Eight employment lawyers, including two partners, have left DWF’s Madrid office to form their own five-partner boutique law firm Everfine.

The split comes less than a year after DWF’s acquisition of 40-partner Spanish independent Rousaud Costas Duran (RCD), for which the group paid €50.5m in December 2019. 

The new firm is led by founding partners Pablo Bernal de Pablo Blanco and Santiago Carrero, both of whom have more than two decades of experience across the full range of individual and collective labour law instructions, acting for IBEX 35 companies, board-level mandates and for senior managers.  

Bernal is a specialist in restructuring and redundancy law, collective bargaining and contentious employment litigation, as well as workplace bargaining. A partner at RCD for more than five years, he previously held similar responsibilities at KPMG from 2010 to 2015; prior to which he worked at Cusan, a specialist employment law boutique. 

Carrero, who qualified in 1998, worked with Bernal at Cusan, KPMG and RCD.

They are joined in the boutique by RCD associates Rita Fernández-Figares, José Luis Díez and and Álvaro Garcíawere, who become partners at their new firm.

Bernal told Spanish news site Confilegal the boutique aimed to act as a strategic partner in resolving and managing human resources needs, adding: "We believe that there is room for an initiative of this type.”

The move means DWF’s Spanish employment team is now led by Jonathan Gil and Cristina Samaranch.

In June, DWF announced the closure of its Brussels and Singapore offices and the downsizing of its Dubai and Cologne arms as part of a cost-cutting drive in response to the impact of Covid-19 its business.