The same sentence does not work on both sides of the border.

“No win, no fee.” In Spain, a lawyer and client may agree that the lawyer is paid only if the case is won. In Switzerland, in litigation, the federal Lawyers Act forbids it. A firm working in both countries that translates its website word for word can end up promising in German what it could only offer in Spanish.

Fees are the part of a law firm’s website that is read most and written worst. They are almost always dealt with in a vague line such as “transparent fees tailored to each case”, which says nothing in any country. When a firm works on both sides of the border, vagueness also becomes a risk.

Switzerland: fees, not a share of the outcome.

Article 12 of the federal Lawyers Act has two letters that matter here. Letter e forbids agreeing with the client, before the case ends, on a share of the proceeds instead of fees, and also forbids undertaking to waive fees if the proceedings end badly. Letter i requires lawyers to explain, when accepting the mandate, the principles on which they will bill, and to inform clients periodically, or on request, of the amount of fees owed.

On the website, letter i translates into something simple: saying before the first meeting whether the firm bills by the hour, by fixed fee or by stage, and how often it will tell clients what has accrued. Clients who know they will receive a statement of fees every month do not need to ask, and are not surprised.

Which complementary arrangements are possible is something each firm knows better than anyone. The website only has to avoid promising what letter e forbids, and explain from the start what letter i asks for.

Costs follow another logic. The Swiss Civil Procedure Code, in Article 106, places costs on the losing party. That includes compensation to the winning party for its legal expenses, but that compensation is set according to tariffs and may not cover everything the client paid their firm.

Spain: freedom to agree, with prior information.

In Spain, the story runs the other way. A Supreme Court judgment of 4 November 2008 set aside the ban on contingency fees, or cuota litis, that the profession’s rules had imposed, meaning agreements that link fees to the outcome. Since then, lawyer and client may agree on them freely, within the rules of professional conduct and competition law.

Freedom does not mean silence. Article 14 of the Code of Conduct requires lawyers to give, in advance, the approximate amount of fees or the basis for calculating them, and the consequences of a possible costs order. Organic Law 5/2024 on the Right of Defence turns that information into a client’s right: to know how fees are set and what a costs order would mean, and to ask for a written estimate in advance.

In Spain, costs are generally paid by the party whose claims are all rejected, unless the court finds serious doubts of fact or law, under Article 394.1 of the Civil Procedure Act. And Article 394.3 caps the part corresponding to lawyers at a third of the value of the claim for each winning litigant, unless there was recklessness.

For someone who lives in Switzerland and litigates in Spain, or the other way round, these differences come as a surprise. It is exactly the kind of explanation a website can give calmly and that a rushed first conversation tends to leave half done.

What the Orvalle website does.

Orvalle, the fictional law firm I designed for this sector, has offices in Lugano and Madrid. Its website cannot have a single fees page with one sentence for everyone. It has one page with two columns.

• One table, two countries. Fee arrangements, outcome-based agreements, mandatory information and costs, side by side, with the rule behind each row.
• A careful estimator. The client chooses a country, a type of matter and a fee arrangement, and sees guidance on what is included and what is not. Underneath, always, the sentence “This is not a quote”.
• Costs in one sentence. What happens if you lose, in each country, without jargon.
• One sentence per country, in every language. What is said about Switzerland starts from the Swiss rule and what is said about Spain from the Spanish one, in all six languages of the website.

Before publishing, I would check this.

• No promise to charge only if you win on pages about litigation in Switzerland.
• Billing principles explained before accepting the mandate: hourly, by stage or fixed fee, and when clients are told the amount.
• Costs described as they work in each country, without implying that the winner recovers everything.
• A written estimate in advance offered visibly to clients in Spain.
• Every translation reviewed by someone at the firm who knows the rules of the country it addresses.

A simple test: take the sentence about fees from the Spanish version of your website and read it the way a client in Switzerland would. Then do the reverse with the Swiss version. Is it still true in the other country? Is it still permitted there?

If one of the two sentences only works on one side of the border, the client will not know when reading it. They will find out at the end, when the bill arrives, which is the worst moment to find out anything.

Which fee arrangement suits each matter is for the firm to decide. The website only has to describe it with the same precision in both countries. In the Orvalle concept you can see the table and the estimator in six languages, and in the Strategic Diagnostic we review together how your website describes it today.