“Barrister-Style” service - PLMJ launches an innovative legal service to help in coordinating and defining litigation strategies that guarantee the best results

The “Barrister-Style” service will be coordinated by José Miguel Júdice and its objective is to help clients and lawyers make the best use of time and resources in particularly complex cases at the most critical stages of those cases. The complexity of the legal system requires ever greater levels of specialisation and companies that are facing a difficult economic and financial situation increasingly demand more control and reduction of the cost of legal proceedings, while maintaining the quality of legal support. The new ‘Barrister-style’ service launched recently by the law firm PLMJ is designed to meet this challenge.

In Portugal cases begin with a preparatory phase that includes the investigation of the relevant facts and the filing of the statement of claim or defence as appropriate and this phase requires many hours of work with a lower added value. Next comes the trial phase which – particularly with the new Civil Procedure Code – requires a high level of experience and specialisation and involves fewer hours of work. The definition of strategy and coordination of the work of the teams are decisive elements in the success of the two stages. The ‘Barrister-style’ service makes it possible for clients of other lawyers, with the agreement of those lawyers, and other companies through their in-house lawyers, to count on the support of a team of PLMJ lawyers with an accumulated 45 years of experience and extensive litigation know-how. These PLMJ lawyers will assist in defining strategies and coordinate the work in order to achieve the best result possible in litigation cases.
The objective is to improve the cost/benefit relationship for the client, with PLMJ involved in the more complex and higher added value tasks at the points in the proceedings at which accumulated experience is most important.
Under this programme PLMJ will assist in the definition and supervision of procedural strategy and carry out a rigorous review of the pleadings. The written phase of the court/arbitration proceedings, organisation of the issues of fact, documentary due diligence and obtaining of information from witnesses and their selection will be done by the in-house lawyer or client’s own lawyer, as will the drafting of the pleadings, although with monitoring/revision by PLMJ. Acting in a similar way to a barrister, PLMJ will assume responsibility for the trial phase and any appeals, working alongside the lawyer whole worked principally in the written phase of the case.

Coordinated by PLMJ founding partner José Miguel Júdice, the ‘Barrister-style’ service is provided by a ‘multi-specialised’ team including partners from a range of areas chosen in accordance with the particular subject matter of the court or arbitration case. This approach also makes it possible to mobilise experienced and qualified lawyers  from a team of more than 200, 100 of whom are principally dedicated to commercial, civil, criminal, employment, administrative litigation and from areas such as  arbitration (including public and tax law), commercial, contracts, employment, construction, competition, the environment, intellectual property. This service is ground-breaking in Portugal and is similar to the Anglo-Saxon model in which the legal profession is divided between solicitors, whose principal role is to provide legal advice, and barristers, whose work focuses principally on the strategic coordination of legal proceedings, and the trial phase and any appeals to higher courts. PLMJ will provide its services in a similar way to those of a barrister instructed to work alongside a solicitor.