Spanish firm ECIJA has combined with Valencia-based consultancy Revamp Law as it seeks to expand its legaltech, cybersecurity and technology services. 

Revamp Law will be integrated into ECIJA Tech, with Revamp Law’s Paul Handal joining the firm as a partner to lead the tech division. Handal founded Revamp Law last year. It specialises in providing technology consulting and legal operations support to companies in Spain and Latin America and offers tech solutions for client lifecycle management, process automation, e-billing, matter management and AI-powered contract and legal document analysis, as well as advice on optimising in-house departments.

Alejandro Touriño, managing partner of ECIJA, said: “Companies are demanding that their legal firms do more with less. In this scenario, there is a clear need for corporate law firms to digitise and implement technological tools, from blockchain to machine learning or big data, to improve their internal processes in favour of efficiency.”

Handal brings with him more than 15 years of legal experience, having previously been a partner at several firms in the region. As well as founding Revamp Law, he is also a professor of legal technology at Spain’s IE Law School and co-director of the Legal Tech Lab at the University of Valencia. He will oversee an international team at ECIJA that will develop new ways of delivering legal services based on human talent, processes, data and technology.

Handal said: “We are seeing firms investing more aggressively in legal technology. However, we see that they need to be able to invest more effectively according to their needs. At ECIJA Tech we are responding to that problem, consolidating ourselves as a one-stop legaltech shop.”

The Revamp Law move follows ECIJA’s expansion into Argentina earlier this month through its combination with Buenos Aires-based ELZEN, following similar Latin American deals last year in Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador and Guatemala. 

Last month the firm made a double partner hire in Madrid, with Patricia Liñán joining from Bird & Bird as head of its competition law practice, and corporate, M&A and private equity lawyer Borja Díaz-Guerra joining from Spanish firm Benow Partners.

Last February, a group of Spanish law firms teamed up with legal tech start ups and universities to set up a legal technology hub in Barcelona.