Hiring a law firm in another country is mostly an act of faith. You cannot walk into the office, you do not know the local reputation, and the credentials on the website are in a system you do not recognize. So here is the short version of who we are, with the parts that are verifiable.
Miguel Zorrilla
Our founder has practiced law in Mexico for twenty years. He holds a professional license issued by the Mexican Ministry of Education, license number 10477721, which is publicly verifiable in the national registry of professionals. He holds two master's degrees: one in constitutional protection law, which is the amparo, and one in criminal law.
That combination is unusual and it is deliberate. The amparo is what stops an authority from seizing assets. Criminal law is what comes into play when a commercial dispute in Mexico escalates into a complaint against an executive, which happens more often than foreign companies expect. Together they cover what a company actually needs when things go wrong here.
He also serves as general attorney-in-fact for Scotiabank Inverlat, granted by public deed, and has represented most of the banking institutions operating in Mexico.
Why the banking practice matters to you
If you take one thing from this page, take this one. Banks are the most demanding recovery clients in any market. They have internal legal teams, they measure results, and they do not retain a firm to send letters. They retain a firm to recover money and to enforce judgments, and they replace it when it does not.
Two decades of that work is the reason a US creditor should care. Your file is not an unfamiliar type of matter for us. It is the same work we do every day, with a different flag on the creditor.
The firm has also represented major corporations, including national and multinational companies, and in recent years has expanded into the pharmaceutical, automotive and energy sectors.
Recognition
The firm has been recognized by Chambers Latin America, The Legal 500, Leaders League and Latin Lawyer. Those are independent international directories that rank firms through client and peer interviews rather than paid placement, which makes them the closest thing to a verifiable outside opinion in this market. If you want to check us before sending a file, those are the right places to look.
How we work with clients in the United States
Our attorneys handle these matters in English. Beyond that, three things tend to matter to a foreign client and rarely get mentioned:
You will not need to travel. Matters are handled under a power of attorney. What does need early attention is formalizing documents granted abroad for use before a Mexican court, which takes time and is a common reason files arrive late.
Updates are written to be forwarded. You have to explain this internally, to a general counsel or a board that is never going to read a Mexican court file. We write updates in plain English that can be passed along without translation, and we flag decisions you need to make before the deadline arrives, not after.
On recovery, we get paid when you do. Commercial debt recovery is handled on contingency: a percentage of what we actually collect. If nothing is recovered, there is no fee. That also means we will tell you when a file is not worth pursuing instead of billing you to find that out. Amparo and defense work is quoted directly, because there it is your own assets we are protecting rather than new money coming in.
Where we are
Our main office is in San Pedro Garza García, in the Monterrey metropolitan area, roughly a two hour drive from the Texas border and in the middle of Mexico's industrial north. Our second office is in Mexico City, where the federal courts and the financial sector are. We litigate nationwide.
Monterrey runs on US Central Time for most of the year, so there is no meaningful time difference for a company in Texas, the Midwest or the Southeast. A matter raised in your morning gets looked at the same morning here.
If you want to talk to someone before sending anything, our contact page has the direct numbers for Mexico and the United States, plus WhatsApp, which is how most business communication actually happens here.