With a turnover growth of 22.44% in 2021 - up to 33.5 million euros - and after being placed in the 'top 20' of the Spanish legal sector barely a year after making its debut in the 'top 25', the Andersen law firm is set to be the focus of many eyes in the short and medium term. Especially, listening to the ambition with which its co-managing partners, José Vicente Morote and Íñigo Rodríguez-Sastre, predict that, in not too long, the firm will be among the top 10 in Spain, with a turnover of 70 million euros. That will be "in two or three years", they say in conversation with El Confidencial, assuming the pressure of those who set high goals: "If we have tripled our size in five years, why shouldn't we be able to double it in a couple more? Andersen's project is in full swing.

One of the great merits of Morote and Rodríguez-Sastre is having managed, in just one year and three months since they took over the management of the organisation, to ensure that no one in the market refers to the firm as "the old Olleros". A transition from a family law firm to a professionalised firm owned by its partners is never easy and requires an extraordinarily difficult combination of left-handedness and determination. At the same time, the firm has developed its integration into a global firm such as Andersen, which is also undergoing its own expansion process, and has maintained intense corporate activity, with multiple integrations, to adjust its structure to the large law firm project they have in mind. Morote and Rodríguez-Sastre promise that Andersen will be a firm to talk about in the coming years.

QUESTION: How has the 2021 financial year been for the firm, and have you achieved the results envisaged in your strategic plan?

JOSÉ VICENTE MOROTE. 2021 has been a very good year for us. We have closed well above budget. We anticipated a 27-million-euro income and, in the end, we ended the year with 32 and a half million euros. We are very happy. The figure is very significant, because the budget was demanding and we have exceeded it by a very significant distance.

Q. Will you maintain this line in 2022, where do you see yourselves at the end of the current financial year, and where do you see yourselves at the end of the current financial year?

J.V.M. We are going to continue to grow. Our budget is 38 million euros but, given how well the first quarter is going, it is reasonable that we will end the year at around 40 million euros. And this is without taking into account the possibility of a significant corporate operation. It is worth noting that, at the beginning of 2017, our turnover was 13 million euros, so if the forecast is met, we will have tripled the size of the firm in just five years. Moreover, this evolution has not been accompanied by a threefold increase in our headcount, which shows that we have also grown in efficiency.

ÍÑIGO RODRÍGUEZ-SASTRE. This year we want to focus on sustained growth. We are going to focus a lot on the Barcelona, Seville and Lisbon offices, which we have recently integrated into our partnership, Andersen Iberia.

J.V.M. Madrid is our driving force and will undoubtedly continue to lead growth, but we think we have good offices in these three cities and we want to strengthen them. We are not forgetting Valencia, which is also going to do very well.

You can read the full interview in El Confidecial.