Most US companies discover they need a Mexican lawyer at the worst possible moment. A customer stops paying and the collection agency runs out of road at the border. A subsidiary gets a bank account frozen by an authority nobody can name. A shipment is seized in customs. A supplier files suit in a Mexican court and the summons arrives in Spanish with a deadline already running.
In every one of those situations the problem is the same: the assets, the debtor and the court are in Mexico, so the solution has to be Mexican too. That is what this firm does.
What we do for companies based in the United States
Commercial debt recovery. You shipped, you invoiced, and the Mexican buyer stopped paying. We collect that debt in Mexico, out of court when the debtor will negotiate and through the commercial courts when they will not. We do not require original documents to open a file, and we work on contingency: our fee is a percentage of what we recover, so if nothing comes back you owe no fee.
Amparo and asset protection. The amparo is the constitutional remedy Mexican law gives you against an act of authority. In practice it is what stops a frozen account, a seizure, a tax determination or an arrest warrant from becoming permanent while it is being fought. It has short deadlines and no equivalent in US law, which is why foreign companies routinely find out about it too late.
Litigation and corporate matters. We also handle commercial and civil litigation, corporate and banking work, tax defense, real estate and criminal defense for companies. Those pages are currently in Spanish, and our attorneys will walk you through any of them in English.
Why the firm
Zorrilla Abogados has spent two decades acting for the creditor side. We are counsel to most of the banking institutions in Mexico, which is the part of our practice that matters most to a foreign company: banks do not hire a firm to send letters, they hire it to recover money and to enforce judgments. We have been recognized by Chambers and Partners, The Legal 500, Leaders League and Latin Lawyer.
Our founder, Miguel Zorrilla, holds master's degrees in constitutional protection law and in criminal law, which is the combination the cross-border work actually demands: recovery on one side, defense of assets and people on the other.
Where we are
Our main office is in San Pedro Garza García, in the Monterrey metropolitan area, about a two hour drive from the Texas border and inside the industrial center of northern Mexico. Our second office is in Mexico City, where the federal courts and the financial sector sit. Between the two we cover where the overwhelming majority of Mexican commercial defendants and their assets are located, and we litigate nationwide.
How to start
Send us what you have: the contract, the invoices, the promissory note, the court papers, the notice from the authority. There is no charge for the review, and you will get a straight answer about whether the matter is viable, roughly how long it takes and what it costs. If it is not worth pursuing, we will tell you that instead of billing you to find out.
One practical warning that costs foreign companies real money: Mexican law puts hard deadlines on most of this. A check has six months. An amparo is counted in days, not months. Waiting to see whether the problem resolves itself is the single most expensive decision available to you.