Customarily, albeit not religiously, we share with readers a “Letter From ________” when we return from a plausibly serious trip to another major metropolitan. Herewith our first from Bogota, Colombia.

For orientation purposes, Bogota is a 5—6 hour flight due south from New York: most of the year no time change, at most one hour. Bogota is also a city of 8-million (on a par with New York) in a country of 50-million (on a par with the UK, France, and Germany). Its elevation is 8500 feet—point of reference, as it didn’t seem to present any perceptible difference to us. It’s the largest metropolitan area in Colombia by far, although Medellin and Cali are also important.

Antonio Leal Holguin, our new Director based there, was utterly instrumental in helping set up our meetings and accompanied us throughout the trip.  His demonstrable sophistication, expertise, and quietly sound judgment served to redouble our enthusiasm at having him on our team.

We were there for four days, comprising three full days of meetings with law firms and the “Chamber of Legal Services,” and here’s our overall impression.

Colombia has been discovered.

That is to say, foreign/international law firms have arrived in force and the market disruption they’ve caused have posed questions about the path forward for incumbent local firms which might be characterized roughly as follows:

While the influx of non-indigenous firms poses challenges to the incumbents, in our conversations we found realistic and purposeful, dare we say “commercial,” attitudes prevailed. No one would dream of erecting barriers and indeed, Colombia has long had an open market for law firms. This is refreshing.