Silvia Bauzá, at the negotiating table
From Garrigues to EY Abogados, the employment partner reflects on a career shaped by new chapters and by a view of employment law rooted in people
by ilaria iaquinta
An orange card. That was how Silvia Bauzá found her way into employment law. After graduating, she was working at a notary’s office when a good client and family friend told her about Arthur Andersen and handed her a card on which to submit her CV. She filled it in on her way home and went to deliver it. When she arrived, she was told that, as a lawyer, she should not have been given an orange card, but a green one. It was 1997, and the professional services firm, then one of the most powerful organisations in the market, was about to merge with Garrigues. As Bauzá had spent two years preparing for the competitive examinations to join the Labour Inspectorate, her application went directly to the employment law department. “That is how I ended up where I am today”, she tells Iberian Lawyer, as she welcomes us into her office to share her story. Almost 30 years later, that largely accidental beginning has become a career spent at some of the leading firms in the market: Garrigues, Gómez-Acebo & Pombo, Hogan Lovells, Allen & Overy (now A&O Shearman) and, for the past year and a half, EY Abogados, where she is the partner leading the employment practice in Spain and a member of the firm’s executive committee.
It is not a typical career path for an employment partner. Bauzá readily acknowledges that many professionals spend decades at the same firm or move only once they have reached a particular stage in their career. In her case, she says, each move had a different rationale and came at a particular point in both her personal and professional life. Garrigues was where she learnt her craft. It was there that she trained as an employment lawyer and formed some of her closest friendships. She later left an established department to join Gómez-Acebo & Pombo, where employment law was still part of the litigation practice and there was no partner heading the team. During her interview with Ignacio Campos, then the senior associate responsible for the group, she set one condition: “If you tell me you are going to build a standalone employment team, I will join. Otherwise, I will stay at Garrigues”. She remained at the firm for 13 years.
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