External General Counsel
Ongoing legal advisory for mid-sized companies and Spanish subsidiaries of international groups. A senior lawyer with twenty-five years of experience in complex transactions, admitted in both Madrid and New York, available as your company's single legal point of contact.
Request a consultationOur experience
At Estudio Jurídico Alta Mediación we have spent twenty-five years working from both sides of the table: as outside counsel advising companies on transactions and disputes, and as board secretary for Spanish subsidiaries of American and European multinationals.
That dual perspective is what sets this service apart. It isn't corporate governance theory applied from the outside. It is the practical experience of having sat inside the boardroom, drafted its minutes, convened its meetings, coordinated reporting with a foreign parent company, and supported leadership teams through critical day-to-day legal decisions.
We know how a European CFO thinks, how an American General Counsel writes, and what a Country Manager needs when they call at eleven at night because a client is threatening to walk away from a contract tomorrow. And we know how to coordinate all of that with local Spanish legal culture without anything getting lost in translation.
What External General Counsel means
It's the "in-house lawyer, outsourced" model: a senior lawyer acts as your company's permanent legal point of contact — available for ongoing consultation, contract review, day-to-day legal decision-making, and coordination with outside specialists when a matter requires it.
It doesn't replace a law firm for work that genuinely requires deep specialization — a significant M&A transaction, complex litigation, advanced international tax structuring. It complements it: this is the person who holds the company's entire legal map in their head, decides what gets resolved in-house and what gets referred out, manages the relationship with those specialists, and supports the leadership team on decisions with legal implications.
It is the functional equivalent of having a General Counsel on staff, without the cost or the rigidity that comes with it.
What we handle directly
Much of the routine legal work of a mid-sized company doesn't require a large law firm behind it. Reviewing and negotiating commercial, employment, or distribution contracts. Drafting internal policies. Convening and minuting board and shareholder meetings. Urgent day-to-day queries. Light due diligence ahead of a minor transaction. Legal communication with a foreign parent company.
For all of that, an External General Counsel with sufficient experience resolves matters without opening a file at an outside firm — with the time and cost savings that implies. We reserve referral to outside specialists for what genuinely requires it: complex litigation, major M&A transactions, advanced international tax matters.
What changes with a real bilingual point of contact
We don't just speak the language. We understand how an American general counsel thinks, what a German CFO expects to see in a legal memo, and what questions an Anglo-Saxon board asks that a Spanish one never would.
We report in the format your parent company expects, not the one that's convenient for the local firm. And when an emergency comes up, you have a direct line, not a voicemail box.
Engagement model
We design a service package tailored to each company's exact needs: scope of matters covered, response availability, cadence of meetings with the leadership team, and volume of hours included. We don't start from a fixed template — we start by understanding how your company works and what it needs to resolve.
The package is reviewed and adjusted over time, as the company's needs change: more or fewer hours, new matters, a different meeting cadence. External General Counsel isn't a rigid contract — it's a relationship of trust that evolves with your business.
Request an initial consultation to work out together which model fits your current situation.
Does this sound familiar?
If any of these situations describe your current challenge, we can help.
- Your Country Manager in Spain has spent months putting out legal fires without headquarters ever seeing what that costs in time and risk.
- Your General Counsel in the US, Germany, or the UK keeps asking for legal reports your local counsel can't produce in the format or the language a foreign lawyer expects.
- You've received more than one contract in Spanish reviewed by a local firm, and neither you nor your boss at headquarters has any way to verify it actually protects the group's interests.
- When you call your Spanish legal advisor at nine at night Madrid time, three in the afternoon in New York, nobody picks up until the next day.
- You're asked for board minutes, shareholder registers, and up-to-date compliance records, and you're not sure what you have would survive a serious governance audit.
- You hired a large firm because it sounded safe, and now you're paying big-firm rates for routine work that could be handled for a fraction of the cost with a single trusted point of contact.
- Or you simply want to stop being the one who explains, in English, at the monthly call with headquarters, why the legal matter in Spain still isn't resolved.
Who this is for
This service is particularly well suited to:
- Mid-sized family businesses going through a professionalization phase, with annual revenue between five and thirty million euros, without in-house counsel but with a steady legal workload that no longer allows for improvisation.
- Spanish subsidiaries of international groups (particularly American), with small to mid-sized operations in Spain, that need a senior local lawyer who speaks the language of headquarters and understands international corporate governance standards.
- Scale-ups after their first or second funding round, with institutional investors demanding legal order and formal reporting, but not yet large enough to justify an in-house General Counsel.
- Family offices and family wealth structures with complex corporate arrangements requiring ongoing legal coordination.
Why Alta Mediación
- Senior lawyer, not a junior team. You always speak with the lawyer handling your matter. No layers, no rotation, no surprises.
- Dual legal culture. Admitted in both Madrid and New York. Direct experience with how American and European counterparts think, negotiate, and report.
- Twenty-five years inside boardrooms. Not corporate governance theory — practical experience as board secretary and advisor to international companies' governing bodies.
- A network of specialists. When a matter requires deep specialization (litigation, international tax, complex employment law), we coordinate with the trusted network of senior lawyers we've built over twenty-five years. The client still has a single point of contact.
- Verifiable track record. References available on request. Public record of training at Georgetown, IE, ICAM, and admission in New York.
If your Spanish subsidiary also needs ongoing corporate secretarial support, see our company secretarial services.
For specific M&A transactions or restructurings, see also mergers and acquisitions.
Let's talk about your company
A first consultation is the best moment to assess your options. No obligation. Reply within 24-48 working hours.
Request a first consultation