estévez's project after leaving RocaJunyent.

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